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The frequency of publication greatly compensates the weight of the form; In people's memory, advertising occupies as much cultural share as other cultural categories. On the other hand, advertising is an art known to all women and children; Vivid and catchy-this makes the affinity of advertising far beyond the usual cultural category. In modern society, commercial advertisements make people well informed. Even without seeing the real thing, people are still aware of the rich material world. In this sense, advertising expands the space for people to imagine life. Of course, the effect of advertising is related to the production and distribution mechanism of advertising. Different from other cultural products, advertisements are not only provided free of charge, but also the enterprises promoted by advertisements must pay the production and publication fees to advertisers and the media. What the enterprise expects is that all these expenses can be greatly compensated in the sale of goods.
The activity and unparalleled coverage of advertisements show that this symbol system is playing an increasingly important role in the public domain. It is doubtful whether the public sphere mentioned here can follow Habermas' famous description. Habermas believes that the field of public relations is an adjustment field between the state and society, where people can freely combine, rationally discuss various public relations and express their opinions publicly. "When this mass reaches a large scale, this kind of communication needs certain means of communication and influence; Today, newspapers, radio and television are the media in this public domain. " Habermas even analyzed in detail how the literary fields in western history, such as salons, cafes and banquets, became the bridge between the palace field and the emerging bourgeoisie field in the18th century. (1) However, is the current public sphere-including the media expressing public opinions-based on rationality and freedom? People say that there are multiple power relations intertwined in the public sphere. On the one hand, the coercive power of the state has not been suppressed as Habermas said, and the voice of the state still dominates the public sphere in many cases; On the other hand, other types of power-such as gender, race, wealth, fame and cultural capital embodied by knowledge and technology-are still one after another, competing for the Central Plains. According to the literal meaning of Chinese, "advertising" means advertising widely. However, speaking to the public is never unlimited. The right to speak is definitely not? Do you want to wake up? What's the matter with you? What's the matter with you? Back? Hey? What's the point of "good words mixed with water and harmony"? School? The word Gu Jiao means that Mu Hui bumped into Hui and was afraid of Pu Yuan's eyes. Hey? Pour the flowers evenly. Did you have fun? A ∷？ 4? ッ椴豢芆椴椴椺? ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽ ⑽? ッッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ ッ 12 What happened to the peach? ッッッッッッッッッッッッッッッッッッッ "⒀ ⒀ ⒀ ⒀ ⒀ ⒀ ⒀ ⒀ ⒀ ⒀ ⒀ ⒀ ⒀ ⒀ ⒀ ⒀ ⒀ ⒀ ⒀. What happened to the grave? Hey? Why don't you deal with it? Lemon thief χ a bad na? χ miscellaneous interpretation? What happened? k？ Yu? Miscellaneous interpretation? What's the point? Axillary? What do you mean, d? Tritium [6]? What is the score? Did you raise your arms? Quot Advertising itself is purely a demonstration of social forces. " Indeed, the summoning function of this power and the intangible social organization it gathers cannot be underestimated:
...... Today, advertisements even use close-up photos of female movie stars to show the prestige of certain products and praise their goals with the tunes of popular songs. Advertising and cultural industries are integrated technically and economically. The same advertisements are everywhere, the same cultural and industrial products are mechanically repeated everywhere, and even the same propaganda language is used. Introduce and popularize people's technology, psychological state and experience in using cultural and industrial products. Strange but trustworthy, relaxed but impressive, grand but simple examples are publicized everywhere to attract scattered customers with various viewpoints. (2)
