" When I look into the mirror, i see two things: what I want to be and what I am not; My chest will never be so huge. My legs are too thin. My nose has an odd shape. I want to be like the man in the Gillette commercials." Any boy today will echo these lines for it is this desire for the hyperreal that instigates any individual to long to a certain space so as to grab the other's attention. Advertisemnts tend to trap us here, promising ae elevated state of existance.
Utility no longer remains the main feature that determines consumption. In fact on produt today is even sold on this lone feature. Every product today brings an image of a particular lifestyle attached with it. Moreover, due to a diverse industry, a consumer is given a wide variety of products (and concequently socio-cultural images) to choose from. This makes the consumer transcend mere necessities of purchase and commit himself to personalise to something beyond it. Choice is thus between the socio-cultural images: whether to belong to them or not. These series of instituted signs constitute society while providing the idividual withan illusiory sense of freedom.
On classifying, we get a diverse range of ad-images: the image of the indifferent but cool student- Virgin mobile, Menthos, Center Fresh; the macho image: Bajaj Pulsar, Axe, Marlboro; the independent woman in Asmi Jewellery, Scooty Pep, Fair & Lovely. The list is never ending. In the contemporary world, indivduals have less control in self realisation and therefore adopt to these images to describe themselves. The 'self' reduces to an object of market dimensions. The image turns back on its creator to control him or her, for objectifying to an image assigns thim or her to a particular place in the overall socio-economic order. Thus the consumer is commodified.
Trudging a foot further, consumers today also have become images themselves. Fiction has become real and real, fiction. I may not be studious but a series of heavy books in my roomguarantee me the image of a bookworm. A tattoo of Che Guevera and not the knowledge of Das Kapital make me a self proclaimed Communist. Carrying my books to college in a Pantaloons packet ascends me higher up the Socio-economic order. We are thus proletarised regardless of class . . . a function of the advertisements around us.
