Illusion Politics

A critique of radical postmodernism

through the semiotics of
print advertising
Cierra Olivia Thomas-Williams
Gender Studies Department
Indiana University Bloomington
 The “Postmodern” Ad World

• 15,000 commercial • 3 yrs watching TV

images per day commercials
• The U.S. spends 48% • The U.S.A. is only
of the worlds’ 10% of the world
advertising dollars population
• In 2005, U.S.
advertising • In 2005, global ad
expenditures: $276 expenditures: $570
billion billion
 Average percentage of African Americans in top
selling U.S. magazines by gender, age

2% 1%
Based on Results
6% from Content
Analysis of
Popular U.S.
Magazines, 2005
(16 000 pages
reviewed in 89
Issues of
Cosmopolitan &
others)
Caucasian

African American
Women
African American
91%
Men
African American
Children
1820s – Ads refer to people, place, things
(Reflective of a “profound reality” in nineteenth century)
 Twentieth
Century
Advertising

Beginnings of
DISTORTION of
reality (phase
of the image)
In his 1745 letter to The Society
Instituted for the Purpose of
Effecting the Abolition of the
Slave Trade, Reverend Robert
Boucher Nikkols wrote that
Equiano’s tales

“represent the negroes

as little removed above
the monkey, or the
aran-outang (sic), with
regard to intellects.”
Twenty-first century advertising becomes hyperreal . . .
Angels lingerie
by Victoria’s
Secret

Which
“angel” lacks
wings?
Teen, August 2001

Glamour,
September 2003
 % of incarceration rates for drug offenses
vs. % illicit drug users by ethnicity, 2000
Census

80

Total 60
Percentage
of
40
Population
20
0
Arrests for Illicit drug
Drug Offenses users
Black Hispanic White
IS advertising significant?

More importantly though . . .

are acts of racism
apparent in “hyperreal”
advertising?
IS advertising really hyperreal?