Film Analysis Of Killing Us Softly : Advertising's Image Of Women '

Jean Kilbourne is an advocate for women and is leading a movement to change the way women are viewed in advertising. She opens up the curtains to reveal the hard truth we choose to ignore or even are too obtuse to notice. Women are objectified, materialized, and over-sexualized in order to sell clothes, products, ideas and more. As a woman, I agree with the position Kilbourne presents throughout her documentary Killing Us Softly 4: The Advertising’s Image of Women (2010) and her TEDx Talk The Dangerous Ways Ads See Women (2014.) She demonstrates time and again that these advertisements are dangerous and lead to unrealistic expectations of women.

In “Two Ways a Woman Can get Hurt: Advertising and Violence,” the author Jean Kilbourne describes how advertising and violence is a big problem for women. Although her piece is a little scrambled, she tries to organize it with different types of advertisement. Women are seen as sex objects when it comes to advertising name brand products. Corporate representatives justify selling and marketing for a product by how a woman looks. Kilbourne explains how the media is a big influence on how men perceive women. Kilbourne tries to prove her point by bashing on advertising agencies and their motives to successfully sell a product. Kilbourne’s affirmation towards advertisements leaves you no doubt that she is against them.

Every minute of every day, millions of people are exposed to advertisements. They plague televisions, streets, radio waves, and all means of communication. These advertisements employ many methods of persuasion and their influence is irresistible. Just like prisoners in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, we are told every day to invest our time and interest into the subject of these advertisements, and to accept the forms of reality they serve us. Whether it be a commercial for a must-have new car, to a spot featuring desirable fast food, or to magazines with photoshopped models; we are seduced to accept these false

The average United States Citizen views about 5000 advertisements a day (Johnson). Advertising is everywhere. Billboards on the way to work, ads on the internet, and paper products such as magazines or newspapers display a sale or a promotion of a good or service. Usually, the ad will give a brand or company name, and uses the product’s merits to draw the consumer closer. This has grown exponentially as advertisements in media in 1970 were estimated to be 500 a day, a ten percent increase in the last 48 years. (Johnson). This is due to the rise of technology, as the computer has become a household gadget within the new millenium. These advertisements are meant to give a synopsis of the product or service’s purpose, quality, and efficiency. If a consumer views 5000 advertisements in a single day and assuming the commercials do not repeat, 5000 goods or services are introduced. With more options to choose from in such little time, the consumer has a harder time differentiating the quality and perhaps necessity of the product. The marketers rely on the quick, impulsive decision making of consumers. With the misleading nature of many infomercials or radio broadcasts, the people of American society are bombarded with constant propaganda, thus making seemingly harmless promotions more potent to filling industries’ pockets and lessening the common population’s

Media impacts our lives everyday. The average 14-to-28 year-old will be exposed to about 3,000 ads every day. Ben Franklin once said that nothing is certain is this life except death and taxes. I believe it is now safe to assume we can add advertisements to that list now. We are literally bombarded with them. After seeing all the advertisements I am led to believe that they are the most carefully constructed of all human communication, being it the most expensive too. In 2004, according to www.answers.com, advertisement was in excess of $450 billion in the United States alone. It is not our fault though that these advertisements display messages that we cannot perceive. When we see an ad, our conscious mind will filter out the things it cannot deal with and make an acceptable idea or image that is made conscious. This is

From TV commercials and product placement to billboards and posters, thousands of advertisements bombard the average American every day. To be effective, an ad must attract the consumer’s attention, maintain the public’s interest, create or stimulate desire, and create a call for action. These advertisements can be small enough to fit on a three-inch screen or large enough to cover the side of a building. But no matter what the size, in this world of ever-shrinking attention spans and patience levels, ads have to be efficient in portraying their ideas. In order to successfully depict certain ideas, advertisements rely on shortcuts. These shortcuts usually involve stereotypes. In the media, stereotypes are inevitable because the audience

In the video Killing UsSoftly 4: Advertising's Image of Women it basically talks about how advertising effects a women's self-image. Jean Kilbourne has been talking about this issue for over 40 years and even after all this time she states, "really they have gotten worse. " Advertising is a promotion for a company to try to portray their product to the public and trick them into thinking they have to have this product to keep up with society's norms. After media was brought to Fiji they noticed that women were worrying more about their body image than ever before. It is sad to think that women in advertising are exposed in a manner to make young girls think that the most essential thing is how we look.

