Outline, illustrate and critically discuss the main cultural critiques of advertising.

Guidance

For general guidance see the guidelines for writing essays and reports.

What Key Features Do I Look For? Familiarity with relevant texts Evidence - the stronger the better Argument - coherent and balanced Theoretical discussion - relation to relevant theories Understanding of relevant concepts Reflexivity - reflections on methodology Examples - insightfully analysed Style - readability and effective presentation

Please remember to avoid footnotes and to include an alphabetical list of 'References' which have been cited in the text (not a Bibliography of anything you have read for the essay). This list should include author's names, date, book titles (in italics), place of publication and publisher. Within the text always cite author's surname, date and page number. Double-space your text and number your pages. For more detailed notes on writing essays in this department, click here. For examples of essays by UWA students click here.

Advice for this particular assignment: Although you should attempt to map out a range of positions on advertising, you are advised to focus in detail on three very different kinds of critique, primarily academic rather than popular. They need not all be negative critiques, but avoid choosing three very deterministic ones. Choose at least one which does not assign a purely passive role to 'consumers'.

Some suggested reading

• Adorno, Theodore & M. Horkheimer (1944/1973) The Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Allen Lane
• Anderson, Chuck (2000) The Big Lie: The Truth About Advertising. London: Random Thoughts
• Baker, Stephen (1961) Visual Persuasion: The Effect of Pictures on the Subconscious. New York: McGraw-Hill
• Barthes, Roland (1964) 'The rhetoric of the image', in Roland Barthes (1977), Image-Music-Text. London: Fontana, pp. 32-51
• Barthes, Roland (1988) 'The advertising message', in Roland Barthes (1988), The Semiotic Challenge. Oxford: Blackwell
• Berger, John (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: BBC/Penguin
• Cook, Guy (2001) The Discourse of Advertising. London: Routledge
• Ewen, Stuart (1976) Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of Consumer Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill
• Ewen, Stuart (1999) All-Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture. New York: Basic Books
• Ewen, Stuart & Elizabeth Ewen (1982) Channels of Desire: Mass Images and the Shaping of American Consciousness. New York: McGraw-Hill
• Goffman, Erving (1979) Gender Advertisements. London: Macmillan
• Goldman, Robert (1992) Reading Ads Socially. London: Routledge
• Goldman, Robert & Stephen Papson (1996) Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising. New York: Guilford Press
• Hall, Stuart & Paddy Whannel (1964) The Popular Arts. London: Hutchinson
• Jhally, Sut (1990) The Codes of Advertising. London: Routledge
• Key, Wilson Bryan (1992) Subliminal Ad-Ventures in Erotic Art. Boston, MA: Branden [a generator of controversy!]
• Leavis, F. R. & Denys Thompson (Eds) (1964) Culture and Environment: The Training of Critical Awarements. London: Chatto & Windus
• Langholz Leymore, Varda (1975) Hidden Myth: Structure and Symbolism in Advertising. New York: Basic Books
• Leiss, William, Stephen Kline & Sut Jhally (2005) Social Communication in Advertising (3rd Edition). London: Routledge
• Lodziak, Conrad (2002) The Myth of Consumerism. London: Pluto
• Messaris, Paul (1997) Visual Persuasion: The Role of Images in Advertising. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
• Myers, Kathy (1986) Understains: The Sense and Seduction of Advertising. London: Comedia
• O'Barr, William M. (1994) Culture and the Ad: Exploring Otherness in the World of Advertising. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
• Packard, Vance (1962) The Hidden Persuaders. Harmondsworth: Penguin
• Richards, Barry, Iain MacRury & Jackie Botterill (2000) The Dynamics of Advertising. Amsterdam: Harwood (Chapter 4)
• Schudson, Michael (1984) Advertising: The Uneasy Persuasion. New York: Basic Books
• Thompson, Denys (1964) Discrimination and Popular Culture. Harmondsworth: Penguin
• Williams, Raymond (1980) 'Advertising: The Magic System' In Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso
• Williams, Raymond (1987) Culture and Society. London: Hogarth
• Williamson, Judith (1978) Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. London: Marion Boyars
• Willis, Paul (1990) Common Culture. Milton Keynes: Open University Press