For a long time in the second half of the 20th century, China seems to have abolished the so-called gap in the public sphere. Revolutionary leaders realized that if the proletariat does not take the initiative to occupy cultural positions, the bourgeoisie will certainly take advantage of it. According to this view, the state and the emerging proletariat are both external and internal, and always resist the attempt of bourgeois restoration. There is no buffer zone at the forefront of the confrontation between the two classes. Therefore, from periodicals and newspapers to radio and television, class struggle has become the primary theme. The overwhelming advantage of the proletariat is manifested in the absolute control of the socialist state power over the mass media. All kinds of slogans stipulated from top to bottom are distributed in the mass media and become the main theme that cannot be disobeyed. Beginning in 1980s, the theme of class struggle began to retreat and was replaced by immature concepts such as "humanity", "humanitarianism" and "subject". I still clearly remember the feeling caused by the replacement of two slogans-one day in the 1980s, on a white wall painted with "focusing on class struggle" or "grasping revolution, promoting production, promoting work and promoting war preparation", a humanized sentence suddenly appeared: "Please forgive the inconvenience caused by the construction site to pedestrians". Obviously, this kind of discourse symbolizes that the so-called public sphere looms behind a long-lost atmosphere. Even today, people can find traces of this atmosphere under the title of "telling the story of ordinary people" or even "telling the truth"
However, for a series of mass media, these gentle thoughts did not last long. The environment of market economy once again exhorts romantic feelings to yield to practical interests. People soon found that the so-called public domain is a commercial resource to be developed-mass media can be sold at a discount. Nowadays, the display of commercial advertisements shows that the mass media has found a good buyer and successfully realized the economic cycle of income exceeding expenditure. According to the investigation, the first commercial advertisement in the second half of the 20th century landed on Shanghai TV Station on1October 28th, 1979, and ginseng and osmanthus tonic was the main character of this advertisement. This is no less than the official announcement of the business theme in the mass media. Perhaps, it is helpful to measure the good price of mass media by quoting two figures: 1997. The advertising expenses of China enterprises are 46 billion yuan, accounting for 0.5% of the total national economic output value, while the advertising expenses of the United States in the same year are170 billion US dollars. In many developed countries, advertising fees usually account for 2% of the total national economic output value. (3) Of course, the expansion of commercial themes has also brought a well-off secular atmosphere. From refrigerators, sofas, lamps and glasses to jelly, wine, soap and detergent, life in the mass media gradually sinks to the appearance of daily necessities, rich and peaceful, full of family atmosphere; At this time, all kinds of metaphysical ideas or lofty aesthetic ideals disappeared. Who can imagine a warrior with a halberd standing majestically in the middle of an advertisement?
Undeniably, the intervention of advertising has greatly changed the operation mode of mass media. Raymond Williams believes that the "art" and "culture" in the 18 to 19 centuries got rid of the category of production skills respectively and became independent in the modern sense. (4) Nevertheless, the contradiction between the cost recovery of artistic and cultural production and the artist's personality has always been an unresolved issue. Mass media can't get enough operating expenses from consumers. At this time, the participation of advertisers has lifted the dilemma of cultural production-huge advertising fees have solved many problems. According to the data, CCTV's advertising revenue has been hovering at a fairly high level after years of step-by-step growth-CCTV's advertising expenses are 1995, 1996, 106 billion yuan, 1997, 2 1 100 million yuan and 654.4 billion yuan respectively. (5) However, advertising fees are not free handouts, and advertisements must climb on eye-catching works to attract audiences; For example, the level of TV advertising fees is directly proportional to the ratings. In this sense, advertising fees must be related to the style of the work. In fact, only those sensational, bloody or hot scenes can be favored by most advertisers. If many artists have to conceive their own works under the restriction of the interests of advertisers, the artist's personality and cultural independence will collapse.
