As communication axis, communication philosophy interrogates the idea that in postmodern society communication constructs reality. The philosopher is called to achieve a new synthesis, between philosophy and media communication, to assume the condition of man of media communication. Media has a decisive influence in relation to the constitution of reality in postmodern consciousness. Communication is related to relationships, to construct interhuman relationships, changing the attitudes of the other, decisions or behavior of others, the perceptions of reality and action according to the requirements of this perception. +++++Gửi tin nhắn tên sách tiếng Anh muốn mua với giá rẻ+++++CAM KẾT BẢN ĐẸP.
ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTS REALITY Orice reproducere, totală sau parțială, a acestei lucrări, fără acordul scris al editorului, este strict interzisă și se pedepsește conform Legii dreptului de autor Coperta: ALEXANDRA BARDAN Redactor: BOGDAN HRIB Tehnoredactor: DAN MUȘA Comanda nr 31 / iunie 2014 Bun de tipar: iunie 2014 Tipărit în România Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naționale a României FRUNZĂ, SANDU Advertising constructs reality / Sandu Frunză Tritonic, 2014 ISBN: 978-606-8571-41-6 TRITONIC Str Coacăzelor nr 5, București e-mail: editura@tritonic.ro www.tritonic.ro Toate drepturile rezervate, inclusiv dreptul de a reproduce fragmente din carte Copyright © Sandu Frunză Copyright © TRITONIC 2014 pentru ediția prezentă Sandu Frunză Advertising constructs reality RELIGION AND ADVERTISING IN THE CONSUMER SOCIETY ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTS REALITY Sandu Frunză About the author: Sandu Frunză teaches courses on religious imaginary in advertising, ethics in advertising, relational ethics, deontology of political communication, biopolitics, religion and ideology, post-Holocaust philosophy He is professor at the Department of Communication, Public Relations and Advertising, Babes-Bolyai University from Cluj, Romania He is author of several books, out of which more recent are: Dumnezeu și Holocaustul (Contemporanul, 2010), Comunicare etică şi responsabilitate socială (Tritonic, 2011), Ethical Reconstruction of Public Space through Rethinking of the Relationship among Philosophy, Religion and Ideology (PUC, 2013), Advertising and Administration under the Pressure of Ethics (SUERS, 2014), Comunicare simbolică și seducție (Tritonic, 2014) 37 44 49 57 57 63 77 91 91 Fetishism, commodity and advertising A circumscription of the fetish concept Fetish commodity Fetish and the consumption of goods and ideas Taboo, interdictions and advertising The significance of taboo 25 25 31 19 12 Seduction and advertising Awaiting seduction Seducer is in turns seduced The world of objects and the seduction of the artificial as ineffable Objects’ seduction Abundance as original seduction Advertising constructs reality A symbolic construct of reality under the sign of the fragmentary Advertising, initiation and consumer culture Advertising and the culture of eschatology always announced and always postponed Table of Contents 162 171 183 197 Final thoughts: the return of authenticity References Index 147 147 155 117 117 122 134 94 107 113 Political advertising and the rediscovery of intersubjectivity in the public space Advertising and intersubjectivity Secularization – a catalyst of the sacred’s energies Ritualizing image consumption and the seduction of communication Postmodern totem and advertising Recovery totemism in advertising Totem and advertising representations Totemism and postmodernism Taboo, fetish and transgression Taboo and the world of interdictions Interdictions and the ethical conditioning of advertising Advertising is the last refuge of mythic, symbolic and ritualistic behaviors It proves to be today the repository of the sacred par excellence, despite appearing in the form of imaginative constructions that some find difficult to associate with the sacred or with the religious Advertising language, expressed in prints, performances and especially in advertising clips, proves to be a kind of concentrated story with the capacity to turn into a significant story It constructs reality as a microcosm, in a similar way to that in which grand narratives used to construct reality as a macrocosm Important with this story is not the narrative dimension, as it only provides support for a manifestation related to the interior construction that mythic thinking reveals in symbolic structures It is not the narrative structure that renders advertising the feature of mythic remnants’ repository, but the ineffable of contents, the inexpressible preserved in language, the inward attitude (determined by the presence of the sacred) towards a certain mode of perceiving reality Mircea Eliade often underscores the importance of the story (in a broader sense, of literature) to postmodern man It is not at all accidental that in the preface to Images and Symbols, Georges Dumezil speaks about Eliade as an author that was and remained A symbolic construct of reality under the sign of the fragmentary Advertising constructs reality Georges Dumezil, ”Prefață” in Mircea Eliade, Imagini și simboluri Eseu despre simbolismul magico-religios, translated by Alexandra Beldescu, (București: Humanitas, 1994), On literature see also Mircea Eliade, Nașteri mistice, translated by Mihaela Paraschivescu, (București: Humanitas, 1995), 173 Mihaela Paraschivescu, The Critical Reception of Mircea Eliade’s Works in the United States of America (PhD dissertation, University of Bucharest, 2012), 72 a writer and a poet.1 Such a statement not only sums up the idea that Eliade uses a type of writing that is close to literature, namely to story and poetic and symbolic creativity, but also the idea that the history and philosophy of religions may provide the grounds for continuous redefinition and resignification, and even for new initiatory ordeals to postmodern man If Eliade takes the scholarly and the literary equally seriously, as Mihaela Paraschivescu notes, it is also because “literature conjures imaginary worlds with their own laws, and certain qualities of time and space that are not unlike the sacred space and time”.2 Nowadays, the Western human being no longer lives in a mythic universe, nor has the opening necessary to evaluate his/her existence and significant gestures in terms of