It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more. Within publicity, choices are offered between this cream and that cream, that car and this car, but publicity as a system only makes a single proposal. Publicity is not merely an assembly of competing messages: it is a language in itself which is always being used to make the same general proposal. It is true that in publicity one brand of manufacture, one firm, competes with another but it is also true that every publicity image confirms and enhances every other.
Publicity, it is thought, offers a free choice. The great hoardings and the publicity neons of the cities of capitalism are the immediate visible sign of 'The Free World'.įor many in Eastern Europe such images in the West sum up what they in the East lack.
It is closely related to certain ideas about freedom: freedom of choice for the purchaser: freedom of enterprise for the manufacturer. Publicity is usually explained and justified as a competitive medium which ultimately benefits the public (the consumer) and the most efficient manufacturers - and thus the national economy. We are static they are dynamic - until the newspaper is thrown away, the television programme continues or the poster is posted over. Yet despite this, one has the impression that publicity images are continually passing us, like express trains on their way to some distant terminus. Usually it is we who pass the image - walking, travelling, turning a page on the tv screen it is somewhat different but even then we are theoretically the active agent - we can look away, turn down the sound, make some coffee. For example, the fact that these images belong to the moment but speak of the future produces a strange effect which has become so familiar that we scarcely notice it. But we accept the total system of publicity images as we accept an element of climate. A person may notice a particular image or piece of information because it corresponds to some particular interest he has. We are now so accustomed to being addressed by these images that we scarcely notice their total impact.
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