Usually, advertisements appear in the cracks of various programs as leftovers on TV screens; Advertising is like a circle of lace or insignificant embellishment, playing some formal tricks. Although advertising can only accompany the bottom, huge advertising fees support a cultural power struggle between advertising and cultural and artistic works. Advertisers can decide the plot evolution of artistic works according to a certain fee, choose the broadcast time, submit a certain commodity brand as the program name, and edit a movie or a wonderful interview at random every once in a while. The edge position of the advertisement is only an illusion; In fact, advertising controls everything. In other words, advertising redistributes the grades of a series of cultural works in the field of images. Baudela believes that the real effect of advertising is that "news and advertising are forcibly equated at the symbolic level through the orderly acceptance of information, historical and social news, events and performances." (6)
Applying Bourdieu's terminology, the relationship between advertising and cultural and artistic works symbolizes the conquest of cultural capital by economic capital. It must be pointed out that this conquest did not end in defeating cultural capital; On the contrary, it is effective for advertisements to skillfully mobilize or requisition cultural capital. People can see that many famous cultural figures-especially movie or TV stars-appear on the screen and use their reputation to recommend products of a certain brand because of their high remuneration. They don't hesitate to succumb to the poor director, and even want to act as spokesmen for deceiving the world. (7) There are indications that the combination of economic capital and cultural capital will dominate the public sector in the future, and advertising is undoubtedly a special form of the convergence of the two capitals.
2
Although some people trace advertising back to many early origins, no one can be sure when the industry was formed. However, many text advertisements have been found, and some people think that this is the earliest recorded promotion activity. The most frequently mentioned is a Babylonian clay tablet with a book on it introducing the business projects of an ointment dealer, a shop assistant and a shoemaker. A piece of toilet paper was also found in the ruins of Thebes, offering a reward for the capture of escaped slaves. In the early advertising history, there are many records about Greek announcements and Roman shop signs, which are very interesting to read. (8)
Although the early history of advertising is unknown, Elizabeth Williamson vividly describes the experience of American advertising industry as mature as a newspaper. Elizabeth Williamson told people that/kloc-newspapers in the early 8th century had started advertising, and Benjamin Franklin was known as the father of advertising-Franklin, who was both a printer and a reporter, greatly changed the style and layout of advertising. More uniquely, Franklin began to use images to express the content of advertisements. The 20th century was the heyday of American advertising. This is obviously inseparable from the leap of electronic technology. "189 1 year, the first electric billboard was erected in new york, giving outdoor advertising, the oldest form of advertising, a new look." (9) At least for a period of time, electronic products and advertisements are mutually beneficial. Many radio stations in the United States were set up to sell radio parts. Radio stations can play all kinds of interesting programs to attract people to buy radios. (10) Similarly, the early MTV was also an advertisement for record dealers to promote records and singers. Perhaps, at the beginning, not many people could have predicted that the endless stream of electronic products-broadcasting, especially television and future computer networks-would open up a brand-new historical stage for the production and release of advertisements. The golden age of advertising has finally arrived.
Compared with traditional paper media, electronic products are a different communication system. From radio waves, satellite relay to computer network, the powerful function of this communication system is unmatched by organizations composed of printing presses, publishers and bookstores. In this sense, the breakthrough of electronic technology has even given advertising an unprecedented style. If TV advertisements are compared with newspaper advertisements, people can at least find several outstanding features:
First, unlike the slow and narrow distribution of newspapers, television can spread an image or an idea to the whole world in an instant. In this sense, "advertising" is worthy of the name. Because TV uses more image symbol systems, TV advertisements are not restricted by specific languages like newspaper advertisements.