fundamental histories, nor has a clear representation of the ways the sacred connects him/ her to cosmos, while personal history relates not only to the history of the world, but also to that of the whole universe Postmodern human being (especially in the West) is yet in the situation of not succeeding to leave the sphere of religion, although free from its constraints, and at the same time lacking the power to rediscover himself/herself as living in a significant cosmos On the one hand incapable to understand history as a history in process under the pressure of the sacred, on the other, living life under the sign of the fragmentary, daily routine, inexpressive surrounding signs and formal or mechanical gestures, the postmodern human being lacks | SANDU FRUNZĂ Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols Studies in Religious Symbolism, translated by Philip Mairet, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991), 25 the power to internalize the image of cosmos as theophany He/ she cannot overcome the fear of rediscovering life values from the perspective of a cosmos full of sacrality, speaking in images, assimilating the human being through cyclical feelings and infusion of tempting freedom Western human being no longer has the patience to listen to the story that the world around tells while casting light against the turmoil of life On rare occasions does postmodern human being sense that it is actually the story one would like to tell of oneself when, cut off from daily life, regains the strength to find oneself Probably the way out of the current crisis for postmodern man will take the happy form described by Mircea Eliade as harmonizing the Western world with non-Western civilizations so as to agree upon the need to rediscover the cognitive value of symbols, which supposes accepting religious pluralism and genuine axiological systems’ diversity Rediscovery of symbolic thinking starts from the premise that it is “part and parcel of the human being”; images, symbols, myths meet a profoundly human need for internal probing and orientation to the mystery of life and to the depth of the image understood as a beam of signification Image plurality, the multiple layers of existence it may introduce, the capacity to capture in a unique synthesis the concrete, the abstract, and at the same time the symbolical, constitute the knowledge instrument3 that Western man needs to relearn to use with much more creativity Considering that the camouflaged, sometimes degraded, forms of the sacred and myth at the foundation of symbolic thinking have found very good preservation grounds in literary texts, Eliade proposes reevaluating the part that the story plays in contempo- ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTS REALITY | Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols, 14 Mircea Eliade, Aspecte ale mitului, translated by Paul G Dinopol, foreword by Vasile Nicolescu, (București: Univers, 1978) Lance Strate, ”The Cultural Meaning of Beer Commercials”, Advances in Consumer Research, Volume 18 (1991), 115 Lance Strate, ”The Cultural Meaning of Beer Commercials”, 115 rary man’s life.4 We shall not call on Eliade’s distinction between myths and fairy-tales.5 Much more significant seems to be the way in which he perceives the importance of mass media in taking over the mythical structure of images and behaviors The fact that mythical heroes shape contemporary human behavior, mythical structures stimulate individuals’ wish to become better, the fact that the symbolic thinking challenge is sensed as a personal need to participate in what is deemed significant, these and many more are an indication that mythic story may influence the way of thinking and guide types of behavior But today, the myth doesn’t belong only to certain areas of human creation, “myths are expressed in many different ways: in the stories we tell, the games we play, the books and newspapers we read, and in the television programs and commercials that we watch”.6 In the spirit of our analyses, we can say that the myth is “the term that is used to refer to the cultural meaning of an image, theme, or any other type of sign… a myth is not a falsehood or fairytale, but an uncontested and unconscious assumption that is so widely shared within a culture that it is considered natural, instead of recognized as a social convention”.7 We are interested especially in two aspects of Eliade’s analyses: 1) the fact that myth directing human being towards the real serves as a guide which helps man abandon the ordinary, the conventional, and join in the construction of reality starting from what is real, true, significant, 2) the fact that myth provides an experience of something totally different, therefore an opening, an initiation, a 10 | SANDU FRUNZĂ Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, translated by Rosemary Sheed, (London: Sheed & Ward, 1959), 456 mode releasing man from common, ordinary existence, and helping in the decision to have and to be in a certain way These elements are increasingly part of media communication In this process, symbolic communication plays a significant role In traditional thought we note that the function of symbols is to reveal unity and continuity between several areas of the real: “to primitive man, every level of reality is so completely open to him that the emotion he felt at merely seeing anything as magnificent as the starry sky would have been as strong as the most ‘intimist’ personal experience felt by a modern; for, thanks chiefly to his symbols, the real existence of primitive man was not the broken and alienated existence lived by civilized man today”.8 Beyond this integrating dimension, we should note that symbol also brings in break and difference Perhaps this is due to the phenomenon that Eliade describes as the hierophany and symbol solidarity From this perspective, we understand that important to modernity is the function of symbol to provide a communication medium, to open pluralist signification and to separate differently perceptible realities Advertising relies first of all on this dimension of difference but typically participates in the integrating action for the existential coherence of the individual who makes choices somewhere at the intersection of rational and irrational Advertising takes into account a feature of the present humanity: one refuses