DOCUMENT RESUME - ERICDOCUMENT RESUME ED 297 376 CS 506 173 AUTHOR Grow, Gerald TITLE "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful": A Commercial in Context. PUB DATE Jul 88 NOTE 14p.; Paper

DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 297 376 CS 506 173

AUTHOR Grow, GeraldTITLE "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful": A Commercial

in Context.PUB DATE Jul 88NOTE 14p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the

Association for Education in Journalism and MassCommunication (71st, Portland, OR, July 2-5,1988).

PUB TYPE Speeches/Conference Papers (150) InformationAnalyses (070) -- Reports - Research/Technical (143)

EDRS PRICE MFO1 /PCO1 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS *Advertising; Discourse Analysis; Emotional Reslonse;

*Mass Media Effects; *Moral Values; Mythology;Propaganda; Salesmanship; *Television Viewing

IDENTIFIERS Advertisements; Advertising Effectiveness; ConsumerProducts; Media Analysis; *Media Imagery

ABSTRACTBeauty, commercials, and hatred can be linked in an

analysis of the dominant structures of advertising. Televisioncommercials such as the one quoted in the title use a commonrhetorical method: present an ideal state; imply that the viewer hasnot attained this state; offer a magical object which will connectthe viewer with the desired state; and tell the viewer how to evokethat magic. This same structure is often used in sermons, and in bothcases, emphasis is placed on the importance of the mediator and thepowerlessness of the listener. By using beautiful, idealized imagesthat have no connection with the product being sold, commercials leadviewers to aspire to high ideals but provide them with means thatwill surely fail in the quest to attain those ideals. This may resultin alienating people from the very values being exploited in thecommercials, laying the groundwork for despair, hatred, resentmentand apathy. (One table of data and three figures are included and 37references are attached.) (MHC)

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"Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful":

A Commercial in Context

Gerald GrowDirector, Magazine Program

School of Journalism, Media and Graphic ArtsFlorida A&M UniversityTallahassee, FL 32307

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' "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful"A Commercial in Context

Gerald Grow, PhDDirector, Magazine ProgramSchool of Journalism, Media and Graphic ArtsFlorida A&M UniversityTallahassee, FL 32307 (904) 599-3718

AbstractIn discussing a single line on a

single television commercial, theauthor seeks to provide the mostfundamental requirement for inter-preting meaning: a context thatmakes sense of it. Because the lineturns on "hate" and because it usessome of the strategies that haveled critics to label advertising as aform of religion, terms from thetraditional moral vocabulary havebeen used in interpreting the com-mercial. The commercial is ana-lyzed as a "mythic" way for ritu-ally discharging envy. Despair,envy, and hate are considered aspotential byproducts of the cogni-tive strategies employed in certaintypes of advertising.

You are watching network televi-sion. It is late evening, the time ofDallas and Falconcrest. Even moresuddenly than most commercials be-gin, a gorgeous model appears on thescreen, looking directly at you withthose compelling, magazine-covereyes. Her voice is friendly, direct,and in complete control. By the timeyou become aware of her, you haveheard her say:

"Don't hate me because I'm beauti-ful."

The line is carefully delivered. Itsemphasis falls, lightly, on"beautiful," almost as if, discarding"beautiful" as a reason, we might findother causes to hate her. But likemost television, the line (whichtakes about two seconds) melts intothe commercial, then flows into theongoing dramas of power, passion, and

..,

A paper presented to the Qualitative StudiesDivision of AEJMC. Portland, July 2, 1988.

©1988. May not be reprinted without permission.

perfection that haunt the televisionlandscape.

But wait: That's an astonishingstatement"Don't hate me becauseI'm beautiful." It begs a question. Isit, "Why would anyone hate a beau-tiful woman?" Not quite. More like:'Why would anyone hate a beautifulwoman on a commercial?" More fully,I think the question is this: Can wefind a way of looking at beauty, com-mercials, and hatred that makes alink among them plausible?