Secondly, most TV advertisements last about 30 seconds, and some TV advertisements are even shorter. On the one hand, the influence of TV advertisements is instantaneous, and people don't even have time to think. On the other hand, short-lived fragments ensure the frequent release of advertisements, and short-lived and repetitive forms the dual style of advertisements;
Thirdly, TV advertisements have widely used people's images as basic symbols. Newspaper text can only be used for abstract description, and the characters appearing in pictures or huge advertising posters are static. Only television really opens the stage for characters to enter advertising. Some people think that all advertisements are composed of three basic symbols-product symbol, environment symbol and character symbol. (1 1) Strictly speaking, this is only the advertising feature of the TV era;
4. People enter advertisements on a large scale, and the worship culture is closely related to advertisements. The prestige, authority and reputation of many celebrities were quickly misappropriated for the guarantee of a certain commodity; As a special form of profit sharing, these celebrities get high rewards from advertising companies;
Obviously, the operating cost of electronic media far exceeds that of paper media. The cost of setting up a radio station, TV station or website is 1000 times that of maintaining a newspaper. The gap between them is like the gap between mechanical production and handicraft production. This is the price that powerful communication function must demand, and it is also the reason why TV advertisements must pay high fees. /kloc-in the 0/9th century, The New York Herald sold for 2 cents per copy and charged 50 cents per advertisement every day. (12) At present, domestic CCTV provides free programs, but the bidding for prime-time advertisements has reached several hundred million. (13) Despite the high price, many enterprises are still fighting for the first place; People firmly believe in a business myth: the spread of advertising may produce huge returns, and the profits generated by advertising are even incomparable to the improvement of production technology or the expansion of investment. This has not only changed people's evaluation of the so-called "industry", but also produced various strange interactions in the way of labor, remuneration and wealth distribution in the business environment. For example, 1997, world public opinion strongly condemns the low wages paid by Nike in the United States to workers. In the same year, Nike paid Michael Jordan more advertising fees than the total salary of 22,000 Asian employees. " (14) If you cite the example at hand, many people will think of the advertising wars of "Yan Di", "Cover in the middle" or "Xie Liting" in full swing in Harbin No.6 Pharmaceutical Factory. At present, enterprises? What? Spring string? Pull? Li Di? In 2000, the cost of TV advertising actually reached about 700 million yuan. For Harbin No.6 Pharmaceutical Factory, the huge advertising expenses are not blind investment; The advertising investment of 1999 increased the profit of the enterprise by 46%-the after-tax profit of Harbin No.6 Factory increased from 1998 to16.98 million yuan to 1999 to 24.83 million yuan. Of course, when retelling the brilliant achievements of advertising, the other two figures are also thought-provoking: First, actor Gong Li got 2.2 million yuan for shooting the advertisement "The Cover is in the Middle"; Second, the No.6 Harbin Pharmaceutical Factory 1999 invested only 2.34 million yuan in scientific research and development. (15) No matter how to evaluate this example, people must admit the bewitching power of the above data and some abnormal reversals hidden behind it.
Advertising is imagined as a cultural pioneer in revitalizing the economy. Taking the lead in setting an example is regarded as the truth in the information age, and grandstanding is no longer a traditional derogatory term. With the increasing saturation of commodities in the market, "attention economy" has become a fashionable term. "In order to attract Yu Yu's keen eyes, she will touch a wrong note from time to time." Enterprises are trying their best to make their products attract consumers' attention. Advertising artists conceive advertisements in various strange ways, even at the expense of increasing advertising costs. The newspaper said that if users spend a certain amount of time dialing the phone number provided by an enterprise, listening to an advertising message and answering related questions, the enterprise will pay a certain telephone fee for users. (16) Even so, the effect of advertising is still declining. In terms of shopping guide, advertising is not as important as many people think. The commodity information released by advertisements is more like a kind of casting a net all over the sky, and it is very rare for people's shopping desire to meet the right advertisements. What's more, the frequent appearance of advertisements has aroused many people's disgust. People are fed up with the constant harassment of advertisements, and some even complain that advertisements are a kind of deception and intimidation, or a kind of spiritual aggression. For TV advertisements, people usually use remote control to eliminate them-advertisements often appear when people change TV channels. This is an unconfirmed humorous story: when TV advertisements appear, the water consumption in cities will increase sharply-most viewers will choose this moment to go to the toilet.