totality, the imaginary of totality and the totalizing spirit so as to better perceive the fragmentary, to enjoy pieces of reality marked by specific elements of one’s existence, to creatively valorize the possibility to construct one’s own world of reality fragments ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTS REALITY | 11 Mircea Eliade, Birth and Rebirth The Religious Meanings of Initiation in Human Culture, translated by Willard R Trask, (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), xv 10 Mircea Eliade, Birth and Rebirth, Advertising uses something inherent to human soul: the passion for initiation Even if it is but a desacralized version, it is no less essential to the modern human being’s condition It meets the need for involvement, knowledge and renewal that makes up an ambiguous whole, camouflaged by wish, satisfaction and immediate pleasure Profane initiation, whose messenger advertising is, relies on new culture elements The new culture cannot avoid the need for free action, the presence of unpredictable elements and the need for transformation in the imaginary realm, typical of any initiation In its traditional sense, initiation meant participating as a hero in the rewriting of a sacred history that used to provide the initiated with access to various modes of understanding and assuming reality In Eliade’s view, initiation “reveals the almost awesome seriousness with which the man of archaic societies assumed the responsibility of receiving and transmitting spiritual values”.9 In both traditional and modern terms, initiation supposes in addition to participating in the religious life, the individual’s development as participant in his/her own culture One of the most significant assertions about initiation is that it is “a fundamental existential experience because through it a man becomes able to assume his mode of being in its entirety”10 In Eliade’s analyses of initiation we should note two aspects Firstly, elements of a nostalgia and initiatic behavior may be found in the imaginary and oneiric life of postmodern man In this sense, a series of creations by contemporary man, despite deemed to be Advertising, initiation and consumer culture 12 | SANDU FRUNZĂ 14 13 12 11 Mircea Eliade, Birth and Rebirth, 135 Mircea Eliade, Birth and Rebirth, 132 Mircea Eliade, Birth and Rebirth, 134 Mircea Eliade, Birth and Rebirth, 128 profane and recognized as such, “in fact contain mythological figures camouflaged as contemporary characters and offer initiatory scenarios in the guise of everyday happenings”.11 Secondly, reflections on initiation indicate that the human being “is not given”, but rather becoming as result of the shaping pressure and action of an initiated group of community elders whose purpose is to reveal to newer generations the deep meaning of life and to stir their wish to take part in culture.12 Consequently, from the perspective of advertising language, we may state that the alienation the researcher finds as indicated by the anthropological analysis of traditional societies continues to the alienation phenomena noticeable in contemporary man Although based on similar symbolic structures, it materializes in different cultural forms These symbolic structures are deeply camouflaged in the contemporary human being of secularized society The fact that sometimes the rites we recognize in modern man’s life may denote “a deplorable spiritual poverty”, or that we notice “extreme spuriousness of these pretended initiation rites”13 or that “the initiatory scenarios function only on the vital and psychological plans” does not in the least contradict contemporary man’s profound need for initiation, and all these we find in limit situations and in the ordeals he/she is subject to: “in the spiritual crises, the solitude and despair through which every human being must pass in order to attain to a responsible, genuine and creative life”.14 Indeed, human existence itself is an initiation process, initiatory gestures and practices are present in the most diverse circumstances of life, some seemingly lacking in any initiation ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTS REALITY | 13 The initiating dimension of advertising may be seen both inside the symbolic construction and outside at the level of an instance proposing the terms of initiation This way, advertising plays the role of a story that creates the symbolic framework of initiation and proposes as a transcendent authority the choice terms, preference direction as well as the means to satisfy wishes “The seed of eternity” that the advertising clip proposes is a way to rewrite the history of initiation under the sign of the significant fragmentary Initiation is not connected to totality and integration into cosmos as in traditional societies, but a way by which history becomes sequential, individualized and generator of personal satisfaction Offer and demand mechanisms replace largely the myth-ritual mechanisms Advertising is an effort for direction in culture as any initiation plans to be It reflects and permanently nourishes the symbolic dimension of consumer culture In a world in which spiritual values are pushed to a secondary level, this new culture proposes investing this spiritual dimension into our relationship with things Moreover, advertising proposes accepting cut-outs in the totality of things following the religious model in which objects of immediate reality become entirely different in their sacralization process while they become hierophanies They are cut off from the rest of the objects and proposed for consumption as products of special quality They become wholly other as compared to the rest of the products because they are consecrated by the advertising discourse Their story, told in an advertising creation, has the role of directing preferences toward a certain product by our initiation in the special world of that product This initiation multiplies endlessly in the consumer culture, and the new type of consecration and initiation is the base of this culture The multiplying possibility ad infinitum of objects that may be consecrated brings to consumer culture the idea of transcen- 14 | SANDU FRUNZĂ dence present at the level of the product that multiplied in a reality fragmenting and offering to us endlessly It is this reality of the fragmentary that we live in immanence is the one