Studious concern...

I am writing an essay (hence taking a timely break/excuse to write a little bloggery!) and worryingly, actually finding it really interesting!! It is about the manipulative nature of advertising and how self and product becomes inter-changeable because advertising is selling both a product and ourselves.

It is fascinating and shows how utterly enslaved we are to this culture. I was looking at an article which depicted Catherine Deneuve and Chanel No5. She is staring out of the page at you (known as 'the gaze'). Cleverly (as in all these ads) her eye line meets yours, as if you were looking in a mirror. Catherine Deneuve herself has little to do with Chanel No5 perfume and actually, what makes Chanel No5 different from any other perfume? It has been the advertisers role to create that difference and they have done so by interchanging the product with Catherine Deneuve - not herself as denoted in the picture, but what she stands for - a connotation inferred by the photo.

You look at Catherine Deneuve and think 'wealth, glamour, sophistication, style, elegance'. You then interchange this with the product and you think Chanel No5 - 'wealth, glamour, sophistication, style, elegance' (as much as you tell yourself you are not taken in by this, think of Chanel No5 and what comes to mind?). The bottles are often given a singular name such as "woman", "babe" etc, never "women", "babes". This is because it is selling YOU, not THEM. You are looking in a mirror and interchanging Catherine Deneuve with yourself, via the aid of a product (hence advertising selling us ourselves). Noone else is looking in this mirror - you can look totally unique. In fact in this pictorial example that I found, all that is between you and her is a bottle of perfume!!

As one book brilliantly portrays the concept: "the publicity image steals her love for herself as she is and offers it back for the price of a product." Enough said... Doesn't it make you feel a tiny bit ill? Of course you are not going to become Catherine DeNeuve (or at least like her connotative associations) if you spray a little bit of perfume on yourself, what kind of delusion is that? It is a subconscious one and it works. I feel a bit grimy...