When I was 13 the radio station called me to ask what the last song they'd played on the radio was. It was one of the familiar advertising strategies discussed in the film Advertising and the End of the World. Listen to Oz fm for tickets to Bon Jovi in L.A., Airmiles, Diner's Club, ect. As a loyal listener I knew the answer and this won me $1000. It's The End of The World As We Know It and I Feel Fine-R.E.M. When my Canadian Savings Bond matured I spent it all on a whole lot of nothing, surprisingly quick. Focusing on the bombardment of commercial images we're exposed to daily, Sut Jhally's film speaks to this overwhelming need to consume. While the film's message is inherently depressing Jhally reminds us how hard companies have to work to sell continuously their products to us. If Coca-Cola is any indication of how hard companies work, and how much money they spend to keep reinventing and selling the wheel, I'd say Jhally is right on the $$$.
Brand portfolio
I found Jhally's discussion of the ways that advertisers use magic to sell products incredibly interesting, particularly in relation to the ways in which women's bodies are used to sell not even products, but happiness. In thinking about the articles on romance novels however, the degree to which we are affected by them, and our agency within this equation. Although Jhally shows us the great lengths advertisers must go to as proof of our resilience, he also paints a fairly bleak picture with respect to the awesome global forces of capitalism. It would seem that Jhally is using primarily Marxist media theory, whereas Light and Radway draw heavily on psychoanalytical theory. Thus they appear to come to different conclusions on the topic of personal agency and transformation.