offered to us as a transcendent reality Continuous production of objects consecrated by the advertising discourse is what constitutes a substitute to revelation It is a revelation which, however disenchanted in its contents, still keeps remnants of the sacred since it is achieved not only with things but also with the human being in its position of subject consumption The presence of transcendence casts a new light on things Transcendence attracts also a form of intersubjectivity Thus, due to advertising we sometimes get to transfer our mode of being with people to our connection to things There is in this connection a sort of combination between what we call possession rapport to things and the intersubjective relationship we transfer to them This way, sometimes things become part of our dialoguing subject, and other times we go so far as to give things the quality of subject accompanying us in the world However, this reification of intersubjectivity is not foreign to traditional man either It is true that this form of connecting with things is perceived by modern man as a form of human alienation, but the history of ideas shows that in different cultures and eras there were collectivities that cultivated a special relationship to things especially as fetishes, totems or idols Yet, each of these had a milieu of manifestation dominated by a certain form of spirituality Even more, they belonged to the manifestation of a symbolic conscience of the world in which man saw himself/herself as participant in religious life Our puzzlement as modern people is related to our uncertainty as moderns that contemporary man still keeps in the connection to things something of the authenticity added or induced by the presence of the spiritual element Even if we not doubt that contemporary man is capable ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTS REALITY | 15 of symbolic investment and creation, there is always a question as regards the forms taken by our distance to things lest we become dependent on what other theorists have identified as the fake needs created for us by consumer culture Without losing their economic dimension, products appear as symbolic goods This finality may be intentional, sought and achieved by advertising people or simply an effect of the presence of advertising language with its mythic and symbolic load Whether they are put there intentionally or not, whether a consumer receives, becomes aware and rationally apprehends the presence of such structures, the effect it produces is important That the message of symbolic structures affects only the deep level of our conscience does not impact the penetration force of mythic-symbolic structures upon communication and behavior models The relationship of the subconscious, conscious and transconscious is as ambiguous in this case as the one between irrational, rational and superrational This happens, as a matter of fact, in the case of any cultural creation, and advertising culture is no exception in this sense The reality constructed by advertising implies a new rapport to value systems Perennial values are held back due to the secondary part of classical values in contemporary man’s life As classical culture increasingly leaves room to mass culture, similarly with values we are in the presence of a phenomenon largely maintained by advertising: value volatility as a principle in the creation of new value systems When Nicu Gavriluță identifies among mass media creators a special category of professionals in democratic culture, understood as mass culture, he was right to place the pleasure of consumption among the essential elements of this culture The new communication techniques contributed by mass media in its classical form as 16 | SANDU FRUNZĂ 15 Nicu Gavriluţă, Antropologie socială și culturală, (Iași: Polirom, 2009),192 See also Sandu Frunză, Comunicare simbolică și seducție Studii despre seducția comunicării, comportamentul ritualic și religie, (București: Tritonic, 2014) 16 Matei Călinescu, Cinci feţe ale modernităţii Modernism, avangardă, decadență, kitsch Postmodernism, (București: Univers, 1995) well as in the new media and new communication technologies, all serve this pleasure The products of this culture are comforting, pleasant, and easy They are readily internalized as they come to satisfy wishes often taken as innocent pleasures that the individual affords although convinced of his/her inauthentic position toward great, classical culture Even risking inauthentic knowledge, understanding, and experience, the individual internalizes such easy values triggered by the cultural outcomes typical of the new society based on communication He/she is stimulated by the whole cultural milieu of every day, maintained by participation to the consumption of such goods This cultural milieu is created, maintained and imposed by the mass media.15 Although this culture mostly exploits the involvement in visual reception (therefore not critical thinking, aesthetic interpretation, existential valorization, and all kinds of expertise), it shapes the types of choices made by various categories, from the individual trapped by media cultures to members of an elite culture playing the social game of a complicity with consumerism.16 Most often it is about sequential choices reflecting a situational behavior This situational thinking is stimulated by the way in which advertising and advertising language construct reality during communication Advertising is the one that in the postmodern world is the deposit and revealer of the mythological structures of the sacred Its role is also to disclose various areas of the real, even if this reality is constructed or downright manufactured As part of media communication and culture, advertising is important through the very fact ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTS REALITY | 17 17 Ștefan Bratosin, Mihaela Alexandra Tudor, Iacob Coman, „La pratique du sacre dans le world wide web: une experience innovante de la norme”, Science de la Societe, no 81 (2010): 128 18 Vasile Sebastian Dâncu, Mitologii, fantasme și idolatrie Meditații și flashmob-uri, (București: Editura RAO, 2011), 33 Pretty suggestive for the way individuals become captive in mass culture are the thoughts from Vasile Sebastian Dâncu, Politica inutilă, (Cluj-Napoca: Eikon, 2007), 230-235 that its manifestation in classical version