What do advertisements really sell?

Only the first 3 minutes and 11 seconds are going to be important in this blog.

For those of you who are not familiar with this file (Mona Lisa Smile), it is set in the 50's at Wellesley College (An all women's college in Massachusetts). Julia Robert's character makes two crucial points within this scene. The first is that history/ time has a powerful influence on the roles of gender. Second, Julia Robert's character illustrates the power of media as a lens for gender as well as how it assists the recording of the anthropological ideology of the culture. In Chris Barker's chapter on "Questions of Culture and Ideology," he reference's Raymond William's views on "cultural materialism." The specific idea that I am referring to is that "the purpose of cultural analysis is to explore and analyze (sic) the recorded culture of a given time and place.... At the same time, we need always to be aware that cultural records are part of a selectively preserved and interpreted 'tradition'." Basically, Williams is saying that the identity of culture depends greatly on the time. The cultural ideology of the Middle Ages is going to vastly differ from our own due to the time and location of the two cultures. In the movie Mona Lisa Smile, the ideology of women was slowly shifting from the rigid housewife roles to allowing a woman to expand her potential within the guidelines of society. During the time of the movie, it was a rather significant opportunity for women to be able to attend an institution of higher learning. However, Julia Robert's character, Miss Watson, expected a greater progression for women in this conservative New England culture. Throughout the film, this character is constantly fighting the confines of tradition.

The second and dominant point in this particular clip is the anthropological ideology associated with women in the fifties. Barker describes the influence of advertisements on the culture. "Textual and ideological analysis of advertising stressed the selling not just of commodities but also of ways of looking at the world. The job of advertising was to create an 'identity' for a product amid the bombardment of competing images by associating the brand with desirable human values. Buying a brand was not only about buying a product. It was also about buying into a lifestyle and values." Is not this quote true regarding the clip as well as our own culture? What is an advertisement really selling us - the product or a lifestyle? We buy the product with the hope that the 'good' connotations associated with the desired object will enhance our identity within society. Essentially, we are really 'buying' the connotations with the perk of the product. For example, in the film clip the first advertisement shows a women and a canned product. What is the advertisement really selling - a product or the image of women? Miss Watson describes how these advertisements stand as a record of women during that era. Therefore, advertisements not only reinforce gender stereotypes, but also embed historical representations of cultural ideology within the confines of media.