Today everywhere one looks one is bound to be staring at an advertisement, whether it be a brand name sprawled across someone’s shirt or an ad on TV. It is almost impossible to escape the advertising as it is shoved in people’s faces through giant billboards and pop up ad on the computer. Almost everyone is obsessed with having the newest and greatest brand name item. Many people are trapped in the world of consumerism and materialism that is modern day America. The consumerist obsession is shown through metaphors and imagery in the poem “America” by Tony Hoagland, and through symbolism and color in the image “I Pledge Allegiance” by Taylor Rutledge. Both the poem and artwork show how consumerism has taken over America. In the poem Hoagland …show more content…
shows how consumerism has trapped America using metaphors. Hoagland writes “America is for him a maximum-security prison whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes”. Hoagland compares the US to a prison, because people are trapped by the advertisements. “RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes” have created “walls” for America. The brands create a feeling of conformity as everyone tries to shop at the same places to have the newest things. Everywhere ads are plastered across building, newspapers, magazines, clothing etc. It is hard to escape the advertising. Later in the poem Hoagland uses imagery to show how American are so obsessed with consumerism they do not care for the people around them.
Hoagland writes “Each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you and you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river even while others are drowning underneath you and you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters” to show how people are so obsessed with buying new merchandise they forgot how others are struggling and do not help them out. The “river of bright merchandise” shows how much and how appealing all the products are. People are trapped on their “pleasure boat” they are surrounded by the merchandise which completely isolates them from those who are suffering, and cannot afford all the new …show more content…
products. The image “I Pledge Allegiance” also shows how America is now trapped in consumerism. The image shows an American flag where the stars are replaced with very popular brand logos. The symbolize represent the brands and how people are no longer pledging to America for our liberties and freedoms but to merchandise and brands. The image represents how people pledge to buy and use certain brands in America these days. People only care about their liberty and freedom in purchasing. The image shows how America has become about consumerism and advertising. The stars no longer represent the freedom of the 50 states in America but the freedom people have in buying 50+ brands. Rutledge also uses color in the image to show America’s obsession with consumerism and materialistic possessions.
The colors of the American flag, red, white, and blue, are usually used to represent America and freedom. Those colors are used in the image to link the brand names with America, and to show the obsession. The red, white, and blue is now not only representing the liberties and freedoms in America but the brand names people have come attached to. Kids in school every day pledge allegiance to the US flag for their liberties and freedoms they have been given; however, now people in America are pledging to buy certain brand names and the “liberty and justice for all” is the liberty and justice people have to buy new merchandise every
day. America is consumed by materialistic possessions and consumerism, which can be seen in “America” and “I Pledge Allegiance”. Whether people are pledging to buy a certain brand or always looking for the bright new merchandise, almost everyone is infatuated with their possessions. Though many people are consumed with buying new and advanced products some people have escaped the trap. Hoagland and Rutledge were lucky enough to escape corporations trap and have become cynical of America and its obsession with consumerism. They believe that people no longer care about America’s original values, such as freedom and democracy, but for their wide variety of merchandise, and technological advances. Hoagland and Rutledge are both criticising many American’s change in values through imagery, metaphors, color, and symbolism in the poem “America” and “I Pledge Allegiance”. Some may say that these pieces are eye opening and can help them out of the consumerism trap.
Americans have long since depended on a falsified ideology of idealized life referred to as the American dream. The construct of this dream has become more elusive with the emergence of popular cultural advertisements that sell items promoting a highly gendered goal of achieving perfection. In “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” Jack Solomon states that ads are creating a “symbolic association between their products and what is most coveted by the consumer” to draw on the consumer’s desire to outwardly express high social standing (544). The American dream has sold the idea of equality between genders, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds, but advertisements have manipulated this concept entirely through representations
Advertisements are one of many things that Americans cannot get away from. Every American sees an average of 3,000 advertisements a day; whether it’s on the television, radio, while surfing the internet, or while driving around town. Advertisements try to get consumers to buy their products by getting their attention. Most advertisements don’t have anything to do with the product itself. Every company has a different way of getting the public’s attention, but every advertisement has the same goal - to sell the product. Every advertisement tries to appeal to the audience by using ethos, pathos, and logos, while also focusing on who their audience is and the purpose of the ad. An example of this is a Charmin commercial where there is a bear who gets excited when he gets to use the toilet paper because it is so soft.
To the Majority Opinion it’s a flag of our nation but to the Dissenting opinion its means more than just a flag. It means “White signifies purity and innocence, Red, hardiness & velour, and Blue, the color of the Chief (the broad band above the stripes) signifies vigilance, perseverance & justice." In this case the Dissenting opinion gave reasons why flag burning should be banned. Eventually Congress passed the Flag Protection Act of 1989. The Act banned flag burning regardless of whether the person burning the flag intended to cause offense to
In order to help answer this question, let’s begin by defining what a flag is. The proponents (veterans, Citizens Flag Alliance, and other organizations of this type) of the amendment for protection of the flag define the flag as a “cultural artifact with meaning, significance, and usage determined by the particular system employing it (Guenter 18).” Some flag historians have recognized the impact of culture on the shifting significance and usage of the national banner, although no one has ventured a full-scale probe of the subject (Guenter 16). The flag in the beginning was a symbol of freedom and enlightenment. The flag design has changed.
