Generation Like

The Frontline documentary “Generation Like” explores the relationship between Internet users and corporate marketers. In the film, Douglas Rushkoff explain how in our generation the consumer turns into the marketer by reaching out to their peers through social media, in turn selling the product for the company.

Rushkoff explain how teens are spending more and more time in digital spaces they know nothing about, eventually creating a demographic profile about themselves and thus voluntarily handing out information about themselves to companies.This is because the value of companies such as Facebook and Twitter aren't based on profit, but based on the volume of likes they can generate. Now here we see the game of likes.

Through social media platforms, teens can participate in something bigger than themselves and engaging with figures that they idolize is what keeps them continuing to like and engage via social media. However, what is really occurring is that corporations are employing kids to sell their product, making them work for free without knowing the role they are playing in the marketing process. In our generation any ordinary kid has the opportunity to cultivate an online fan base. Kids feel validated by the number of likes they receive, skewing their notion of success and creating a meaningful impression. New world marketing is where it's no longer "the medium is the message" and more of "you are the medium".

How powerful is the connection between the effect of social media and the structure of the Hunger Games? 

In “Generation Like” companies profit by selling out identities. Teens are victim of manipulation by marketers and large corporations and playing into a system they aren't aware of. Teens feel empowered and like they part of a meaningful social community when really they are just “players in a corporate version of The Hunger Games.”

As seen in the clip above, Rushkoff uses the Hunger Games as a metaphor and makes a direct comparison between advertisers and the game makers from The Hunger Games, the ones who create arenas where teenagers fight each other to the death for sponsorships and the viewing pleasure of adults. It's where hidden game masters set the rules that you need to follow, and where the only way to receive benefits from sponsors is to get as many people to like you as you can. Jar of miraculous healing ointment anyone? This inclusion of profound parallels between the subject-matter and the plot of The Hunger Games, and its incorporation of clever transition methods, helps to convey a story that’s tackling a heavy subject matter into a simple and cohesive structure for the audience to enjoy.

The connection between the effect of social media and the structure of the Hunger Games is a profound message. For today’s young adult audience, a world of instability is just the norm. When young adults read these books, stories about teenagers who must fight for their lives and fight for their freedom in a world that a previous generation has wrecked, they are reading a metaphorical representation of their own world. Today’s kids have been handed a world their elders mismanaged, used up, polluted and wrecked. 

The relationship with the games being just like social media, gives the audience something to relate to. They understand the issues with the games, not only from the character's point of view but with their interpretation of it as well, Associating this to social media gives them a further understanding and makes them question the social media game.

We Need To Talk About Lily Allen

The Internet exploded when iconic British pop star Lily Allen released the music video for her long-awaited comeback single “Hard Out Here”. It is incredibly ambitious and catchy as hell. "Hard Out Here" has Allen referencing everything from the sexual double standard for women to the glass ceiling. It's a feminist pop anthem you can blast at parties.

At first, we find Allen stretched out on an operating table, undergoing liposuction while silently protesting criticism about her wright from her old white manager. “How do people let themselves get like this?” Her gross white middle-aged manager asks. “Um, I've had two babies,” she responds. This aptly captures the pressure woman in the music industry must feel. She aptly instills the idea of female empowerment, cleverly discussing the objectification of women, sexism in the media and the fallacy that sexism no longer exists. She introduces the concept of the glass ceiling and her attempt to expose and break it. This is probably the most effective scene because she liberates herself from the revolting sexism it creates by getting up and singing.

The lyrics aim to ridicule common tropes perpetuated about women in pop music, and are supported in the video by clever references to other music. The repetition of the refrain “hard out here for a bitch,” is a reclamation of “bitch” as a term of power and a reference to Three 6 Mafia’s “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”. This actually contrasts with the ideology that "males are active and females are passive" within media texts.

She also satirizes the standard "Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus" approach to Top 40 by adding an inter-textual reference to Thicke's video "Blurred Lines" and Cyrus' "We Can't Stop" video and performances. As a widely recognized gesture, this became a successful satiric statement. She replicates this to show how insignificant the assertion was to the the actual narrative of his song and making a point of how ridiculous the content of pop videos have gotten and how the 'patriarchal society' allows this.

The only problem with Allen's video though, is that it undermines its own message.

Lily Allen uses a satiric approach to her music video. In trying to make a comments about the sexism and materialism in hip-hop video and pop music, Allen's video was interpreted by many as perpetuating racism The problem was that for satire to have a real effect, mere imitation is not enough. In her attempt to satirize, Allen still manage to alienate.

