新編大學英語第一冊unit11 Text C: Should Advertising Be Banned?
UNIT 11 AFTER-CLASS READING 2; New College English (I)
Should Advertising Be Banned?
1 Advertising is a powerful medium for manipulating people's desires, values, and lifestyles. In general, advertising is done hypocritically, manipulating people without regard for their good. Advertising causes people to want things that they do not need, distracts them from values of life that do not involve buying and consuming products, and weakens traditional symbols.
2 Those who control advertising control culture by controlling what we spend our money on and what our values and lifestyles are. Almost any message can be packaged in the language of advertising. Charities and good causes project the same stereotyped images and values that products do. With the right advertising, who knows what people could be persuaded to believe? Advertising could be used as easily to support racial violence or violence against police as to support sentiments like saying no to drugs or loving your children. The medium is perfect for propaganda.
3 There are also clearly some cases where, although the thing advertised is not bad, it is made worse when packaged in advertising. For example, the advertising agency for a political candidate discovers what slogans and symbols voters respond positively to and then packages the candidate in those things. The candidate is associated with images with positive emotional value the family dog, the American flag, and so on and the right words are put into her mouth or said in the voice-over. In the thirty-second television slot we see the candidate with her husband and children and pet dog and it tells us that we should vote for her because she loves America. Advertisements show the candidate as a person who looks as if she has the right virtues for the office. The commercials show the candidate talking to workers, minorities, or senior citizens to convince us that ordinary people just like ourselves will vote for her and she cares for our concerns. Thus, in the short advertising message, too short to communicate any real content, the candidate tells the viewers what her market researchers say the viewers already believe, and shows the viewers images of voters backing the candidate for them to identify with. This is the same thing that advertisements for products do. They reflect the average consumer back at himself, using the product.
4 This sort of advertising corrupts the political process by showing us the candidate, not as she is, but packaged to appeal. Thus, it shares in the general atmosphere of hypocrisy and dishonesty of advertising. The political process has been corrupted by letting political issues be reduced to which market researcher is the most skillful in constructing an appealing image, and which candidate has the most money to throw into ads. When we vote for a candidate because of her television commercials, we are voting for an advertising package, not for the individual and her true political convictions.
5 Some want to blame the advertising professionals for the corrupting influence of advertising. They say that advertising artists and copywriters should consent to persuade people only of things that are good for them. But what is good for people? At the moment, business and industry control advertising and hence control culture. It is up to them to determine how advertising is used. It is business and industry that pay artists and copywriters to package their messages, and mass media to distribute them. Blaming advertising specialists for the negative impact of advertising is like blaming the messenger when you don't like the message. If we want to blame someone we should blame business and industry.
6 Some suggest that instead of allowing business and industry so much freedom in advertising, there should be some sort of governmental regulations banning advertising for potentially harmful products, such as cigarettes or alcohol. Everyone agrees that some advertising should be kept away from children, but perhaps we should be keeping some of it away from adults as well.
7 However, even if we were to restrict advertising to products that are not harmful, restrict the advertising that is targeted at children, and stop political advertising, advertising would still be bad for us. It is not that an advertisement for a single product corrupts us, it is rather that the cumulative effect of seeing great quantities of advertisements corrupts us. Advertising provides an atmosphere of hypocrisy and a background of manipulative messages and distorted images. It makes us anxious and suspicious. It weakens our cultural and religious symbols. Advertising promotes material solutions to all problems. It creates false needs. It keeps us daydreaming about products, which is bad for our ability to think clearly. It is hard to think rationally against a background of advertising fantasy. Thus, advertising has a negative cumulative effect on us.
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