In 2016, the United States spent 190 billion U.S. dollars on advertisements, almost double the amount of money on advertising than the next largest ad market (Statista). These ads advertise a multitude of different products. The ads are exposed to society in many different ways, from the breaks in between songs on the radio, to the ads shown online. Ads are targeted to a specific group of people, usually, the target demographic the brand wants to buy their product. Brands will often use women’s bodies in a sexual way to get people to stop and look at their ads. Over the last few decades, speakers and activists have seen advertisements becoming more sexual and more demeaning towards women. Activist Jean Kilbourne has been analyzing ads and has been bringing awareness to this issue for years through her four documentaries. In her documentary, “Killing Us Softly 4,” Jean Kilbourne asserts women’s bodies are often dismembered, portrayed with an unattainable, “ideal” body type, and despite advances in the women’s movement, the objectification of women in ads have gotten worse. The two images below illustrate these ideas.

The media is one of the most significant agents of socialization in our society. This means that to some extent, the media has some power over our opinions or expected behavior as citizens. This necessarily is not a horrible thing but it is not marvelous either. It has been reported that the average American is exposed to up to 600-625 ads every single day. We are constantly bombarded with advertisements on a daily basis through posters, television and even newspapers. It is quite impressive that we are still capable of responding to ads after being exposed countless times. Not to imply that all ads are detrimental but most times, the message is usually to persuade us to make a purchase that will in some

In this study Eisend, Plagemann, and Sollwedel (2014) look at both humorous and nonhumorous advertisements and the impacts they have on the different genders including

In fact, “from 1997 to 2007, these procedures, overall, rose 457% to almost 12 million per year and an increase of 114% in actual surgeries, such as breast implants and liposuction”(Hodgson), all as a result of the influence of the advertising environment. Yet despite these statistics, many people feel exempt from the influence of advertising, this is because “only 8% of an ad’s message is received by the conscious mind, the rest is worked and reworked deep within the recesses of the brain”(Kilbourne). This working and reworking of the ad’s subliminal message of the brain is exponentially increased by the amount of ad’s the average American is exposed to every day. On average, Americans are exposed to over three thousand advertisements per day and will have been spent two years of their lives watching advertisements on the Internet and television by the time they die. This two hundred and fifty billion dollar per year industry that we call advertising profits from the appeasement of its consumers but at the cost of the consumers mental state. The cost of this environment, however, goes much further than just the environment itself, and extends rather into the direct objectification and dehumanization of women.

When you first glance at this ad, you might say to yourself “I know what women in the media are all about, its sexism and stereotypes.” What you probably don’t know is that how; these visual cues are affecting women individually and collectively, in how they view themselves in the mirror. One of the largest influences on women and adolescent girls is the media. The media pushes body image, clothes, and fast food. At the same time they push weight lose with unrealistic results. This combination that I am referring to above leads to adolescent girls, and women having eating disorders and a discomforting self-image. Young women aged 15 to 30 are a prime industry target since 80 per cent of all consumer products are purchased by women in this

Today, I recorded twenty advertisements throughout the school day. I was surprised how much advertising I was exposed to. It was a lot, and the reason why it was a lot is because I was using various platforms the whole day. When I went to bed I realized that when I turned the television on I was exposed to about 4 advertisements every fifteen minutes.

Throughout the media and advertising, they fetishize women as an object rather than a person. In the first essay, Kilbourne points out an epidemic that still occurs today when Kilbourne states, “Sex in advertising is pornographic because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women, and because it fetishizes products [...] meet our emotional needs” (489). This quote unfolds the truth on how advertising and media portray women as sex symbols. Both the media and advertising have women portrayed in a sexual way, which affect the image of women drastically. In advertising specifically, Solnit points out a problem that occurs in the gaming community quite often when Solnit states, “Women in the online gaming community have been harassed,

Television, magazines, phones, and Internet all contribute to the global epidemic of false advertising. Millions of Americans have a television or the most current news in there home, which contributes to society always wanting to be someone their not. On the contrary it is a great way to spread important news but consequently ads are showing the reality of how to promote stereotypes or have products we don’t need. As a consumer we get bombarded with ads for different services or products that just want to gain our dollar. The problem about the broadcast of advertisements is how it’s distributed. It transmits through audio and video signals and targets the masses of society. It’s literally everywhere and anyone from a toddler using an iPad to a 95 year old listening to the radio is affected. Advertising has provided a harmful impact to society through its use of manipulation, false accusations, and influencing the next generation.