or in virtual environment keeps in the logic and internal representation elements that we associate to the sacred, although they are manifested today as parts of an essentially lay culture.17 Significant is the importance attributed by the current culture to symbolic communication, be it the metaphorical dimension of communication or the deep structures of human consciousness, brought up by the imaginary and activated in real life through imaginative creation In this respect, Vasile Sebastian Dâncu associates myths and metaphorical language in communication with a light cast over the soul of postmodern man, subject to our temporal rhythm, to reality perceived in its immanence, and to mass culture released with a shout of freedom from the classical culture pressure.18 Symbolic communication becomes thus the field of a social ritualization, of emotion manipulation by use of mythic imaginary, of symbolic integrity by consecration in communication acts In this context, advertising discourse appears as the harmonious framework of language, thought and action resignification Perennial symbolic forms combine with postmodern man’s relative reception and symbolic assumption We may explain this way why some secular culture forms receive maximal charge and constitute a source of consecration in support of choice direction and celebration, as elements typical of communication in public space Most theorists of the sacred nowadays insist that myths, rites, symbols in postmodern man’s life are either simulacra, or debili- 18 | SANDU FRUNZĂ We live in a time of rapid change and spectacular transformation in communication techniques The unstoppable optimism of communication development is shadowed by the very eschatological feeling dominating the end of the 20th century and especially the beginning of the third millennium Western man is a human being constructed around the idea of Christ’s death and resurrection as a new start, with hope for the better as with any beginning, and with a fear intrinsic to any new experience This ambivalence is also part of the attitudes and feelings of postmodern man as it has always been of human beings It is connected to the structure of ambivalence that we find in the entire history of religions as part of the human experience in front of the sacred Communication technique development does not fall outside this ambivalence either Therefore, we may note that in addition to perceiving technological development as miraculous, postmodern man wonders about the threat that it may pose to human development Despite awareness Advertising and the culture of eschatology always announced and always postponed tated degraded forms as compared to what they represented in and for traditional societies In this respect, they are deemed inauthentic forms of manifestation of the mythical-symbolic conscience or of the sacred Even if in anthropological or religious studies’ perspective these appear as degraded forms, at the personal experience level the degradation reflects positively in new experiences of various modes of perception, understanding and representation of the sacred Advertising brings into advertising discourse and in the individual conscience a horizon full of significance, constructed to resemble postmodern man ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTS REALITY | 19 Georges Vigarello, “Pentru că merit”, 160 See The best of L'Oréal - “Because I'm Worth It” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nU_14xjT3M; the evolution and journey of the legendary L'Oreal Paris slogans http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=hQLZxqgwRMA Georges Vigarello’s commentary on the L’Oréal Paris campaign, promoted through the slogan ’Because I’m Worth It’, is relevant for portraying the metamorphoses generated by burdening the object with intersubjective relations that converge towards the idea that the satisfaction of the subject is the supreme dream: “’Because I’m Worth It’ is a new way of positioning yourself towards objects It is the belief in a natural upgrading and certainty in a carefree world, a certainty that has to not only with technical aspects, but with a total and primordial self-fructification”.8 The L’Oréal campaign represents not only a revolution in the perception of women and femininity in advertising, but also a change in paradigm in the importance of advertising in consumerist culture Remarkable in this aspect are the following developments of the L’Oréal slogan: from ’Because I’m Worth It’ to ’Because You’re Worth It’, and completing the message of the campaign with the L’Oréal Kids commercials where the slogan is ’Because We’re Worth It Too’.9 It is not important whether the steps of this revolution follow the evolution in this specific order; what is important is the fact that the way in which L’Oréal Paris generates this paradigmatic change (in the way of constructing the relation between product, consumption, and consumer) coincides with a revolutionary change, a revolution of authenticity Advertising does not lead us to seek authenticity solely through economic communication There is also a market for ideas and ideals, and for that the political sphere generates endless possibilities In democratic societies, political advertising is a privileged instrument of electoral communication It is used in connection with political marketing and other forms of political communication In 176 | SANDU FRUNZĂ the analysis presented in this book I emphasize two elements: on the one hand the importance of intersubjectivity, of interpersonal communication and of affecting by direct involvement of the person or organization that represents the object of advertising, and on the other hand the fact that mythic, symbolic, magic, and religious elements are essential in selling the specific product proposed by political advertising The secularization of discourse and of public space, as an essential value of the contemporary world, also triggers the use of elements of the religious imagination and religious tradition as significant elements of the language of political advertising The relevance of symbolic thinking is highlighted in the unique relation of mass media, religion, ideology, and political action The secularization of discourse and symbolic thinking are the two pillars on which the persuasive language of political advertising is being built Using