Advertising

Advertising is the part of popular culture which has generated, and still generates, some of the most polemical debates in recent literature. The debate around advertising discourse is usually articulated around three axes: 1) The first axis is structured around the question “‘What’ does advertising do?” Very often it is argued that advertising ignores or distorts the real/natural human needs and puts in their place “false desires.” 2) The second question that dominates the ongoing discussion is “How does advertising work?” Here the “natural” answer is that it does so by simply lying. 3) But why? It is usually argued that the reason is located in advertising's crucial role in maintaining the capitalist system, or the market economy system, if you prefer. It is true, of course, that advertising is essential in stimulating the mass consumption that is needed in the capitalist phase of mass production. Critics of advertising see that as a brainwashing activity that enhances our enslavement to capitalist exploitation while analysts more favorable toward advertising describe it as its central role in the economic reproduction of society.

None can fail to recognize, however, that this organization of the debate does not take into account recent theoretical developments regarding the need/desire and truth/falsity questions. Thus, it cannot really help us in approaching the advertising phenomenon. This is also proved by the fact that the critique of advertising based on the aforementioned assumptions is not effective; that is to say, it is unable to generate a real change in social attitudes toward advertising. Even people who are questioning the status of both market economy and advertising seem unable to organize their desire in an alternative way; thus advertising discourse enjoys a passive legitimation that, in fact, adds to its hegemonic hold.

It is time for a radical reorientation of our approaches to advertising, and Lacanian theory has a lot to offer to such an enterp