I'd like to argue that we can.Recent critical works on advertising

employ a variety of approaches. InDecoding Advertise .nents: Ideologyand Meaning in Advertising, Wil-liamson (1976) analyzes a collectionof individual print ads for recurringthemes and semiotic patterns. Hercommentaries are often lively, pro-vocative, liter-ate, and insight-ful. Goffman(Gender Adver-tisements, 1979)brings an imposingsociological rela-tivism to a selec-tion of print ads,in order to illustrate how ads employstylized versions of gestures and pos-tures"hyperritualized" gesturestosignal the relations between the sex-es. Leymore's Hidden Myth: Struc-ture and Symbolism in Advertising(1975 raps a wide- ranging series ofobservations with a structuralistanalysis of advertisements from printand television. Her discussion culmi-nates in mathematical analyses ofthe basic "binary pairs" structuralistsseek in mythsopposites like endog-enous/exogenous, happiness/misery,nature/culture--and the results,

while fascinating, are rarefied.In Captains of Consciousness: Ad-

vertising and the Social Roots of theConsumer Culture, Ewen (1976) tracesmodern advertising as an essentialfunction of the rise of mass productionand consumption. Advertising is de-picted as one of the main ways peo-ple's minds are kept oriented to servethe structures of the capitalist systemof production. Drawing from psycho-analysis, anthropology, and especial-ly Marx, jhally (The Codes of Adver-tising: Fetishism and the PoliticalEconomy of Meaning in the ConsumerSociety, 1987) criticizes advertisingas a system where products functionlike magical fetishes that help massmedia and the marketplace replacetraditional institutions.

In this paper, I draw upon theseauthors less for their technical meth-

ods than for the broadissues they hold in

Any individual ad makessense only against a largerbackdrop.

"Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful"

3

common. They all con-sider ads culturallysignificant. They alllook for recurringstructures in ads anddeep structures be-neath them:

"[Advertising] obviously has a func-tion, which is to sell things to us. Butit has another function, which I be-lieve in many ways replaces thattraditionally fulfilled by art or relig-ion. It creates structures of meaning."(Williamson, 1978, 12). Though theyconsider ads a force influencing peo-ple, these authors (in varying de-grees) emphasize that people partic-ipate in advertisements as active in-terpreters, not as pawns. For each ofthese authors, advertisements formsome kind of system that must be ap-proached as a whole: Any individual

© 1988 by Gerald Grow 1

ad makes sense only against a largerbackdrop, what Goffman calls "therealm of being of which the drama inevery individual ad is but an in-stance" (22).

My methodology is much closer toliterary analysis. It resembles theapproach used by a fellow student ofliterature, Kenneth Burke, in TheRhetoric of Religion. It is an attemptto uncover relationships inherent inthe structure of certain dominantstrategies of advertising and to usethose to interpret "Don't hate me be-cause I'm beautiful." We take theline as a given, then try to create acontext in which it makes sense.

The Company She Keeps:Values in Commercials

The immediate context for any com-mercial consists of other commercials.Viewers apparently remember and

compare commercials. That supposi-tion underlies Frank Deford's 1984scrapbook on the Miller Lite commer-cials. On a deeper level, advertising--as Williamson and others havearguedforms a system of meaning.The TV viewer "sees all advertise-ments as one, or rather, sees theirrules as applicable to one anotherand thus part of an interchangeablesystem." (Williamson, 1978, 13).Many television commercials, for ex-ample, are loaded with images ofways to be. Watching them, you arevirtually flooded by images of val-ues, ideals, desirable states of beingsuch as liveliness, fun, pleasure, selfconfidence, contact with nature, fami-ly closeness, sex appeal, success, pow-er, sophistication, popularity, patri-otism, youth, adventure, superiorknowledgeand, of course, beauty.

A commercial of this kind from thesummer of 1987 shows vivid, master-ly scenes of idealized family togeth-erness. Parents, children, and grand-parents move together in a miniaturedrama of family closeness. Theysmile, they move close to one another,they look at one another with glow-ing fondness. Their world consists of30 seconds of an idealized relation-ship. As the commercial goes on,M&Ms candy plays in increasing rolein this togetherness, until it seems to

Table 1.

A rhetorical structure shared by commercials and sermons.

Sennon

God and Heaven, the state of be-ing saved.

The listener is a sinner separatefrom God.

Christ mediates between the sin-ner and God and provides sure ac-cess to Heaven.

Repent, believe, be baptized,and you will be saved.

Commercial

Ideal states, such as beauty, so-phistication, liveliness, familytogetherness, individual fulfill-ment.

The viewer lacks and desiresthese ideal states.

The product, directly or indirect-ly, promises to link the viewer tothe desired state.

Buy the product and you will at-tain the ideal.