such instruments, political advertising integrates the politician into public political action as a voters’ delegate and preserves the voters as the true bearers of political power Together, they can build a new reality In this case, advertising is an instrument used in the construction of reality, but at the same time it functions as a general frame for the possible conditions of the construction of a new reality under the banner of authenticity and cooperation Searching for authenticity, advertising stimulates consumption as an indicator of existential and social positioning We find ourselves facing two aspects that concern individual choices The first aspect pertains to social status, the way in which we perceive ourselves in connection with others, and focuses on personal achievement by following certain criteria established by the community In this case, authenticity is conditioned by the opinion that others have of us The second aspect involves an existential option where the individual perceives consumption as a way of social fulfillment, as a way of obtaining authenticity, and he/she focuses on fulfilling ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTS REALITY | 177 Mihaela Alexandra Tudor Ionescu, Ștefan Bratosin, ”Langage, communication et médiation: déplacements métaphoriques”, Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations, Vol 11, No (17) (2009): 68 10 a set of personal desires oriented towards the recovery of the self in a consumerist culture The use of myth, symbol, ritual, fetish, taboo, or totem in advertising has the power to rebuild the world from a symbolic perspective It is essential for advertising because by setting in motion the fundamental dimensions of a human being, they allow a personal development of each individual at the intersection of immanence and transcendence, of imaginary and reality Thus a resignification of values is possible, of values that define the authenticity of his experiences The language of advertising has the ability, by utilizing the profound structures of visual culture, these „more or less complex pictorial metaphors”, to overcome obstacles in the way of meaning endowment, to atenuate the violence that sometimes manifests itself in the structures of the imagination, to overcome interdictions implied by social conventions, and to reduce the likeliness of various factors interfering with the intersubjective affirmation proceeding from the sacred This is how Mihaela Alexandra Tudor Ionescu and Ștefan Bratosin use the concept of „metaphoric mediation” to highlight the importance of metaphor in the knowledge and communication processes, and to reveal the exact mechanisms through which, with the help of language, a community institutes the world, the knowledge, the communication, and the ways in which these change according to the interests of the individuals that represent that community Crucial in this case is the fact that communication, understood as mediation through language, is conceived as a self-knowledge process, as a way of communicating with others and living with others.10 Used as a discourse strategy, the power of 178 | SANDU FRUNZĂ Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narative, Vol I, translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), 12 Georges Vigarello, “Pentru că merit”, 158 13 Robert C Trundle, “America’s Religion versus Religion in America: A Philosophic Profile” in Sandu Frunză, Mihaela Frunză (editors), Religion, Culture and Ideology in America, (București: Tritonic, 2012), 15 See also Richard Huber, The American Idea of $ucce$$ (NY: McGraw Hill Book Co., 1971) 11 metaphor helps to describe realities and meanings that would be difficult to understand otherwise, highlighting „the creative power of language”.11 In the name of pluralism, characteristic to the way of thinking promoted through advertising, criticisms of consumerist culture can be accepted and legitimized, just as attachment to the values of consumerist society can be legitimized and authentic This is because “by praising the freedom to choose, consumerist society is also praising the diversity of possibilities”.12 Critics of consumerism overlook the fact that advertising can employ things with an intersubjective value and can create a system of interpersonal, economic, social, political, and institutional relations that will help the individual rediscover and affirm himself One example in this situation could be America’s cultural critique, where the critique of consumerist society is accompanied by a critique of the idea of personal fulfillment at the meeting point between economic growth and personal success The affirmation “success in America is spelled $UCCE$$” is a result of a cultural critique of success, where success is understood as being closely related to capital, to wealth and the excessive ability to consume.13 At the same time, we should not forget that the image of a consumerist and McDonalidized America is not only one of tremendous economic success, but also the image of a country where the religious spirit is forever reborn (through revival of traditional religions and the birth of new religious move- ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTS REALITY | 179 Umberto Eco in Jean-Claude Carriere, Umberto Eco, Nu sperați că veti scăpa de cărți, conversations moderated by Jean-Philippe de Tonnac, translated by Emanoil Marcu, (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2010), 143 15 Charles Taylor, Etica autenticității, translated by Alex Moldovan, afterword by Radu Neculau, (Cluj: Idea Design & Print, 2006), 43 and the following 14 ments) Resurgence of the religious spirit in postmodern society is deemed natural by Umberto Eco, because he believes that „the religious rebirth doesn’t take place in periods of obscurity… it blossoms in hyper-technological eras, such as ours and coincides with the end of great ideologies, with periods of profound moral dissolution”.14 At the same time, it is a country with a blooming academic culture and a country of endless possibilities of affirmation for artists, but at the same time it is the country where religious and cultural tolerance faces new threats from fundamentalist movements and different forms of violence that affect dialogue and cohabitation We cannot ignore the fact that inside this consumerist society, economic success is reinforced by