However, all this will not weaken the output of advertising. Mcluhan even humorously explained a paradox between audience and advertisement: "An angry audience is a loyal audience. Therefore, disgust has become a new principle of advertising dynamics, just as it has become a new principle of aesthetics. " (17) Many times, advertising has separated from the commercial category to a certain extent and become a cultural industry independently. Nowadays, "advertising culture" is no longer a strange concept. Even if the physical goods do not exist, the appearance of the goods provided by advertisements can still produce an atmosphere of indulging in money. In this sense, advertising production has the self-sufficiency of getting rid of physical objects. The image communication of advertising is a kind of cultural production; To some extent, the significance of cultural production is no less than material production. With the development of image symbols, the boundary between objects and images becomes less and less important. Is there a line between truth and falsehood between advertisements and objects? In other words, what's the point of sticking to this limit? More and more people are beginning to ignore this problem. In people's consciousness, the gap between the two seems to have been smoothed out. There is a smooth transition between image symbols and the real world. If we say that symbolic consumption in post-modern society has begun to gain the same meaning as entity consumption, then advertising is indeed a vivid example.
three
Many people agree that advertisements spread paid and responsible information. This information may be a compliment to a product, or it may provide some life information on a larger scale-the latter must contain some values and ideological declarations. Of course, "information" or "intelligence" does not mean that advertisements are just boring explanations. In fact, the explanation and publicity of most advertisements are often artistically embellished. If Li Ning's "I exercise, I exist" and Deng Yaping's "I am confident, I succeed" and Anta's "I choose, I like" remain silent, then other advertising words are meaningful. "Confucius' family wine makes people homesick", "We have been working hard and love VCD more" and "Only choose the right ones, not the expensive ones"-these advertising words are lively and can be recited. In TV advertisements, image symbols have greatly increased the means of expression that words can't match, and even produced a series of special advertising rhetoric, such as the famous three-B principle-that is, beauty, baby and beast (beauty, children and animals) constitute the advertising background. In this sense, people can't deny the artistic elements in advertisements; In fact, many people are willing to declare bluntly that advertising is an art.
In my opinion, no matter how much affirmation is given to the wisdom or talent of advertising, no matter how many similarities exist between advertising and art, people must still be aware of the inherent differences between advertising and art. Indeed, if we only consider the artistic expression-whether it is composed of lines, bronzes, notes or images-and the perceptual pleasure in the aesthetic sense; There is no reason for people to exclude advertisements from the art category. But in my opinion, the significance of art as art mainly lies in the fact that the works inherently point to a utopian space different from reality. In this sense, art is self-disciplined. The appearance and sensibility of art is like imitation of realistic prototype; The complete art form makes the work form an independent kingdom. The logic and inner spirit of the art kingdom show that it opens another possible dimension besides experience. It can be said that the art kingdom is incompatible with reality and refuses to integrate into the mediocrity and triviality of reality. However, this is not synonymous with art escaping from reality; On the contrary, art is the "other" of reality because it is different from reality. The existence of art and its aesthetic light will make reality unable to maintain the status quo with peace of mind. This is a powerful coercive force of art to reality. Art can't shake reality by violence, but the potential influence of artistic spirit may deconstruct all kinds of tangible and intangible autocracy. Therefore, the aesthetics of art is by no means a simple sense of form, it contains the edge of criticizing reality. People can't perceive the difference between art and reality from the local details of artistic works, but the ideal contained in the whole art is the new social relationship and natural order. From Huai Su's cursive script to Picasso's modern painting, from Beethoven's symphony to Mei Lanfang's Peking Opera, all kinds of works of art have constructed aesthetic space from a certain aspect. In this way, art must be divorced from ordinary life, and the lack of freedom and harmony in reality explains the reason for this distance. If art tries to put forward any ideal for life, then the artist will eliminate the distance between reality and ideal in the spirit of freedom and harmony. Various types of art may change people's experience from a specific angle-even a small change-and this change will eventually have a far-reaching echo in life. How can people say that The Water Margin, the joys and sorrows of Journey to the West, or Lu Xun's works have not had a potential or profound impact on people's attitude towards life today?
