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Advertising - A Case of Myth-Taken Identity

Bown, Roger

The world we inhabit is filled with visual images and manufactured sounds which are central to how we represent, make meaning and communicate. In many ways, Western culture has come to be dominated by audiovisual rather than textual media and one of the most prolific producers of these images and sounds is the advertising industry. Despite fluctuations in the economy, advertising still commands the services of perhaps the largest body of designers, artists and writers who, with their attendant managers and advisers, produce images and messages which permeate human consciousness throughout the whole of Western industrial society and beyond.

While on the one hand these developments promote a fascination with the presentation of advertising, they also generate certain anxieties about its power and integrity. Its designers clearly have the capacity and the resources to make highly creative use of a variety of media, giving rise to credible cultural and stylistic trends. Yet as a medium, although widely appreciated, there remains a certain mistrust and disapproval in the way advertising is regarded, to the point where perceiving it as an unbridled source of pleasure and aesthetic gratification is still seen by many commentators as problematic.

This paper argues that advertising has become an important form of contemporary mythology and is, like many other cultural practices, a vital source of enjoyment as well as a means by which we are enabled to function successfully in contemporary consumer society. As an integral part of our whole cultural experience, advertising should now be regarded, analysed and criticized with appropriate acknowledgement of its changing status and using the same criteria as those which are applied to any other design, art, media or cultural forms.