JEAN KILBOURNE

 

Jean Kilbourne

Chapter 1 – We are the Product

Millions of dollars are spent on advertising. TV & radio programs are simply fillers for the space between commercials. Advertising (especially for tobacco & alcohol) are forever claiming that advertising doesn’t influence anyone & that kids smoke and drink beer because of peer pressure. Jean Kilbourne agrees but she says such pressure is created by advertising. Advertisers believe that “Reach the right bird and the whole flock will follow.” Opinion leaders can influence what their friends eat, drink & wear. Consumers are brain washed, and easily led. Advertisers themselves describe consumers as sitting ducks & direct marketing is like dropping a smart bomb with pinpoint accuracy. Young people are got on the web without any problem. Children are especially vulnerable on the internet, where advertisers manipulate them, involve their privacy & transfer them into customers without their knowledge. Jean Kilbourne writes there are as yet no regulations against targeting children online. Advertisers attract children to websites with games & contests.

Some sites offer prizes to lure children into giving up the email addresses of their friends too. Not only are children influencing a lot of spending but are also developing an addiction to consumption. Advertisers spend a great deal on psychological research that will help them target children more effectively. Advertising is increasingly showing up in our schools. There are already market-driven educational materials in our schools. Just as children are sold to the toy and junk food industry, women are sold to the diet industry. Female drinkers are sold to the alcohol industry. Young people are also an important market for alcohol.

Jean Kilbourne says that women’s magazines are often ridiculous. In one magazine they said that appliances can suddenly burst into flames & cites an example when this happened & eighty people died. In the same magazine on the back page was an ad on cigarette, a product that kills over four thousand people year in & year out. Also women’s magazine, talks of health cancer, leukemia & how breast cancer can be fought with a positive attitude. In the same magazine is a cigarette ad!

Jean Kilbourne writes that our ancestors lived for thousands of years with the young learning ancient hunting methods, oral history, legends around camp fires. Now they wear Nike instead of moccasins & use power ski mobiles instead of dog sleds. This change has been brought about by advertising.

Chapter 2 – Advertising is our Environment

According to Jean Kilbourne, an average American is exposed to 3000 ads everyday & spends 3 years of one’s life watching YV ads. Today she says, little girls rate super models high because of their perfect features & skins. Films & TV shows also carry hidden commercials. Products, brands are shown casually. Consumers are not aware that a lot of money is paid to these producers to display the brands.

These days, she says that kids don’t want to grow up to be athlete, scientists, etc. but want to be highly leveraged brands. Although advertisers say that ads simply reflect society, it is a medium of influence & persuasion & its influence is cumulative. She also claims that advertising is not only our physical environment; it is increasing our spiritual environment as well. E.g.: Jesus is a brand of jeans “See the light” (an ad for wool), “an enlightening experience” & “absolute heaven” (power ad). Alcohol ads are with the bottles surrounded by a halo of light. Advertising co-opts our sacred symbols & sacred language to arouse our immediate emotional response.

Advertising & religion share a belief in transformation & transcendence. People believed that we can transform ourselves by hard work & transcend our circumstances. Today we can transform ourselves by all the material goods advertised & achieve transcendence. The focus of transformation has shifted from the soul to the mind. Jean Kilbourne says the influence of advertising goes beyond the target group. The group that cannot afford & thus become envious even kill to get what they can’t buy.

Consumers feel that objects will transform their lives & give them social standing & respect. People who buy goods are buying an “Image” most brands are essentially the same but consumer buy because of the image reflected in their advertising. Liquor is not selling liquor but fantasies. A car is not selling convenience of travel but prestige. Thus advertising sells a great deal more than product. It sells values, images, love and success. Jean Kilbourne says advertising corrupts our language.

Chapter 3 – The Corruption of Relationship

Advertising promotes a corrupt & bankrupt concept of relationship. Most of us yearn for intimate & committed relationship that will last. Advertising ties consumers’ needs with products & promises us that, things will give us that relationship but it never does.