Consumerism is the idea that influences people to purchase items in great amounts. Consumerism makes trying to live the life of a “perfect American” rather difficult. It interferes with society by replacing the normal necessities for life with the desire for things with not much concern for the true value of the desired object. Children are always easily influenced by what they watch on television. Swimme suggests in his work “How Do Kids Get So Caught Up in Consumerism” that although an advertiser’s objective is to make money, the younger generation is being manipulated when seeing these advertisements. Before getting a good understanding of a religion, a child will have seen and absorbed at least 30,000 advertisements. The amount of time teenagers spend in high school is lesser than the amount of advertisement that they have seen (155). The huge amount of advertisements exposed to the younger generation is becomi...
Another view of the American flag is the colors red, white, and blue. Some Americans see the color red as blood for all the blood shed on the battlegrounds. Another color white for victory or triumph in our great nation of America. Lastly, the color blue for the sadness or sorrow felt because of the lives lost in war.
The video describes how our society may not even care about the product being advertised, but we still read the billboard or watch the commercial. Also mentioned was the use of colors in a commercial, the marketing effects in politics, and even market research obtained by studying different cults. Frontline takes an in-depth look at the multibillion-dollar “persuasion industries” of advertising and how this rhetoric affects everyone. So whether this is in the form of a television commercial or a billboard, pathos, logos, and ethos can be found in all advertisements.
In Tony Hoagland’s poem “America”, greed and its negative implications on society are addressed. The “American Dream” revolves around this idea of consumerism, this kind of dream is blind because it prohibits someone from finding the simple things in life that truly make them happy. People in the USA are living their life based on this dream, they want the fancy car and home so they strive throughout their lifetime to achieve those goals while neglecting core values. Hoagland’s use of implied metaphors and commentary tone conveys the theme that dreams based on materialistic items causes unhappiness, greed and corruption.
The colors of the Flag may be thus explained: The red is for valor, zeal and fervency; the white for hope purity, cleanliness of life, and rectitude of conduct; the blue, the color of heaven, for reverence to God, loyalty, sincerity, justice and truth.
On our American flag, the white signifies purity and innocence. The red color means hardiness and bravery. Blue expresses courage, vigilance (alertness), perseverance (never giving up), and justice.
In Solomon’s words, “American dream encourages the desire to ‘arrive,’ to vault above the mass, it also fosters a desire to be popular, to ‘belong’.” (169) Advertiser whose “ads are aimed at a broader market” (169) are utilizing such kind of human mentality. For instance, Nike is a famous clothes brand to almost everybody. In its advertisement, there are always people in different genders, races and ages wearing Nike’s products running on streets, on riversides or in parks. Through its advertisement, Nike is trying to convey consumers that everyone is using Nike’s products, and you should be one of them. People want to fit in as part of most people, so they buy Nike’s products. Nike’s advertised products make people belong to it. If I were going to buy a new pair of shorts for running, I would consider of buying a pair of Nike shorts because it seems that so many people wear Nike shorts and I want to keep the same with them. People buy those advertised products to increase their senses of belonging, but they are losing their individuality at the same time. Despite many advertised products could decrease the individuality, some of them indeed make people more of
Consumerism stands as a tenet of the American culture. Our common desire to possess the newest or most popular products drives our daily lives. We strive to have the possessions of those to whom we compare ourselves – friends, family, neighbors, associates – in the hope that we may feel a semblance of fulfillment. Yet, this path of obsession over objects merges our individual identities with the objects we covet. In the novel A Mercy, the character Jacob Vaark epitomizes this modern materialist trend. Through the metaphor of Vaark’s insatiable desire for a mansion, Morrison criticizes the modern consumerist American culture.
The past few years many people have been expressing their feelings about what they think the flag and the national anthem means to them. Some people think of it as a race thing or some people’s mentality makes them think the flag is just another thing that has no meaning.
What the colors stand for red stands for courage, white stands for purity, and blue stands for vigilance, perseverance, and justice The flag shouldn’t be flown in bad weather . Men and women should salute with their right hand over their heart to show respect to the flag. The American flag’s national anthem is called “the stars spangled banner”. The American flag also has another song about it.
“The average family is bombarded with 1,100 advertisements per day … people only remembered three or four of them”. Fiske’s uses an example of kids singing Razzmatazz a jingle for brand of tights at a woman in a mini skirt. This displayed to the reader that people are not mindless consumers; they modify the commodity for their use. He rejects that the audiences are helpless subjects of unconscious consumerism. In contrast to McDonald’s, Fiske’s quoted “they were using the ads for their own cheeky resistive subculture” he added. He believed that instead of being submissive they twisted the ad into their own take on popular culture (Fiske, 1989, p. 31)