Utopian Images and Narratives in Advertising

Dreams for Sale

Luigi Manca, Alessandra Manca, Gail W. Pieper, Dolores Sorci-Bradley

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2012
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780739173275
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The study of advertising and its treatment of utopian appeal enhance our understanding of consumer culture. By looking into the advertising page, we also look into consumers' desires and the process by which these desires are reshaped and rechanneled through images and narratives created solely for the purpose of making a sale.

Utopian Images and Narratives in Advertising: Dreams for Sale, edited by Luigi Manca, Alessandra Manca, and Gail W. Pieper, is a collection of essays which gather a host of academicians from a wide variety of disciplines including sociology, psychology, literature, fine arts, history, religious studies, communication, and media studies. Through their expansive disciplinary expertise, the contributors bring unique insights to the analysis of the advertising page. The collection's cross-disciplinary investigation also examines gender images and narratives which, in the advertising page, are frequently associated with utopian fantasies. The analyses offered in Utopian Images and Narratives in Advertising will appeal to any scholar or student engaged in mass media, communication, and the effect of advertising and consumerism on individuals and cultures.

Table of contents

• Introduction: Probing Madison Avenue’s Utopian Images and Narratives
• The Portrayal of Utopian Spaces in Magazine Advertisements
• Water, the All-Purpose Utopia
• Women and Children in a Fragile Paradise
• Welcome (Back) to the Brotherhood: Nostalgia, Masculinity, and the Selling of the Mitchum Man
• Absolute Utopia: Advertising the American Dream “In an Absolut World”
• Utopia on the Common Ground: Norman Rockwell’s Breaking Home Ties
• Utopian Images and Gender in Web-Based Advertisements: A View from the Starting Line
• Jungian Archetypes in Advertising Imagery
• Selling the Good Old Days: Images of Community Life in Contemporary American Advertising
• Masculine and Feminine Images in Italian Magazine Advertising
• Black Face—White Utopia: Reflections on African-Americans, Utopia, and Advertising
• Utopian Scenarios in Hispanic Advertisements: People en Español
• Advertising, Neoliberalism, and the Financial Collapse of 2008
• Living in Worlds We’d Like to Live In: Capitalist Utopias in an Age of Counterfactuality
• The Four Women of the Apocalypse: Utopia or Dystopia?
• About the Contributors