Many ads seem to be about advertising between a parent & a child, turn out to be glorifying relationship between the parent & a product e.g.: an ad shows a woman on the telephone & a little girl behind her touching her hair. The headline says “what makes the room cozy.” It is an ad for room freshener. Another ad shows a girl running towards the open arms of a woman. The copy says “open your eyes what is important is right in front of you.” It is an ad for a shoe.

Ads have always promised a better relationship via a product. Buy this & you will be loved. Advertisers say that products don’t betray us or abandon us “you can love it without getting your heart broken” proclaims a car ad. Another TV ad shows a man snoring in bed. The woman beside him tosses & turns & hugs a pillow. A female voice says “put some excitement back into your life.” What the woman longs for is new sheets.

Chapter 4 – Crazy for Cars

Ads encourage us to think of cars as family members. A Mazda ad says “It’s not a family car, it’s a family.” In ad after ad we are told that buying a car in like falling in love & getting married. E.g.: A Lexus ad says “we don’t sell cars. We merely facilitate love conditions.”

Mercedes Benz says “buying a car like getting married. It’s a good idea to get to know the family first.” Vance Packard tells us that cars are often men’s horses. Car ads are funny silly, exciting, clever & seemingly insignificant. However they have a cumulative direction & impact. The car in an ad has gone from being a symbol of power to the actual source of power (the engine that pumps the value in our hearts from a symbol of sex to an actual lover).

Chapter 5 – Falling in Love with Food

While men are encouraged to fall in love with their cars, women are invited to fall in love & romance with the food, its gathering & serving. Food has been advertised as a way for women both to demonstrate love & insure its reward. E.g.: warms your heart “like a hug that lasts all day.” Advertisers offer food as a way to relate romantically & sexually. E.g.: an ad shows a close up of a woman’s face smiling very seductively “whatever you are giving him tonight he will enjoy it more with rice.” An ad says “looking for a light, cheesy relationship?” (Ad for macaroni & cheese). While someone connects passionately with a product human relationship is trivialized & ignored. Just as alcohol ads teach us that drinking leads to good times, great sex, athletic success so do food ads associate eating & over eating with only good thing. The negative consequences are not mentored.

Always in the world of advertising the solution to a problem is a product. Food that is heavily advertised is seldom nourishing. Food can nourish us & bring us joy; it cannot love us, it cannot fill us up emotionally. When people use food as a warp to numb painful feeling to cope with a sense of inner emptiness & a substitute for human relationships. Many end up with eating problems that can destroy them.

Chapter 6 – Cutting Girls to Size

We are more vulnerable to the seductive power of advertising & addiction at adolescence. At this time they are developing their self concepts, learning values & roles. Advertisers do not hesitate to take advantage of insecurities & anxieties of young people offering solutions. A cigarette provides a symbol of independence. A pair of jeans or sneakers conveys status. Even girls who are raised in loving homes with supportive parents grow up in a toxic cultural environment at risk for self mutilation, eating disorders & additions reinforced by advertising.

Girls of all ages get the message that they must be flawlessly beautiful & then. The more you subtract the more you add says an ad for clothing. The search for independence can be a problem if it leads to a denial of interpersonal relationship. Boys are generally shown in ads as active while girls are often presented as blank & fragile. Young boys & girls are surrounded by messages urging them to sexually active. You can learn more about anatomy after school says an ad on jeans.

Chapter 7 – Alcohol & Rebellion

Jean Kilbourne states that the number one drink in America is beer because beer is the drug of choice for young people. She feels children are at a greatest risk from alcohol than these other drugs. She adds that alcohol is the leader killer of young people in America (age 15 – 25) car crash, homicide and suicide. Alcohol is linked with half of the violent crimes, domestic violence rape & child abuse and addiction.

Advertisers aim alcohol ads at kids because they want to have positive associations with specific brands long before they start to drink. So ad man broadcast ads on TV during youth viewing hours. The alcohol ads are also released for young people via magazines with almost half the readers under twenty-one.