However, advertising does not undertake such a mission. Fundamentally speaking, advertising and reality are homologous. Advertising is the further development of reality. Indeed, people don't own all the goods introduced by advertisements, and the gap between the world and people's lives formed by these goods is obvious and even irreparable. Nevertheless, people can find that the advertising world is only a reasonable extension of the real world, and they have formed a * * * conspiracy relationship. In other words, advertising does not put forward independent logic like art, pointing out the dimension beyond reality, or giving people a rebellious or mysterious and horrible space. People must admit that many advertisements have broken through the plane of reality, and some impulses hidden under the real body have been liberated. "If you want to succeed, please use Yashili milk powder", "President uses Parker pen" and "Drink Baker beer and listen to yourself"-the introduction of these products also includes some desire induction; These desires are even hidden in the unconscious and are not clear. People have reason to believe that many desires occur at the same time as commodities. Therefore, as Jameson demonstrated, the image of advertisements is consistent with people's desires: "It is these advertisements that tell us what people's unconscious desires are and let us know people's views on utopian society." (18) In this sense, the distance between advertising and ordinary life is not freedom and harmony, but desire-advertising is the world that desire tries to reach. How to narrow or even eliminate this distance? The prescription prescribed by advertisements is consumption-consumption is drifting from reality to ideal. Consumerism is the hidden foundation of advertising. No matter how exquisite the advertisement is, no matter how much artistic content it contains, the difference between material desire and consumerism ideology and the spirit of freedom and harmony is the difference between advertisement and art. If we think of Althusser's analysis of ideological function, we can say that advertisement is not only the ideology formed by commodity representation; At the same time, advertising is also responsible for "calling" consumers who enjoy goods. The exquisite commodity images in advertisements gradually train consumers' new feelings; Having abundant commodities has become the greatest source of happiness. This feeling may become an internal part of the new generation of subjects and become the starting point for the new generation of subjects to enter life. Because of advertising, commodities are natural life in the imagination of the new generation of subjects.
Therefore, people have reason to think that advertising rhetoric contains desire rhetoric to a great extent. Advertising is the use of appropriate rhetoric to express, condense and even create and produce various desires. Desire is the driving force of consumption. As many people have said, the relationship between Marlboro cigarettes and galloping cowboys is a classic rhetorical way of commodity metaphor desire-cigarettes and bold cowboys both mean men's charm. Associating a soap powder or wine with a luxurious and comfortable home environment, organizing a suit with a high-class business occasion in the same lens, or decorating a drink with a beach and a yacht, and decorating a candied fruit with a sexy girl's head are all the contrasts between desire and goods. Many times, advertisements skillfully use "Bi" and "Xing" in China's classical poetics. Jameson clearly said:
..... Advertising must act on deeper desires, even unconscious needs, some of which are related to sexual desire. Some beverage advertisements have this feature. It is said that after drinking this drink, not only will young girls snuggle up to you, but you will also feel that life is extremely beautiful and full of romance, and so on. In this way, direct desires and deep unconscious needs are met; You can dream of a young girl, or even go further. As you can imagine, your life has changed completely. You are surrounded by beautiful people. You have plenty of time and no worries. In other words, everything in the world has changed and deformed under this utopian state. These advertisements are quietly telling you, isn't it this utopian transformation of the world that you long for? If so, why not use our products? Although we can't promise anything, these products at least contain ingredients that change the mental state. In this unconscious desire, the strongest and oldest desire is still collective. For example, eternal youth, freedom and happiness. This shows that this desire is collective and dreams about the change of the whole world. ( 19)
In particular, female images in advertisements are an important part of desire rhetoric. From car advertisements, mobile phone advertisements and leather shoes advertisements to motorcycle advertisements, toothpaste advertisements and mineral water advertisements, the narrative of advertisements often implies that the hero who owns these commodities will also have many beautiful girls. For feminists, the male perspective of these advertisements obviously contains female discrimination-comparing women to commodities, women are men.