Marxism, Consumer Culture And Commodity Advertising

The main focus of this terms are Marxism, consumer culture and commodity advertising. It will serves to understand the; grow of students in concepts such as commodity fetishism, ideology, use and exchange rate as well as mass media. The aim of this project in this term is to identify and critically interpret media texts; specific commodity advertisements as a means to Karl Marx’s theory; that ideologies are encoded within images. This strengthens the economic force that would determine the actions on people through products. It shows the consumerists behaviour through the observation and study. The media manufactures desire in selling of commodities from a critical Marxist ideological perspective.

For the essay we are asked to state a valid

Sturken and Cartwright (2001:200) explains that “commodity fetishism can be seen as an inevitable outcome of mass production and distribution of goods to many different consumers”. Commodity fetishism is seen as a process that does not so people the production behind the commodity. But instead market the commodity through the means of mass media. For example Nike nobody really knows about how it is made they just buy the product to fill social status in some cases. (Sturken & Cartwright 2001:200). Thus it will be creating a social value to the object. For instance looking at a specific brand no one knows about the production of the clothing, but it is bought because of the brand

Ideology works largely by creating forms of "common sense," of the taken-for-granted in everyday life. ” ideologies are systems of belief that exist within all cultures, images” (Sturken & Cartwright 2001:21). In order to explore the meaning of images, one would have to acknowledge that they are produced within dynamics of social power and ideology. Aesthetic is an ideological necessity because it shows how people can be brought together and uses ‘individual experiences’ to produce a sense of community, which then embodies ideology (Cavallaro 2001:77).Images are elements used in advertising and consumer culture. They makes us conform to the standards and ideologies that are reinforced in society. Ideology is part of a system of belief that a culture produces in order to function is a certain way. They are produced and affirmed through the social institutions in a given society Cavallaro (2001:76) says that ideology can be defined in 2 ways; neutrally, as ideas without political connotations; and critically, as ideas in which people categorise each other within a socio-historical and economic