Fight the Power of Advertising

Jean Kilbourne’s introduction “A Girl of Many Parts: The Making of an Activist,” discusses gendered media representations in advertisements, audience interpretations of these advertisements, and the social context of representations and interpretations. She explains how advertising images devalue women and focus on impractical beauty standards. The goal of advertising creates an emotional relationship and connection among advertisements, products, and consumers. Creating a false emotional attachment to ads and products is similar to what happens in an addictive relationship (Kilbourne 27). The way an alcoholic relies on a drink for false fulfillment, the consumer relies on a product. Kilbourne explains, “Advertising, an enormously important part of our culture, contributes mightily to the climate of denial in which relationships flounder and addictions flourish. I will also argue that these two consequences are related: disconnection (loss, rejection, isolation, abuse) especially in early life, drives many people to addiction, which in turn makes authentic connection impossible” (Kilbourne 26). If consumers deny this addiction, then they continue to substitute products as coping skills and human connection. The earlier in life and more frequently it is denied, the more authentic connections consumers find with a product. Consumers must recognize an advertiser’s profit making goals and actively resist the temptation to contribute to materialism and conspicuous consumption.

Kilbourne asserts the “problem of addiction” cannot be resolved in a corrupted cultural environment (30). This environment is difficult to navigate. The advertising representations are made in a culture where corporations seek profit, not women’s liberation (Kilbourne 30). If a magazine advertisement depicts a woman as a sex slave, domestic goddess, or entrepreneur, the advertisement remains as the company’s attempt to increase profit. Companies can sell a lifestyle, but not a fulfilling one. Advertisers make false promises about products; consumers buy into the promises, and make false connections with the products and promises.

Kilbourne asks us to examine our personal actions and find a time where we have used a product to suppress unwanted emotion, or produce a desired feeling (28). Examining my own lifestyle and actions, I am embarrassed by my past, but consoled as well. My current relationship with the media makes me feel more empowered. Before I truly began examining my “relationship” with products, the attachment I had with brand names was disgusting. In the past, I had particular brand names I associated with myself. If I did not own or wear what I thought represented me, I felt selfless or as if something was missing. I still feel what you wear can help represent how you feel on a particular day, but I do not think it should tell the story of who you are. Color and pattern can help evoke a certain mood, but not explain my wonderful spiritual self. I do not have those selfless feelings as I grow older and more become self-aware, but I still have daily requirements.

The products I consume do not define my person, but they have become an addictive substitute. I am referring to cigarettes and a daily cup of Starbucks coffee. My addiction with cigarettes began at time when I lost the personal connections I once knew and felt comfortable with. Cigarettes became a connector between other smokers and myself as a common ground. I actually met one of my best friends smoking outside the dorms at my old college. The advertisements did not lure me in, but the product’s substitution for feeling lonely stuck with me. I am no longer lonely, but I am still smoking seven years later.

My second daily requirement, Starbucks coffee, holds the same status of being both a connector and repressor. I go to coffee shops to either study, connect with other people, or repress my feeling of being tired and dreading work while drinking coffee. However, I laugh at the products’ advertisements. Starbucks tells me I am doing something for conservation. They explain, “I’m doing my part,” “have been for tens years,” and I should be “proud of myself” (Figure 1). It’s actually posted on the bathroom wall. Honestly, the message made me feel good once, but then I consciously thought, “If I forget my own cup, I create trash and that is not very earth friendly. Also, Starbucks has only been open in this area for about three years, I started frequenting the shop about two years ago, and so doing my part for ten years is impossible.” Recognizing the connection between advertisements and their message is important. Products advertised can ultimately become addicting. Understanding the messages advertisers send is necessary, as they are profit-making ventures. Products cannot support emotional wellbeing.


Bibliography
Kilbourne, Jean. “Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising.” Introduction. A Girl of Many Parts: The Making of an Activist. New York: The Free Press. 1999. 17-32. Print.
MacDonald, Chris. You Are Starbucks. The Business Ethics Blog. Created 09 July 2009. Accessed 17 September 2009. http://www.businessethics.ca/blog/2009/07/you-are-starbucks.html.

Building Better Bisexual Worlds

In “Monsters from the Id,” Margaret Tarratt argues that science fiction aliens are externalized representations of unconscious drives. This science fiction film adjusts gender representations and identifications. In it, women possess masculine traits. Tarratt quotes Freud stating, “the Id…is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts but has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle” (349). The alien in Aliens represents the fear of human’s bisexual nature. The embodiment is gendered feminine carrying horrific, grotesque, repulsive, and violent qualities. The alien’s visual characteristics and Ripley’s victory over the alien represent the fear of human’s bisexual nature.

