Emily's blog

In the article in “Ways of Seeing” we read in the class, the paragraph our small group read was about how different advertisements are designed and displayed as it used to and at present. The advertisements in the past were pretty much closer to reality and true, while the ones nowadays tend to be made in a more exaggerating way. One of the sentences in the paragraph mentioned, “She is not purely the creature of others’ envy – which is how, for example, Andy Warhol presents Marilyn Monroe.” This sentence points out the core spirit of this paragraph: Advertisements nowadays are so shallow sometimes that their audience get attracted or even influenced afterwards.

In the advertisement picture above, we can see a sexy woman wearing pretty much nothing but a bikini lying under a man in a suit’s standing feet. The weather seemed to be a perfect scorching hot summer day on the beach by a clear blue ocean. The woman was staring up at the man – or the two glasses on his hands, or the vodka, or his penis. It’s an advertisement made probably out of the director or the designer’s personal sensational desire, and he grabbed the same desire in people’s minds to get them attracted by the amazing power of their promoted vodka. And therefore this advertisement also reflects on the idea in the paragraph we read in the class. It’s kind of shallow (and nasty in its way too, as it takes advantage of the sexual desire in people’s minds), and it attracts people’s attention too, while it gets people influenced by maybe buying their product eventually. It’s not a really clean way promoting a product this way, but surely it’s smart. Costumers, male ones in particular, will definitely have their eyes fixed on this ad and stare at it for at least some seconds. Merely those few seconds would make a big difference – that could get some of the costumers to buy their product, whether they really need it or not. Because they were attracted by the advertisement.