Mass Media and Education: "Faceless" (Adbusters Ad)

Thursday, June 17, 2010

"Faceless" (Adbusters Ad)

My spoof ad (below) speaks to the destructive nature of popular culture and media, particularly in terms of trends and advertisements aimed at women. We’ve all seen the standard fashion/beauty magazines I’m referring to, filled with celebrities and designer labels. We’re all familiar with the repetitive teasers we see splashed across their covers (like the one you see here). They always send the same superficial message and feature the same conventionally “beautiful” women, despite the fact that “exposure to images of thin, young, air-brushed female bodies is linked to depression, loss of self-esteem and the development of unhealthy eating habits in women and girls” (Media Awareness Network).

These publications aren’t just marketing expensive products and social fads; they’re marketing a specific lifestyle, and it ain’t pretty. At least, not on the inside. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? No one cares what’s inside - it’s what’s outside that (apparently) counts.

But here’s the kicker: these magazines play on insecurities and fears that have been entirely manufactured by our consumer society. We’re conditioned to think that getting old is scary… that having fat on our bodies is bad… that if we’re not relentlessly working to achieve perfection, there’s something terribly wrong with us.

The hypocrisy in women’s magazines is infuriating. They’ll toy with our desire to be authentic with an article called ‘How to be Yourself,’ while at the same time, featuring airbrushed models who are “being themselves” - and making the rest of us feel like about as good as the bullshit they’re shoveling down our throats. We don’t need unsolicited prescriptions on how to live our lives! So why are we so addicted to them?

Speaking of addictions, you’ll notice that I based my spoof magazine cover on the social networking phenomenon that is Facebook. With more than 400 million users, half of whom sign in on given day, people spend a combined total of more than 500 billion minutes on the site per month (facts courtesy of Facebook Statistics). Okay, get ready: that’s the equivalent of over 900,000 years! Talk about messing with the time-space continuum…

So, let’s review. Somewhere along the line, someone convinced us that we aren’t good enough the way we are. We need to change, we need to improve… but how? By spending money and buying things, of course! Surely some makeup, new clothes, a few pairs of Manolo’s, hair products, exercise gear, expensive food, a vacation, a new computer and an iPhone will help. And what if we get smart and start to second guess our consumerist tendencies? Well, in that unlikely event, we’ve got the media to remind us of our many flaws.

But there’s more. Remember how we’re spending over 900,000 years worth of human time and energy - each and every month - sitting in front of our computers on Facebook? That seems like a pretty effective way of preventing face-to-face contact, social intervention, physical collaboration… things that could interfere in the direct impact and influence that media currently has on us as individuals.

Is keeping us engaged online a way of manipulating us even further? What would happen if we spent more time interacting with other people out in the real world, instead of in cyber space? Would we start to see the world differently... perhaps see new possibilities for change and transformation? Is there a chance we might get a glimpse of a new type of lifestyle, based not on products and profits, but on distributed power and opportunity?

It’s hard to know just how much Facebook - with its identity-altering appeal and individually-focused advertising - is actually impacting our perceptions of ourselves. It’s not that Facebook can’t be used for good: after all, it facilitates political mobilization and connects our global community. I’m just scared of what it could be capable of if continued to be used for bad.

Below are the two ads I designed (in Photoshop) using the Faceless magazine cover I created (in Paint):