1

be the cause, the motivating force be-hind the happiness of the partici-pants. M&Ms share the stage with anearly mythical moment of magicaltogetherness.

Many commercials follow a similarstrategy: Images of desirable statesof being are associated with products.In The Best Thing on Televisio i:Commercials, Jonathan Price quoksadvertising au-thor Walter Ta-plin to illustratehow the ap-proach is recog-nized and dis-cussed in the ad-vertising indus-try:

"Most of thethings we wantare not material but mental. Wewant states of mind. The advertis-er, beginning with a material ob-ject, which is to be sold, suggeststhe states of mind which may beachieved by the purchaser" (50).

Here are some recent examples. Whenenvironmental awareness grew in the'70s, tobacco companies presented glo-rious images of backpackers commun-ing with nature (and with their cig-arettes). As jogging became popular,many commercials featured images of

happy joggersassociated with un-likely sponsors (such as banks) thathad nothing to do with jogging. Asour divorce- torn culture groped forthe meaning of family in the early'83s, idealized images of family to-getherness, family reunions, and tra-ditional extended families appearedon many commercials, associatedwith candy, diet cola, fast foods, and

other products. Arounda decade ago, bill-

Through such advertis-ing, products become theconnecting link betweenpeople and a wide rangeof personal, social, andpsychological ideals.

2 "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful"

4

boards began to an-nounce "Alive WithPleasure!" and im-plied that the productresponsible for thishappy state was New-port cigarettes. A cur-rent commercial states,"There's someone ex-

citing living inside you," and offers aproduct to set that person free.

To the extent such a commercial issuccessful, it convinces us (on someIf.vel) that the product is a good way,the best way, or the only way toachieve the ideal state celebrated inthe ad. For the ad to be successful, itsproduct must become the link betweenour reality and the idealized image.Through such advertising, productsbecome the connecting link betweenpeople and a wide range of personal,

© 1988 by Gerald Grow

' social, and psychological ideals.

Advertising and SermonsCommercials repeatedly imply

that products can connect us with al-most any conceivable value. Watch-ing them, you might conclude thatvirtually any desirable state of beingcan be attained, if only you purchasethe right products. The seemingly in-nocent M&M commercial, for exam-ple, is structured to imply that M&Msbring families together. The commer-cial implies that the ideal--familytogethernesscomes to us by means ofthe power of the product.

Commercials of this kind employ acommon rhetorical method: Presentan ideal; convince your audience theyneed it but do not have it; convincethem that you have the secret formoving from where they are to thedesired state; tell them what to donext. This structure has frequentlybeen used in sermons, especially atthe revival meetings of my youth,where it appeared in this form: Thereis a God and heaven. Due to Adam'sfall and your own failings, you areseparate, a sinner. Christ is the onlylink between, you and God. EmbraceChrist and you will enter the desiredstate of being saved. Refuse Christand you will not only remain a sinnerin this life, after death you will liveforever in damnation. Now, since youclearly don't want to burn in Hell for-ever, come down to the prayer railand be saved. (See Table 1.)

In both cases, the method of presen-tation is designed to emphasize theimportance of the mediator and thepowerlessness of the listener. In bothsermon and commercial, viewers areled to feel that they lack something,they are cut off from an ideal state ofbeing which they can attain onlythrough a mediator. Jhally (1987,171) uses the term "fetishism" to de-scribe consumer products in the sameseries of relationships: a desiredstate, a separation, a magical objectthat connects you, and a ritual forevoking that magic. In advertising,the product serves as mediator be-tween us and the image of beautyorother desired states of being. Theproduct symbolically becomes the

savior, the mediator, the fetish, theefficacy that promises to save us fromthe ordinary and elevate us to thecompany of those perfect beingswhose images grace so many adver-tisements.

The Two Faces of the IdealIn his study of gender in print ads,

Goffman illustrated how the modelsin ads abstract certain gestures whichreveal social relations, then projectthose gestures in simplified, ampli-fied, "hyperritualized" form. Evenanimals are susceptible to selective,exaggerated versions of the normal.In his classic study of the herringgull, the ethologist Niko Tinbergen(1953) found that the the begging re-sponse of the newly hatched chickwas triggered by a red spot on the bot-tom of the parent gull's bill. Throughan elaborate series of experiments, hepinpointed just which features(position of the red spot, color, con-trast, color of bill, head color, headshape, shape of bill, lowness, posi-tion of bill, etc.) trigger the response.He was then able to construct a modelwhich the chick preferred to the realthing! In other experiments, Tinber-gen constructed stimuli other birdspreferred above natural stimuli. Anoystercatcher, for example, will pre-fer a giant, spe-cially-paintedmodel of an arti-ficial egg to itsown egg. Normalresponseseventhose vital to sur-vivalcan be sub-verted by symbol-ic stimuli thatare more powerfulmull.

