Contradictions and Juxtapositions

White calls attention to both the endless, repetitive flow of television that works to knit all of its products into a seemingly unified whole, and the contradictions and juxtapositions embodied across different programs, within different programs and within commercials. Contradictory messages are simply accepted and absorbed into the larger flow of television and their incompatibility goes unrecognized. Susan Bordo examines this phenomenon in relation to advertising directed at women. She notes that “with a flip of the page or barely a pause between commercials, images of luscious foods and the rhetoric of craving and desire are replaced by advertisements for grapefruit diets, low-calorie recipes and exercise equipment (Bordo 199). As a result “bulimia emerges as a characteristic modern personality construction” as we are commanded to both indulge in endless consumption and employ self-control in denying desires (Bordo 201). Bordo notes that, in consumer capitalism, this same tension exists as individuals are required to both consume endlessly and deny desires to consume in order to produce. She further notes that of key importance to the continuation of the capitalist system is the masking of this contradiction, which is accomplished through advertising that demands we can ‘have it all’. Thus, as is seen in this magazine cover, we find images of slender women combined with headlines urging us to “lose 9lbs. this week” next to images of rich desserts. Perhaps due to the an endless and ever-increasing acceleration of images combined with a lack of distance, we lack the “heightened presence of mind” necessary to pick up on the obvious contradiction. There is no reflection, no “significant crystallization” allowing for the revelation of the obvious tensions embodied in such advertising.

Bordo, Susan. (1995). Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley and London: University of California Press.

White, Mimi. Ideological Analysis and Television

Baudrillard, Jean. The Illusion of the End.

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.