Oracle Online

Plenty of designer and other fashionable shirts proudly display their logos and use whomever is wearing them as walking advertisements. People make the conscious decision to be a representative for the brand of clothes they purchase. I’m sure it’s on purpose; otherwise, the wearer would opt to buy the cheaper, blank shirt of the same quality. But perhaps some people prefer to wear the clothes they see, so adamantly promoted, to feel associated with something larger. You can’t walk from one end of campus to the other without passing by at least a few walking advertisements, whether the advertiser know it or not.

Remember, Christmas is coming, and all its extra holiday shopping must-haves and schemes are coming tumbling after. Everything that was already heavily advertised is now even more over-advertised; but now, the things we’re supposed to buy are to make other people happy, not just ourselves. No one, no matter where you’re from or what your lifestyle is like, can escape the songs, sales, or the accepted idea of obligation to buy, buy, buy. It seems like we’re supposed to feel guilty if we don’t fork up extra cash during this season, and the TV commercials certainly aren’t helping. But how bad for us is advertising, really?

Author and professor Sut Jhally of the Media Education Foundation puts the problem into conceivable
terms. He says, “Advertising has been called a cultural threat, and it is to the extent that it pushes us toward material things and away from social relationshipčand pushes us down the road to increased economic production that is driving us toward economic catastrophe, to the extent it focuses on individuals and puts aside the collective interestsčand usually from a male viewpoint because of the male dominance of advertising.” What are we going to do about all this? What can we do about all this?

Originally, I had planned on boycotting Christmas this year to stop the materialism in myself. But after thinking it through, I knew it wouldn’t work; people just wouldn’t understand. Plus, I think I’m too weak to avoid the whole gift giving thing, probably partly because of all the hype advertising has created over the holiday season. Obviously, even though we don’t notice it or take it seriously sometimes, advertising has a huge affect on us.

No matter how hard you try, advertising is unavoidable, especially this time of the year. Although we can’t really put a stop to advertising (nor would we want to completely; that would be disastrous) or even lessen it during this or perhaps the next generations, we can at least change the ways we treat advertising. We just might have to continue throughout our daily lives temporarily wearing mental blinders. After we understand the grasp advertising has on our culture, we might be able to show the world that we can live without its highly subjective nature, but still have a happy Christmas after all.