People are also susceptible to"supernormal sign stimuli" (as hecalled them in The Study of Instinct,44). Tinbergen discussed one example:exaggerated sign stimuli derived fromthe face of the human baby. He ob-served that dolls, films, and the pettrade all employ idealized baby fac-es. Here is his characterization ofthe elements that go into the ideal-ized baby face: It must have " a smallfacial part and a large brain part of

the head. Moreover, its cheeks mustbe fat and rounded. The baby's crying,and its clumsy movements, are alsonecessary to make it really cute."(Herring Gull, 223).

Advertising's easy-looking imagesof hard-earned perfection may, ingeneral, work like hypernormal sti-muli. Such images certainly do notcome easily. Diamant (1970) and Ar-len (1980) documented the mind-boggling lengths to which a producerwill go to achieve the fleeting imagesin 30- or 60- second commercial. Nofamily can be as perfect as the onepictured. Few moments in life canhave the immediacy of the AT&Tcommercial that took weeks to stage,shoot, and edit. We can seldom reachout and touch so vividly, so complete-ly, so gorgeously, so ideally, as choseimmaculately staged images do in theads. Technology amplifies the ads'perfection. Anyone who has attendeda demonstration of the Sdtex graph-ics workstation can verify how easy itis for graphic designers to make mag-azine pictures even "more perfect"deleting inconvenient portions of thepicture, enhancing color balances,moving component parts of the imagearound, even importing images fromother photographs--all withoutleaving a trace.

People are also susceptibleto what Tinbergen called"supernormal sign stimu-li."

than natural sti-


No one can look asgood as the picture orvideo image of a fash-ion model--not eventhe models them-selves, whose looksale for the camera. Inlife, many models aresaid to look startling-ly skinny. A book like

Cherv! Tieg's The Way to NaturalBeauty, documents the immense ef-fort required for a professional modelto maintain her casual good looks.One line suggests the magnitude ofthe labor of being beautiful: "I hatespending even an hour fussing in frontof a mirror in the morning" (19, italicsadded). As a result of her labors, shebecame one of those who embodiedthe ideals of beauty and presentedthem for women to emulate.

The supernormal images of perfec-tion presented on the media (such as a

©1988 by Gerald Grow 3

photograph of Cheryl Tiegs) areworth some thought, because any kindof guiding image has a double nature.One the one hand, idealized images

can uplift and give direction. In thepursuit of the unattainable, peopleattain great things. The upliftingideal may be to love like Jesus, tomanifest the compassion of the Budd-ha, to show the wisdom of a belovedRabbi, to be the fastest runner in his-tory, to raise a happy family, to looklike Jane Fonda at 45, to live a bal-anced life, to bring about world peace,to end hunger, and so on. Even if youtry but fail to attain such ideals, youcan remain pointed in the right direc-tion and ennobled by the effort. Webelong to a culture guided by unat-tainable ideals: liberty, equality,happiness. Noble failure while pur-suing great ideals is central to ourstriving, romantic spirit. For Ameri-cans, the hyperreal has often beenmerely a way of pointing us toward afuture that has exceeded science fic-tion's wildest dreams.

But idealized images are upliftingonly when there is some way to movefrom where you are in the direction ofthe values implicit in the image. Ifthere is nothing to connect you withthe image, so that the ideal seems un-attainable, you can feel cut off fromit. If the ideal is important and thegap formidable, an unbridgeable gapmay seem to loom before you. Insteadof inspiring you to cross that gap, theseparate, unattainable ideal begins tomock you and becomes a torment. Inthe worse case, you can become ob-sessed by an ideal, yet feel you haveabsolutely no means of moving fromwhere you are to it, or even toward it.You can become stuck, powerless tomove toward what you most desire.

