The message of any social reality finds expression through different medium. And I feel ‘advertisement’ is one of the medium that can affect us positively or adversely. The basic idea of advertisement in most cases is to sell products but if we look at them very closely it sell much more than just the products. It sells values, images, concepts of love, romance, success etc. etc. And the prevailing taste takes its ideal from the advertisement, for instance advertising captions like, “Wear your attitude” “Be a model citizen, in the eyes of fashion police”, “An apple a day, can keep you away from Doctor” so on so forth. We are ruled by the principles of pre-determined needs provoking us, as capable in fulfilling our needs and we feel ourselves as eternal consumers which is the object of advertising industry, yet we didn’t realized that they are not allowing us to believe, that by such deception fulfils its selfish design. Advertising is merging as psycho technology, a procedure to manipulate us and their main aim is to overpower the customer, who is conceived as absent minded or resistant, creating an artificial need around us making us believe that we need certain things which are not really necessary.Jean Kilbourne, an American feminist and a film maker uses several ads and TV commercials in her Documentary film killing us Softly, to critique the image of women being misused by the advertising industry. She points out that to a great extend advertisement comes tell, who we are and who we should be. She feels, women are the most affected ones in this project, because advertising industry creates a notion that ‘beauty’ is the most important thing about women. And at the very early age women are made conscious by these agents that they should spend enormous amount of time, money and energy to achieve this ideal beauty and feel ashamed when one doesn’t indulge in this project. The saddest past is women are contempt when they failed to achieve that ideal beauty. She further adds, to achieve that ideal beauty becomes even more difficult in the eyes advance technology, the magic touch that computer can give to the images has made even more difficult for real women to achieved that ideal beauty. But interestingly she says, the advertising industry comes to promise that such transformation is possible if we try hard, buy the right products.
I feel this is true to a great extend even to our society that many indulge in this project and ends up frustrating for it is impossible to achieve that virtual perfection created by the advertising industry. Taking this as a departure point I would like reflect on how advertisement has slowly affected even the ways Christmas celebration.
Today, if we look around, the perspective of Christmas celebration wears completely a different look, the concept of first Christmas is slowly turning out to be a distant memory. The festival which supposed to be celebrating the birth of Christ, the gift of love and the plan of redemption seem to have little relevance, as the pendulum of celebration drastically swing towards festivity rather than dwelling on the meaning and purpose of celebration. The commercial industry is partly to be blame for making Christmas a massive event of shopping, coercing people to embrace the deviated meaning of Christmas to meet their ends, advertising their product in such a way that Christmas would be incomplete without owning their products. For instance, the concept of Christmas tree, Christmas stars, Santa Claus etc. have taken the centre stage of the celebration, making us believed that Christmas is incomplete without these stuffs, and somehow we have become a victim of this project.
Christmas wasn’t about digging so deep into our bank accounts or savings. But Christmas is turning out to be a burden for many, as compel to meet certain expectations around, and in turn many would be left with huge debts. And the saddest part is that, even after several months of celebration, many would be still trying to shovel out ways and means to repay the debts that they have borrowed for Christmas celebration. Many a times we think a well celebrated Christmas is all about having new clothes, lots of meat, well organised gatherings wherein, we get all sort of entertainments. Well, I am not completely against the idea of material celebration but focusing too much on feasting and other materialistic entertainment would certainly kill the purpose of celebration. As we all wait to celebrate this Christmas, I think it’s important on our part to lend a serious thought on the evolving trend of Christmas celebration! So that we may prepare in the right spirit and wait on the Lord who will never disappoint us, like the things of the world has disappointed. Wishing you all a blessed Christmas!