The alcohol industry has also developed several new products designed by young people – mixed alcohol with ice-cream, milk, jell, popsicles. Adolescent females are significantly more at risk for becoming dependent on alcohol than women in older age group. This makes them target for alcohol advertisers. Advertisers want to appeal to idealized images especially when the people are young, as courageous rebels and free spirits. The promise that alcohol will liberate our wild selves is especially seductive for women.

Through advertising and popular culture we get the message that rebellious men are sexy & desirable but rebellious women are not. Alcohol advertisers want to attract men to the promise of seduction and sexual adventure and attract women to the promise of release from inhibitions and societal restraints without frightening women or portraying them as shits. They often show women as sexual and untamed but not too wild. They imply that drinking will give a woman some of man’s power and privilege without detracting from her feminity. So they often use male symbols such as cigars, etc.

Chapter 8 – Rage and Rebellion in Cigarette Advertising

Of all the lies advertising tell us, the ones told in cigarette ads are the most lethal. The tobacco industry is in the business if getting children addicted to nicotine, this is because 90% of the children according to Jean Kilbourne start smoking before they are 18. If you don’t start smoking when you are very young, the chances are you will never start.

Almost nothing good can be said of cigarettes unlike other potentially dangerous products such as alcohol. There is no such thing as low use. People start smoking and become addicted for many reasons and no one suggests that tobacco advertising is the primary one. However cigarette ads target the most vulnerable one.

Research shows an association between exposure to advertising and adolescent smoking behavior; sudden rises in adolescent smoking coincide with large scale cigarette promotional campaigns. It is not that the young see an ad and immediately start to smoke but seeing the ads and handling cigarette packs and promotional gift lessens their resistance weakens their resolve so later they will somewhat be willing to accept a cigarette when offered. It is clear that targeted ads do influence the young.

Jean Kilbourne had her first cigarette when she was thirteen. She was lonely and depressed, felt awkward and had very low self esteem. She liked the way cigarette made her feel high and calm at the same time. She states the she did not become addicted to cigarettes because of advertising. Cigarettes smoking was constantly glamorized and assumed to be safe and socially desirable.

Ads claim that smoke fills you up when you feel empty inside. An angry woman is still often considered to be terribly unfeminine and undesirable. What does one do with all that suppressed rage? Why not have a cigarette or another piece of cake. Suppressed anger also plays an important role in alcoholism and in eating disorders.

Cigarettes advertisers are aware that women are likely to use smoking as a way to regulate other moods. A Marlboro ad features a worried looking baby saying “Before you scold me mom… may be you better light up a Marlboro.” Girls who are susceptible to addiction are the ones who are the least tough, most vulnerable, feeling most in need of a tougher image for protection. Cigarette ads offer smoking to women as a way to control their emotions. Phalli imagery, sexual innuendo is often used in cigarette ads along with exotic subliminal images.

Chapter 9 – Advertising an addictive Mind Set

Long before a girl or a boy picks up a cigarette or beer he or she has been primed by advertising to except transformation via product. We get seductive and incessant message from ads – product are magical and can fulfill our dreams. “The dream begins as soon as you open the door” say a car ad. The landscape of advertising is often deliberately dreamlike.

Food is often offered as a way to enter into a dream world. A yogurt ad claims that the product will take you to paradise, women are encouraged to reach for food to find peace, and other products are offered to women as a magical way to transport ourselves into a state of bliss. Alcohol ads promise a dream world “Fairly takes can come true” says an alcohol ad. Countless ads offer a route to paradise itself.

Again and again we are told that products can give us energy, power, sex appeal and magnetism. “Get your hands in the newest source of energy say ad for gloves. “Tang it’s a kick in the glass”. The very language of advertising to children is drug language. Surge, rush, loaded, blow you mind? The double meaning is not lost on children. Our real life and relationship is dull; via the products advertised we can escape into a colorful exciting, endlessly passionate world.

