Decoding Advertisements

A fascinating account of how the admen achieve their effects.?Stuart Hood This book sets out not simply to criticize advertisements on the grounds of dishonesty and exploitation, but to examine in detail, through over a hundred illustrations, their undoubted attractiveness and appeal. The overt economic function of this appeal is to make us buy things. Its ideological function,...

A fascinating account of how the admen achieve their effects.?Stuart Hood This book sets out not simply to criticize advertisements on the grounds of dishonesty and exploitation, but to examine in detail, through over a hundred illustrations, their undoubted attractiveness and appeal. The overt economic function of this appeal is to make us buy things. Its ideological function, however, is to involve us as 'individuals' in perpetuating the ideas which endorse the economic basis of our society. If it is economic conditions which make ideology necessary, it is ideology which makes those conditions "seem" necessary. If society is to be changed, this vicious circle of "necessity" and ideas must be broken. "Decoding Advertisements" is an attempt to undo one link in the chain which we ourselves help to forge, in our acceptance not only of the images and values of advertising, but of the 'transparent' forms and structures in which they are embodied. It provides not an "answer," but a "set of tools" which we can use to alter our own perceptions of one of society's subtlest and most complex forms of propaganda. Other books by Judith Williamson published by Marion Boyars are "Consuming Passions: the Dynamics of Popular Culture" and "Deadline at Dawn: Film Criticism 1980-1990."

Judith Williamson is an academic who teaches media studies at UK universities. She is also a writer and critic and lives in London. She is the author of two other acclaimed books on culture and imagery, Consuming Passions: The Dynamics of Popular Culture (1986) and Deadline at Dawn: Film Criticism 1980-1990 (1993).