The video cuts to black women twerking, an obvious parody of the use of black women as props in music videos. While Allen may not have intended to dehumanize and objectify the women of color twerking in her video, she succeeded in many ways. But even when she’s dancing with them, it seems she’s still kind of making fun of them, or at least keeping her distance. We get the message yet the entire video is laden with half-naked ladies twerking. We see women licking various objects as phallic symbols and spraying themselves with champagne; there are gratuitous close-ups that reduce women to jiggly butts and crotch shots. Further to that point, Allen is the only three-dimensional woman in this video yet the dancers never stop playing up the bottle-popping, booty-shaking roles they've been assigned—roles she’s already condemned and rejected. Meanwhile she sings, "No need to shake my ass for you cause I’ve got a brain.” Exacerbating this is Allen demonstrating her own superiority by being a clothed white woman parading amongst semi-naked women of colour.

The biggest issue here isn't that Allen chose to satirize the twerking dancers in hip hop videos, but that she chose to satirize something that doesn't actually affect her, that she could stand apart from and present as a sort of oddity. That's ultimately the problem with Allen's brand of pop feminism, though. In order to empower women just like her, she's had to exclude and make a mockery of countless others.

Written Task 2 Practice

 How and why is a social group represented in a particular way?

In this article, I'll be answering the question above in relation to LGBT advertising.

There are 2 types of techniques marketers use to advertise to the LGBT community. Gay window advertising is one of the earliest and most common strategy targeting gays. It features “average” and straight-looking characters that can be read as buddies or roommates by straight audiences and as gay couples by gays. This advertising strategy tries to appeal to lesbian and gay consumers without offending, or even alerting, homophobic audiences. In addition, through the use of in-group language, gestures, and symbols of gay sub-culture, an ad is able to appear “innocuous” to heterosexual audiences and induce a gay reading from gay audiences simultaneously, thus creating a multivocal article. However, gay window advertising only secretly and ambiguously acknowledges and entertains gay audiences which may become a glass closet, or the “closet of connotation”.

Now, the gay message is beaming through more clearly these days.They now use LGBT families or LGBT individuals in campaigns that reach mainstream audiences. The LGBT community isn’t as ghettoized as it used to be. Gay marketing, like gay-everything, has seeped into the mainstream.

 

Despite this, we've changed tactics. Does sex still sell? More specifically, how are gay men depicted in gay men’s magazines? Is sexuality used to sell products in ways that are similar to the way sexuality is used to sell products in mainstream men’s magazines? Are gay men more sexualized than straight men?

The de-sexualization of LGBTQ media is often articulated in terms of an attempt to make “respectable” the gay civil rights movement.

FOA

The gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community is a multi-billion dollar target audience, estimated to be worth around $835 billion.


AD 1:


The 1997 ad for the Volkswagen Golf, called "Sunday Afternoon," featured two guys (one white and one black) driving around. It's been called memorably ambiguous.


Now this ad is a basic textbook example of gay window advertising, one of the earliest and most common strategy targeting gays. It features “average” and straight-looking characters that can be read as buddies or roommates by straight audiences and as gay couples by gays. This advertising strategy tries to appeal to lesbian and gay consumers without offending, or even alerting, homophobic audiences. In addition, through the use of in-group language, gestures, and symbols of gay sub-culture, an ad is able to appear “innocuous” to heterosexual audiences and induce a gay reading from gay audiences simultaneously. Multivocal


The gay window advertising is a 1997 Volkswagen commercial which features two hip young men who salvage a discarded chair and place it in the back of their vehicle as they drive around aimlessly. Here we see subtle touching and physical proximity. Mainly, we can see the playful wrestling with the action figures. The characters could be read as roommates, or partners, especially considering the fact that it was first aired during the much publicized coming-out episode of Ellen, an expensive spot that charged advertisers twice the normal rate.


Some advertising meanings are deliberately opaque to induce higher involvement in the message. This indicates that consumers gain pleasure from decoding or making sense out of ads. This ad would cause controversy and further publicize the ads. The best communication is through the people.


However, gay window advertising only secretly and ambiguously acknowledges and entertains gay audiences which may become a glass closet, or the “closet of connotation”. LGBT are seen but not recognized by the mainstream society.






AD 2:


Within the last year we've seen advertising come out of the closet, and now use LGBT families or LGBT individuals in campaigns that reach mainstream audiences. The LGBT community isn’t as ghettoized as it used to be.


Many big brands are now using the out-of-closet technique; a daring strategy to target their gay consumers explicitly in the hope of winning their loyalty.
Ads Break During NBC's Coverage of Sochi Olympics Opening Ceremonies. Russia's stringent anti-gay laws have created an issue for sponsors and advertisers of the Sochi Winter Olympic Games, with some skirting the issue and others confronting it.