a continuous upgrading of religion and religious motivations They propose a discourse that conditions success through the assumption of religious practices and the ranking of experiences according to religious values Due to the ideology of the separation of public and private spheres when discussing religious matters (and probably due to the impossibility of this separation), we are taking part in an extraordinary development of communication concomitant with the increasing impact of religious symbolisms on American culture In the larger phenomenon of communication, advertising benefits from a new rediscovery at the crossroads of the economic and the spiritual, of religion and communications, of the imaginary and imaginative constructs generated by a symbolic conscience This does not reach to a merely „narcissist culture”, falls prey instrumental rationality, despite what the critics of the individualism of consumerist society claim.15 A resource capable of investing 180 | SANDU FRUNZĂ things with sacredness exists behind the mythical, symbolic, metaphoric, ritualistic action Even if it’s a camouflaged and degraded sacredness, it keeps all the attributes manifested by the symbolism of the center Due to the fact that the entire existence is organized around the subject, it becomes a reference for the creation of intersubjective relations These relations can be understood by the postmodern man through symbols derived from totemic mentality charged with the desire for harmony in relation with things, other beings, the world, and even the entire cosmos The society of abundance with its arsenal of paradisiacal symbolic resources assures the right set of resources needed for personal development in the spirit of a culture of authenticity Due to such a promise, advertising will most likely generate numerous critiques These will be similar to those concerning consumerist society The critique of consumerist culture uses the structures of the imaginary and the rational to justify the traditional way of understanding human need, the values, and the beliefs that derive from the desire to posess these values, all of these being conditioned by the history of a society Using the same instruments – the imaginary and the rational – consumerist culture offers the axiological references and the effort to build reality and authenticity as a way of escaping the past and living in the present (as well as the future) A statement defining the human condition of the consumer society is: I consume, therefore I am; and if I exist, I can only desire to live in a paradisiacal world Who could deny this joy to the postmodern man, a joy as simple as it is difficult to live? 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http://www.advertolog.com/honda/print-outdoor/europeanmyth-honda-11738605/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDQ6udTZV8k, http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4513085/cirque_du_soleil_ show_totem_costumes/ http://www.archiexpo.com/prod/mce-design/video-displaytotems-11725-87665.html Surse online: Wolin, Richard, The Seduction of Unreason The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2004) Wunenburger, Jean-Jacques, Omul politic între mit și rațiune O analiză a imaginarului puterii, translated by Mihaela Frunză, (Cluj: Editura Alfa Press, 2000) Wunenburger, Jean-Jacques, Sacrul, translation, notes and introductory study by Mihaela Frunză, (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Dacia, 2000) Zhao, Xin, Russell W Belk, “Politicizing consumer culture: Advertising's appropriation of political ideology in China's social transition”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol 35 issue (2008): 231244 ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTS REALITY | 195 http://www.123inspiration.com/athletic-wear-inspired-by-totempoles-by-adidas-originals/ http://www.perfecte.ro/colectii/noua-colectie-adidas-originalsby-jeremy-scott-totem-uri-aripi-si-motive-etnice.html http://www.e-galerie.ro/main.php/v/Florin+Ghergu/Florin+ GHERGU+-+Album+expozitie+European+Art+Gallery/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nU_14xjT3M ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQLZxqgwRMA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrp0NqKvoYA 196 | SANDU FRUNZĂ B Babias, Marius 47, 48, 183 Bagdasar, Nicolae 54, 174, 190 Balaban, Delia Cristina 32, 46, 183, 188 Baltag, Cezar 187 Banos, M 162, 188 Barthes, Roland 32, 36, 99, 100, 159, 160, 165, 166, 183, 192 Bass, Alan 41, 186 A Abbas, Mahmoud 105 Abrudan, Elena 168, 183 Adam 119, 120, 121 Agamben, Georgio 88, 183 Alam, Edward Joseph 151, 183 Albulescu, Laura 81, 185 Alt, Florian 174, 184 Anderson, Benedict 124, 183 Angus, Ian 171 Aristotel 174, 183 Aveling, Edward 63, 191 Bataille, Georges 41, 58, 184 Baudrillard, Jean 25, 26, 27, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 164, 165, 166, 167, 184 Bauer, B 73, 191 Bauer, Christine 174, 184 Beldescu, Alexandra 8, 186, 187 Belk, Russell W 157, 195 Bernard, Carmen 61, 62, 63, 184 Bertholet, Alfred 58, 92, 118, 184 Best, Beverley 69, 70, 71, 74, 184 Big, Sebastian 41, 184 Bivins, Thomas H 116, 184 Bolle de Bal, Marcel 155, 167, 184 Borgerson, Janet L 61, 63, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 94, 95, 96, 174, 193 Index C Caillois, Roger 92, 185 Campbell, Heidi A 162, 185 Caragea, Rodica 42, 185 Carpov, Maria 100, 183 Carriere, Jean-Claude 180, 185 Cavallin, Clemens 157, 185 Călinescu, Matei 17, 185 Cercel, Cristian 47, 183 Cezar Baltag 121, 187 Chamberlin, Bill F 108, 109, 191 Chavez, Hugo 105 Cioc, Emilian 88, 186 Cistelecan, Alex 88 Codoban, Aurel 20, 33, 34, 38, 39, 49, 51, 164, 185-187 Cohn, Andrei 143, 144 Coman, Iacob 18, 168, 185 Cook, Captain James 91 Cortese, Anthony J 107, 186 Culianu, Ioan P 121, 187 Bourdieu, Pierre 33, 40, 41, 42, 50, 52, 53, 80, 81, 82, 83, 184, 185 Bratosin, Ștefan 18, 132, 167, 168, 172, 178, 185, 194 Brewer, Anthony 67, 68, 69, 185 Buber, Martin 151, 185 198 | SANDU FRUNZĂ E Eco, Umberto 180, 185 Eliade, Mircea 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 92, 104, 121, 156, 158, 159, 160, 186, 187 Engels, Frederick 63, 67, 73, 191 Eremia, Mircea 144 D Dalwood, Mary 41, 184 Dâncu, Vasile Sebastian 18, 33, 45, 82, 83, 186 de Tonnac, Jean-Philippe 180, 185 Debord, Guy 32, 74, 75, 76, 77, 186 Decuble, Gabriel 58, 92, 184 Delkeskamp-Hayes, Corinna 157, 186 Derrida, Jacques 