The creation of ordered meaning from Freud and Lacan’s ideas of unconscious desires leads to socially constructed gender roles. These ideas structure film and the audience’s reception. The man, as an active spectator, objectifies the woman. Sexual difference positions men in a higher status of the symbolic order and woman largely exists as the Other. The feminine gender representations held on a day-to-day basis are merely a performance. The instance of a bisexual nature would claim there is an oscillation between the masculine and feminine roles. That is to say, they are not fixed. The feminine sex, but bisexual identity, could possess traditionally masculine traits without causing castration anxiety, reason with rationality, not relying largely on the feminine quality of emotion, and perform the maternal function. The masculine sex, but bisexual gender identity, could ideally possess traditionally feminine traits without castration anxiety. In a sense, the blending of both gender identities would be a complimentary desire and a type of accepted “incorporation.” As the boundaries between aliens and human are consumed, humans then feel something is lost because their human body is treated as a host. Currently, under a capitalist patriarchal society, a man may feel the same way. From the masculine gender, being feminized is consuming. If masculinity has been breeched, men are feminized, and die. Their ever important masculinity would be lost if a bisexual nature were identified.

The alien in Aliens (1986) has the place of the absolute other. In an evolutionary sense, she is hyper-reproductive. Examining the nature of the beast before it is known, one crew member insinuates, “Maybe...there’s one female that runs the whole show. She’s badass.” He is right. She is the ultimate other, creating tons of babies, which live for the process of incorporation. Ripley refers to the alien’s baby as, “A dangerous organism.” The organism is dangerous because of the fear of incorporation. It presents the fear of men being feminine, or of women being masculine. She is not attractive, but here, the body of woman is rather grotesque.

The female character, Vasquez, appears to be very masculine. She is a muscular Marine. When she first sees Ripley, she criticizes her, calling her “Snow White.” When the squad enters, they send her in first, but she must carry a huge phallic gun. In the beginning of the film, Ripley is initially characterized as the emotional mad woman. In addition, she dreams of incorporation pleading, “Kill me!” We later learn she is the cool, rational, woman who can have it both ways. She can drive the loader, play the mom role, wear short hair, and keep the symbolic nuclear family together. The human females are allowed a degree of oscillation.

When an alien attacks Ripley and Newt, the evil Burke, a capitalist patriarchal symbol, turns off the monitor that could help save them. Ripley exposes the darker side of masculinity of Burke in opposition to the alien’s hyper femininity. She asks, “Which species is worse?” He is the villain, and we are glad to see him die through incorporation.

The alien is represented as a killing machine, so we are repulsed. The birth imagery plays out often. When the crew is in the womb, everything is chaotic. When her babies come in through the tunnel, or long corridor, only phallic guns can destroy them. They eventually retreat because the aliens are apparently intelligent. The alien’s babies, visually bisexual, are the embodiment of castration anxiety. The method of reproduction represents female repressed sexual desires. Like the abyss, the alien’s womb symbolizes Lacan’s male castration anxiety. There is an obsessive focus on the female body. The squad escapes through a small red corridor. The child, Newt, knows the way because technically, she has been the last one out of the womb. Nevertheless, the womb also sucks her back in.

Ripley’s victory over the alien represents the fear of humans' bisexual nature. Ripley carries a huge fire-launching gun. As a mucous alien-baby begins to emerge, threatening Newt, the child screams. The feminine speaks. Ripley removes Newt from the gross embryo. There is a still silent moment when Ripley and Newt realize they are witnessing, firsthand, the alien reproduction process. They stand among the eggs, the thing responsible for possible incorporation, or bisexuality. The camera pans across her long birth canal. The alien is shown in all her menacing glory. The alien breathes an intimidating breath at Ripley and Newt. Ripley fires her weapon, then points it at an egg. Looking at the alien, it understands for a moment, “I won't hurt your babies, if you do not hurt mine.” Then one egg begins to hatch. The bargain is off and Ripley fires at all the eggs. Ripley carries Newt away, but the elevator is broken, and the alien returns. Both get on the plane, driven by Bishop. Maternal motivation drives the action and the symbolic nuclear family holds strong throughout the film.

When the alien threatens the family institution, Ripley yells, “Get away from her you bitch!” She must incorporate with a robot before she can win the mom-to-mom battle. The alien’s phallic tail whips around injuring Ripley. Both fall into the abyss of castration. Ripley’s eye is bleeding. Ripley climbs out of they abyss, but is caught. Bishop, torn in half, who we now sympathize with as he is almost blown away, saves Newt. Ripley closes the door to the great unknown, and all is right with the world. Newt calls her “Mom!” Bishop claims, “Not bad for a human.” They are placed back in their womb-like pods. “Sleep tight” Ripley says. In a robotic tone, Newt says, “Affirmative.” Alien reproduction, bisexuality, and the unconscious converge. The Id is polymorphous- it is inevitably bi and hypersexual.

**Author's note: this was written under extreme sleep deprivation, but I still dig it**

Bibliography
Tarratt, Margaret. “Monsters from the Id.” Film Genre Reader III. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007. 346-365. Print.