By using idealized images thathave no connection with the product,commercials may be promoting, notthe joining of the viewer and theideal, but just such a separation.Through certain strategies in commer-cials, we are led to desire variousstates of mind, yet we are misled inthe means for achieving them. Bydepicting highly-valued states of be-ing, yet offering no avenue to thosestates except consumer products, com-

mercials make us the cognitive equiv-alent of sinners: cut off from theideals we aspire to and mocked bythe mediators that promise to take usto that heaven implied by televisionimages. In showing us what to aspireto, but providing us means that willsurely fail, advertising has given us aformula for despair.

"Despair" may sound like a harshword to apply to a commercial, but Ibelieve it is accurate. I am not imply-ing that television viewers are alllying around in paralytic states of de-spondency. Rather, I want to suggestthat certain advertising strategiesprovide the cognitive preconditionsfor a well-known state of being whosestructure has been documented for cen-turies. Turning to an excellent sum-mary from experts on the subject--theNew Catholic Ency-clopedia--we findthis definition: De-spair "signifies apositive act of willby which a mangives up the expec-tation of salvationbecause he considersthat, in his own case

rebe

of

ches down to him. The Go' of loveomes been transformed into a Godrath:

Where is it now? 'Tis gone. And seewhere God

Stretcheth out his arm and bends hisireful brows.

Mountains and hills, come, come ,

and fall on me,And hide me from the heavy wrath

of GodMy God, my God, look not so fierce on

me!

I am not calltheir Christipoint out howture of despaihave just analyenticed to desir

ng upon these sources foran perspective, but to

much the inner struc-r resembles the way Ized advertising: one ise an ideal, then cut offfrom all means ofattaining it.

Advertising pro-otes despair ofis kind, first, byrrounding us withges of unattain-

perfection.

In showing us what to as-pire to, but providing usmeans that will surelyfail, advertising has givenus a formula for despair.

at any rate, it is a thing too difficultto be achieved." Because of my earlytraining, I tend to turn to literaturefirst for illustrations, and we find oneof the most powerful depictions of de-spair in Christopher Marlowe's Dr.Faustus, a play contemporaneouswith the early works of Shakes-peare. In his last scene, Faustus findshe must live out his part of the bar-gain and surrender his soul in ex-change for his great knowledge.

0, I'll leap up to my God! Who pullsme down?

See, see, where Christ's bloodstreams in the firmament!

One drop would save my soul, half adrop! Ah, my Christ!

Notice how he portrays his desiredideal--salvation--as something faraway. Although he can Vividly im-agine the heaven of his desires, hefinds himself with no way to attainit. He is unable to reach up towardthat salvation, and no mediator


6

mthsuimaablSecond, advertisingpromotes despair by

implyir.: that the product will deliv-er the idt :1-- when it can't. In bothcases, consumers look across a vastgulf at the promise of valuesandfind that the offered means (productswe buy) cannot take us there. As onecritic of advertising put it: "Sadnessbetrays the idyll [of advertising'smore-than-perfect world] .... Whilebusying themselves with feeding us,the ads are offering to appease a moreunassuageable hunger, and failing to

do so." (Conrad, 118) We do not gaintitillating encounters through Dou-bleMint Gum, a youthful dancer's vi-tality through diet Pepsi, familycloseness through Priazzo, or powerand control through Z-cars. Despair-1 am arguing - -is a natural byproductof the experience structured into theway advertising promises to deliverthe values implicit in its hypernor-mal images.

Beauty may bring its own forms ofdespair. Beauty, and women's rela-tions to it, are far more complicatedthan just imitating the example set


'by gorgeous models in advertisements.What Ewen called "the pursuit of

beauty through consumption" (1976,181) has a discouraging effect onmany women. Women have written ofthe way advertising has promisedthat "perfection is obtained on yourgrocer's shelves. Perfection, cleanli-ness, godliness, gracious hospitality,and an adoring family are attainedthrough the purchase of Lemon FreshJoy and Drano." (Scott, 199). Yetmany women say the pursuit of suchperfection has made them not morebeautiful, but more ashamed of theirbodies:

"Whole industries depend on sell-ing us products through slick adsdepicting 'beautiful' women, play-ing on our insecurities and fears ofimperfection.... The media defines'looking good' so narrowly that fewof us ever feel we have made it...We always have to measure up tosome image" (Boston Women'sHealth Collective, 5).