If I drink this I will be sexier, if I smoke I will be calmer & sophisticated. These products will change me and my life. Advertising depicts that adulthood is a drag, our real life is monotonous, our relationship is boring and out job meaningless. So ads tell us that we can escape and get instant gratification. Children get the message that better do the good stuff now and thus children feel the good stuff is to chase women, stay out all night and party.

Alcohol ads give a choice fun, excitement or monotony without it. Advertising encourages compulsion, greed and transformation via products. Addiction begins with the hope that something out these can instantly fill up the emptiness inside. Advertising is all about false hope.

Chapter 10 – Addiction as a Relationship

In alcohol ads the bottle is sometimes shown as a friend of family member, “Bring our family home for the holidays” says a beer ad. A vodka ad states “The perfect summer guest.” A beer ad uses a bull dog with the slogan “Be your own Dog”.

Cigarettes are shown as friends, companions. Smoking ads are shown as a facilitator for sexual activity. A cigarette ad shows two cigarettes touching by the light of the moon with the slogan “Moonlight and Romance.” Another ad says ‘Wanted tall, dark stranger for long lasting relationship.”

In life there are many loves, but only one Grand passion. A liquor ad shows a couple in a passionate embrace. Is it the passion for liquor? Jean Kilbourne does not mind when advertisers exploit people longing for relationship and connection to sell shoes or shampoos but not to exploit it to sell addictive product.

“Can the generation gap be bridged” (ad for scotch) Scotch can bridge it. The truth is that it is for more likely to widen gaps between people than to bridge them. Most often the intimate connection that alcohol ads offer is sexual experience. Alcohol has long been advertised to men as a way to seduce women. “Sex appeal is the slogan for all ads that features a six pack of beer.

Women are increasingly encouraged to think of the bottle as a lover too. “For 15 nights I have been with Floria – never once was it the same (Italian wine ad). Women’s bodies in alcohol are often turned into bottles of alcohol. We drink to feel connected and in the process we destroy all possibility of real intimacy and end up profoundly isolated.

Chapter 11 – Advertising and Violence

Sex in advertising is more often about power than passion, about violence than violin. It dehumanizes and objectifies women. The poses and posters are borrowed from pornography. Male violence is encouraged by ads that encourage males to be forceful and dominant to value sexual intimacy more than emotional intimacy. Men are encouraged by ads that encouraged to never taking a “No”. “If your date won’t listen to reason try a velvet Hammer” (cocktail).

Jean Kilbourne says ads do not directly cause violence but the violent images cause the state of terror. Advertising helps to create a climate in which certain attitudes and values flourish, that women are valuable only as objects of men’s desire that real men are always sexually aggressive.

Chapter 12 – Redefining Rebellion

All consumers need to get past the belief that there is a fix, an instant solution to every problem. The basic point of new advertising is that an individual has a need or a problem and a product can meet or fix it. We need to use the right product and all will be fine. If we are unhappy we can smoke a cigarette or drink or have an ice cream; if your teeth are rolling use whitening gel, if you are fat use diet food, etc.

When social problems are mentioned in advertising it is only trivialized “scientist predict global warning.” The icy cold six pack of beer is the obvious solution”. You know what is happening to the Ozone says an ad for makeup “Imagine what it is doing to your skin.” Jean Kilbourne states that counter advertising can change the environment advertising that gives honest information and deglamorises products like alcohol or tobacco. It should be fairness based doctrine. E.g.: “The tobacco industry is not your friend.” School should be ad free zones. We should see TV with our children and choose programmes with care. We should limit our consumption and TV watching instead, take up other activities like reading, sports, dramas and start discussion groups with our children. We should start a “Voluntary simplicity movement to save our earth and our souls.” She feels democracy is endangered when information is given for economic gain rather than to educate and enlighten the public. The main enemy is longer the communist but capitalist threat. It is time to fight back. Our survival is at state.