41, 88, 186 Dinopol, Paul G 10, 187 Drăgan, Adrian 143 Duda, Gabriela 102, 187 Dufour, Stéphane 150, 186 Dumezil, Georges 7, 8, 92, 186, 187 Durkheim, Emile 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138, 186 G Garcia, F 162, 188 Garcin, Jerome 175, 194 Gavriliu, Leonard 174, 187 Gavriluță, Cristina 27, 189 Gavriluță, Nicu 16, 17, 136, 137, 189 Gheorghiu, Mihai Dinu 33, 42, 52, 53, 184, 185, 189 Ghergu, Florin 144 Ghiu, Bogdan 40, 81, 184, 185 Grad, Iulia 151, 189 Gray, Daniel 65, 194 F Fernandez, P 162, 188 Ferreol, Gilles 123, 186 Feuerbach, Ludwig 73, 142, 187 Ficino, Marsilio 174, 187 Fletcher, Winston 107, 187 Flusser, Vilem 163, 164, 187 Foley, Duncan K 72, 187 Foucault, Michel 35, 41, 187 Frare, Therese 103 Frazer, James George 102, 119, 187 Freitas, Elsa Simões Lucas 91, 92, 93, 94, 101, 102, 106, 188 Freud, Sigmund 118, 174, 188 Frunză, Mihaela 88, 138, 179, 194, 195 K Kaid, Lynda Lee 147, 191 J Jeanrenaud, Magda 123, 186 Jeffreis, Mark 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 189 Jeffrey, Denis 155, 189 Jeudy, Henri-Pierre 98, 99, 189 Jhally, Sut 171, 189 Jones, Robert Alun 118, 190 Jones, Rosalind 105, 192 Jouve, Michele 190 I Ică jr., Ioan I 87, 191 Idel, Moshe 27, 189 H Habermas, Jurgen 58, 59, 189 Hackley, Christopher E 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 189 Harvey, David 66, 189 Heidegger, Martin 41, 58, 189 Hosking, Geoffrey 162, 193 Hosu, Ioan 46, 188 Huber, Richard 179, 189 Hutnyk, John 73, 74, 189 Gruzinsky, Serge 61, 62, 63, 184 ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTS REALITY | 199 L La Pastina, Antonio C 162, 185 Lambiase, Jacqueline 61, 193 Larson, Charles U 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 190 Lazăr, Horia 43, 184 Lepădatu, Gilbert 59, 189 Levinas, Emmanuel 22, 23, 165, 190 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 119, 190 Levitt, Theodore 113 Lingis, Alphonso 22, 190 Lipovetsky, Gilles 53, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 100, 115, 190 Livingstone, Rodney 70 Lucaci, Călin 138, 190 Lukacs, Georg 69, 70, 190 Lungu, Dan 42, 149, 185, 193 Lupescu, Silviu 123, 186 Lyotard, Jean-Francois 59, 190 Kalman, Tibor 103 Kant, Immanuel 54, 174, 190 Kaufmann, W 41, 191 Keller, Thomas 127, 145, 190 Kirby, David 103, 104 Kolakowski, Leszek 160, 190 Krell, D 41 Kruckenberg, Dean 111, 191 200 | SANDU FRUNZĂ M Mairet, Philip 9, 187 Manceau, Delphine 106, 107, 190 Marcău, Lelia 59, 190 Marion, Jean-Luc 87, 191 Marx, Karl 58, 60, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 187, 191 McFall, Liz 74, 191 McLaughlin, Kathleen 179, 192 McNair, Brian 150, 153, 191 Meslin, Michel 159, 191 Merskin, Debra, 100, 102, 191 Michelangelo 103 Michelis, Daniel 174, 184 Middleton, Kent R 108, 109, 191 Mihali, Ciprian 32, 39, 59, 184, 186, 190 Miller, Richard 32, 183 Mleșniță, Virgil 166, 183 Moses 121 Moldovan, Alex 180, 194 Moore, Samuel 63, 191 Moraru, Mădălina 138, 141, 191 Moraru, Vlad 47, 183 Mucundorfeanu, Meda 46, 188 Müller, Jörg 174, 184 P Pope Benedict al XVI-lea 105 Papahagi, Marian 160, 192 Paraschivescu, Mihaela 8, 187, 192 Parry, Sara 105, 192 Pecher, I 117, 134, 190 Pellauer, David 179, 192 Perloff, Richard M 147, 148, 191 O Obama, Barack 105 Obermiller, Carl 107, 193 Odih, Pamela 72, 192 Olson, Laura R 157, 192 Otto, Rudolf 96, 144, 192 N Nădășan, Timotei 20, 185 Neamțu, Mihail 87, 191 Neculau, Radu 180, 194 Netanyahu, Benjamin 105 Newman, Bruce I 147, 148, 191 Newsom, Doug 111, 191 Nicola, Mihaela 60, 192 Nicolescu, Vasile 10, 187 Nietzsche, Friedrich 41, 97, 191, 195 Nistor, Octavian 102, 187 North, Gary 73, 192 S Sabri, Ouidade 107, 192, 193 Sandu, Antonio 193 Sălceanu, Diana 149, 193 Schopflin, George 161, 162, 193 Schroeder, Jonathan E 61, 63, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 94, 95, 96, 174, 193 Schutzman, Mady 60, 94, 95, 193 Schwartzenberg, Roger-Gerard 139, 140, 142, 143, 193 R Rabinow, P 41, 187 Raines, John 68, 192 Reichert, Tom 61, 193 Ricoeur, Paul 179, 192 Riviere, Claude 135, 136, 160, 161, 192 Robinson, Matthew 105, 192 Petecel, Stella 174, 183 Petre, Dan 60, 192 Petrescu, Dan 92, 185 Pisică, Anca 139, 193 Platon 174, 192 Pop, Ion 160, 192 Popescu, Marciana 157, 194 Popp, Lavinia Elisabeta 163, 192 Posescu, Alexandru 174, 193 ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTS REALITY | 201 T Taylor, Charles 180, 194 Thompson, John B 81, 185 Tissier-Desbordes, Elisabeth 106, 107, 190 Tomkins, Rosie 103, 194 Ș Șahighian, Alexandru Al 97, 191 Şandor, Sorin Dan 157, 194 Scott, Jeremy 127 Selwyn-Holmes, Alex 103, 193 Sfez, Lucian 148, 149, 161, 193 Sheed, Rosemary 11, 187 Sheffield, Tricia 86, 100, 131, 171, 173, 193 Shimp, Terence A 114, 193 Simonson, Peter 162, 163, 193 Singer, Brian 26, 184 Spiekermann, Sarah 174 Spinoza, Baruch 174, 193 Stanciu, Beatrice 62, 184 Steele, Valerie 60, 61, 95, 193 Stern, Philip 105, 192 Stirner, Max 73 Stoenescu, Radu 32, 186 Strate, Lance 10, 193 Sutherland, Max 111, 194 Sylvester, Alice K 111, 194 202 | SANDU FRUNZĂ W Walker, David 65, 194 Wiesner, H S 121, 187 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 58 V VanSlyke Turk, Judy 111, 191 Vasile, Aurelia Ana 111, 194 Vattimo, Gianni 156, 194 Vereș, Caludiu 150, 191 Vigarello, Georges 175, 176, 179, 194 Vlădulescu, Victor-Dinu 115, 190 U Ungureanu, Mihai 53, 190 Ţ Țepeneag, Mona 175, 194 Toscani, Oliviero 103, 194 Trager, Robert 108, 109 Trask, Willard R 12, 187 Trundle, Robert C 179, 194 Truth, Taylor 30, 31, 32, 36, 37, 194 Tudor, Ciprian 35, 187 Tudor, Mihaela Alexandra 18, 132, 168, 178, 185, 194 Tuten, Tracy L 167, 194 Z Zhao, Xin 157, 195 Zoicaș, Mihaela 135, 192 Y YHWH 121 Wolin, Richard 30, 41, 195 Wunenburger, Jean-Jacques 88, 138, 195 ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTS REALITY | 203 ... TRITONIC 2014 pentru ediția prezentă Sandu Frunză Advertising constructs reality RELIGION AND ADVERTISING IN THE CONSUMER SOCIETY ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTS REALITY Sandu Frunză About the author: Sandu... Abundance as original seduction Advertising constructs reality A symbolic construct of reality under the sign of the fragmentary Advertising, initiation and consumer culture Advertising and the culture... enjoy pieces of reality marked by specific elements of one’s existence, to creatively valorize the possibility to construct one’s own world of reality fragments ADVERTISING CONSTRUCTS REALITY | 11