Even for women who meet the pre-vailing standards for "looking good,"there are problems in what the poetWilliam Butler Yeats called "theputting on of burdensome beauty." In"A Prayer for My Daughter," Yeatswished that she might be blessedwith beauty, but in moderation notenough to draw upon her the kind ofdestructiveness precipitated by thebeauty of Helen of Troy. In their bookon the politics of beauty Lakoff andScherr summed up the burden of beau-ty this way:

"Women do not have powerthrough beauty: beauty has power.Therein lies the paradox. Men- -whose judgments are what givebeauty what power it has--envyand resent women for their sup-posed 'power' through beauty overmen's hearts and minds (and pock-etbooks). Women fear the depen-dence upon men, since only men canunlock the 'power' of beauty andmake it function to woman's advan-tage. Men are angry at women forpossessing a power which, in fact,women do not possess; if anything,

it possesses them." (279)

Arguing from a psychoanalytic.framework, Holbrook in The Masks ofHate (1972) claims that "the glamor-ous images in the mass media" aremanifestations of the "intense uncon-scious hatred of woman" that is"expressed...widely in our culture"(41).

Beauty has not always seemed socomplicated. From the time of theGreeks till the early 20th century,philosophers and poets connectedbeauty with such glorious ideals astruth and harmony. Plato consideredbeauty "a self-subsisting idea shiningthrough bodies, laws, and knowledgeitself. Every beautiful thing par-takes of this eternaloneness of beauty.Beauty and goodnessare found togeth-er...; in fact, theyare identical" (NewCatholic Encyclope-dia). For Plato, asfor Dante, suchideals were theguiding lights thatilluminated exis-tence. One has only to remember theconclusion of Keats' "Ode on a Gre-cian Urn:"

terms of envy. Advertising "proposesto each of us that we transform our-selves, or our lives, by buying someth-ing more.... [Advertising] persuadesus of such a transformation by show-ing us people who have apparentlybeen transformed and are, as a result,enviable. The state of being envied iswhat constitutes glamour." And ad-vertising (he uses the British term,"publicity") "is the process of manu-facturing glamour." (131) Advertis-ing, he concludes, is about the soli-tary happiness that comes from beingenvied by others.

In this sense, envy implies the ad-miration of others. This "envy" sug-gests that others might covet yourpossessions, looks, manner, etc., and

want to be like you.Surely Berger isright in a way; ad-vertisers must wantus to want to be likethose beautiful peo-ple in the ads. Butenvy has a darkside which haslargely been lost totwentieth-centurythought. For at

least a thousand years, a distinctionhas been made among envy, coveting,and jealousy. You are jealous to pro-tect something you already have.You covet what you want but do nothave. Covet!ni; and jealousy are mi-nor sins. But since medieval times,envy has been considered a majorterm for identifying the causes of hu-man suffering. In many versions ofthe Seven Deadly Sins, envy tookfirst or second place. According to theNew Catholic Encyclopedia, fromenvy come "hatred, calumny, detrac-tion, and many types of malevolentbehavior." In Purgatorio, CantoXIII, Dante meets Sapia, whose pun-ishment for malicious envyshe re-joiced to see her countrymen lose inbattlewas to have her eyelids sewnshut with steel wire. Plotting thedeath of Cassio, Iago tossed off thesechilling lines: "If Cassio do remain,/He hath a daily beauty in his life/That makes me ugly." (Othello,V.I.18- 20). Shakespeare's audiencewould almost certainly have recog-

On the simplest level,"Don't hate me becauseI'm beautiful" is themodel's plea to be freefrom the destructive envyof the viewer.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need toknow."

In contrast, listen to the words usedabout beauty by the modern commen-tators we have quoted: vacuum, de-personalized, power, paradox, envy,fear, dependence, advantage, angry,possession and hate. We have trav-elled a long road to come back to thatcommercial for hair conditioner withsuch a vocabulary in mind.

Let's continue our discussion of theway advertising uses idealized imag-es to imply that products can delivervalues, by focusing on the term mostcentral to our commercial: "envy."