"While what it means to be a family hasn't changed, what a family looks like, has," notes the voiceover. "This is the new us." The spot ends with Chevy's tagline for the past year: "Find New Roads." With this ad, Chevrolet is making a big socio-politcal statement.


LGBT consumer demographic as a means to get "their message through the clutter to the buyer."






The spot blends real-life events, news clips, and social media to show, as Chevy put it, “that even though the world is constantly changing, the things that matter most remain the same.”


The ad is certainly heavy on depicting the constant change. It begins, Like the old love, the new love starts with a kiss, shifting from a shot of a heterosexual couple smooching at a race to the gay nuptials.


Like the old success, the new success still takes hard work, the ad continues, with a fast-moving stream of scenes depicting generational and ethnic diversity, family occasions, heroism and fun, social-media applications and technological innovation — and ending with a rat-tat-tat melange of new Chevrolet models.


The LGBT community tends to be more affluent. They spend more,” he said. “They’re more loyal to brands that use LGBT people in their ads and have LGBT-friendly policies. They also tend to be more influential — especially for certain products.


In the commercials explicitly targeting gays, no gay stereotypes such as sissy gay men are presented. Gays are not shown in peculiar settings, wearing flamboyant clothes or talking in a certain theatrical manner; gayness is a treated like a norm in the ad story.


Active portrayal: showing the person interacting directly with the product.


Affect Transfer: Supporting the LGBT and diversity is human rights. This activates thoughts of ethical goodness which extends to the evaluations of the product.


Participation in the mass market was equated to membership in mainstream society.


If you’re invisible in the media, then you’re basically invisible in society, and how the media portrays you is how society is going to see you.


It’s saying ‘We got money. We contribute to the corporation. We contributed to big business. We got families. We are part of the mainstream now.’


Targeted advertising was identified as an essential step in achieving social and political inclusion. ‘Consumer rights, citizenship, and civil rights are intricately connected in the United States. When we express our identity as a consumer that reinforces and strengthens our identity as a citizen.’


Here, not only does Chevrolet present an LGBT household, but it goes further and creates diversity with their choice to include multiple races.


AD 3:


It is crucial to note which group of gay people from the community is privileged to be presented in these ads—white, upper-middle class males, similar to the findings from previous studies concerning gay representations in print ads. The consequence of identity-based marketing has a tendency to focus on the prosperous white man as the representative homosexual since the social dominance of whiteness and maleness leaves the gay part of their identity as the most salient. Although the ads explicitly targeting gays can subvert stereotypes by portraying gays like “normal” people, (i.e. the heterosexual mainstream), those “positive” gay images have also been criticized for offering a counterproductive version of gay visibility that perpetuates the “dream consumer” stereotype.


Role-product congruity: advertising affective as can be increased when appropriate models are used. The Acceptable image. Reliance on stereotypes.


Some were willing to give up something of their sub-cultural identity for the sake of total acceptance in society. This stereotype is also implicated as it is with racism in the mainstream society as well as gay community which would hinder many gay people of colour from affirming their gay identity.


The de-sexualization of LGBTQ media is often articulated in terms of an attempt to make “respectable” the gay civil rights movement.


It can really have an impact on people's perceptions towards the community. Ads are something that people see every single day and truly do have an influence in our culture, and not only does the inclusion raise more awareness, but it gives the LGBT community more of a sense of acceptance. The media is broadcasting gay acceptance, the political climate indicates it, and advertisers are capitalizing on it.


AD 2 and 3:


These ads indicate a fantasy for gay people to be accepted by the mainstream as well as to escape from everyday discrimination, as scholars have suggested that escapism is one of the most common motivations attributed to users of the mass media.


They are associating acceptance with the product.


The intended function and meanings of advertising messages can change as they migrate from the textual context of their presentation to the context of social interactions.


Conclusion:


Double Edged Sword: Acceptance yet Stereotyping. Assimilating into the mainstream by representing them as average individuals.


However, the representations of LGBT people in advertising are further implicated with racism, sexism, and class bias in the LGBT community. Power conflicts are demonstrated in the filtered gay images in advertising so that a certain group from the queer community—white, middle-class, gender-normative, and mostly male—is found to dominate the advertising space.


Because these representations provide a mirroring function for LGBT people, they potentially have an effect upon gay subjectivity and agency, i.e., how gays and lesbians think of themselves and how they view marketing practices and consumption behaviours in relation to group interests.