What the Hail?

The blog that I am writing today is about advertising and interpellation. For those of you who don’t know what interpellation is, it is basically “a process in which we internalize ideologies as a response to being hailed or addressed”. The ad I chose to analyze was a Tommy Hilfiger ad that I saw in a magazine. The ad shows three white girls who seem to be college students living the college lifestyle because they are outside, on campus, carrying books and looking studious. The girls are all dressed pretty similar, wearing clothes from Tommy Hilfiger (obviously). One girl is wearing a Graduation cap on her head, two of the girls are carrying books in their hands, one has a bike and they are all wearing designer sunglasses, scarves, fancy shoes, knee high socks, big coats and pullovers. They all look really preppy.

This ad is showing us that we can look stylish like these women if we buy clothing from Tommy Hilfiger. They look dressed for success. You can tell that this ad is aimed at teenagers because the women in the ad look about 20 and they are living the college life, which would make them between 18-22 years old.

This ad is not successful at representing norms, values and beliefs because we normally don’t tend to dress that way when going to school, unless you are very wealthy. I’m not saying that nobody dresses like that at university but from what I’ve seen, the majority of us dress pretty casual. When at university or college, our values should be more focused on education and not on our clothing choices.

Even though this ad is not successful at representing norms (in my opinion), it still has the power to present ideologies to us that can change the way we think. We might not dress like that right now, but we might want to because these girls look so cool in their Tommy Hilfiger clothes. “On the other hand, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries produced numerous academic and theoretical perspectives that show the opposite- that individuals are not in control of their own destinies that we are subject to forces beyond our individual, conscious control”. Ads that we see address their target audience and basically give you ideologies and values that they want you to have, so individuals are not really in control because their ideologies are presented for them.

 “We live in a culture that stresses individuality, encourages us to believe that every person has unique qualities, and puts forward the view that we have control over who we are, what we do, and how others see us, but this view is questionable”. The fact that these women are all dressed pretty similar shows no individuality and the fact that they want us all to buy these clothes shows that they aren’t encouraging individuality at all. They want us to be the same or be different but then encourage others to be like us because if we are all the same, then we are all going to buy the same things. We are all going to want what everyone has. The media makes it seem like standing out is bad because it means being an outcast. This view is definitely questionable.

O'Shaughnessy, Michael, and Jane Megan. Stadler. Media and Society. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. Print. Pg. 185 and pg. 189.