The Two Faces of EnvyNear the end of Ways of Seeing,

John Berger describes advertising in

"Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful" @ 1988 by Gerald Grow 5

nized this as an instance of envy.Modern writings on envy are rare,

but the German sociologist, HelmutSchoeck, has produced a rich, schol-arly volume on the subject: Envy: ATheory of Social Behavior. In his re-view of what great thinkers havesaid about envy, he quotes Nietzs-che's compelling definition: "Whensome men fail to accomplish whatthey desire to do. they exclaim angri-ly, 'May the whole world perish!'This repulsive emotion is the pinna-cle of envy, whose implication is, 'If Icannot have something, no one is tohave anything, no one is to be anyth-ing!'" (179) Schoeck argues that envyis a universal drive that ranges froma spiteful Schadenfreude (maliciousglee at another's misfortune) to hor-rible acts of mutilation and murder forno other reason than that the perpe-trator felt belittled by the accom-plishments of the victim.

I covet when I want something I donot have; I can covet my neighbor'swife, car, house, tal-ents, or achieve-ments. Coveting, in-deed, may be one ofthe virtuous vices ofa competitive econo-my; but there isnothing virtuousabout envy. Covetingsays, "He has it; Iwant it." Envy,though, says: "If Ican't have it, nobody can."

Envy is frustrated desire turned de-structive. Envy is what leads a childto break another child's favorite toy,or a boss to frustrate a talented em-ployee. In the play and film, Amade-us, Salieri enacts a highly theatricalversion of envy as he sets out to de-stroy Mozart for effortlessly writingmusic far greater than all Salieri'slabors can produce. Impotent to at-tain the ideal, the envious personfeels destructive toward it. Like de-spair, envy derives from the separa-tion of the person from the object ofdesire, combined with a sense thatone is powerless to attain what is de-sired (Schoeck, 17). In envy, the urgeto reach out becomes the urge to de-stroy.

Envy seems to be a difficult conceptfor the modern mind. In their recentcollection of wise quotes on almostevery subject, Good Advice, for exam-ple, William Safire and Leonard Sa-fir confuse envy with coveting andjealousy. I have given up finding themeaning of envy in Britannica III. InNovember, 1987, Harper's ran a paro-dy in which a different agency pro-duced an ad for each of the SevenDeadly Sins. Many of the sins wererepresented both keenly and humor-ously. The advertisement based onenvy, however, left one with thefeeling that envy was an amplifiedform of griping. Going back as far asthe turn of the century, Schoeck con-sulted decades of American Sociologi-cal Review, American Journal of Soci-ology, The British Journal of Sociolo-gy, and other prominent journalswithout finding "a single instance of'envy; 'jealousy,' or 'resentment' inthe subject indexes." (9) Anyone un-convinced of the reality of envy will

find the case

From this perspective, thecommercial acts as a sur-rogate myth for viewerswhose cultural myths arenot adequate to help themidentify and deal with thesocially destructive emo-tion of envy.

argued well bySchoeck. It is re-markable that suchan ancient andpowerful conceptcan have disap-peared from themoral landscape ofeducated people. Itis even more re-markable that a

television commercial could bring itback to mind.

Bombarded by commercial imagesthat imply that using a certain prod-uct will cause them to become as suaveand vivacious as the beautiful wom-an selling it, viewers have good occa-sion to develop destructively enviousfeelings toward these idealized andunattainable images. On the televi-sion documentary, Quest for Beauty,Nina Blanchard, "the most famousmodel agent in Hollywood," discussedthe hostility professional modelsarouse: 'There is anger about beau-ty....I think that beautiful womenprovoke anger when they walk into aroom." A closer term might be "envy."If you feel immune from envy, hinkhow satisfying it is when the cover of

the National Enquirer shows one ofthose impossibly gorgeous celebritiescaught looking like a drunken pig!

On the simplest level, "Don't hateme because I'm beautiful" is the mod-el's plea to be free from the destruc-tive envy of the viewerthe kind ofenvy that expresses itself in a rangefrom catty remarks to the recentslashing of a model's face on a NewYork street. It echoes the plea ofevery person of beauty, talent,wealth, luck, or distinctionthe pleafor protection against the "levelling"violence of envy. It may even reflectthe viewer's fear of being envied forbecoming more beautiful.

We are now able to ask the centralquestion: Why would an advertise-ment try to arouse such a difficultemotion in its viewers? The first an-swer to this question takes us into theinterpretation of advertising as my-thology.

Advertising as MythologyFrom a variety perspectives, dif-

ferent writers have concluded thatadvertising is the consumer culture'sversion of mythology. Such is thetheme of Leymore's book, HiddenMyth:

"No society exists without someform of myth. Once this is real-ized, it is not very surprising thata society which is based on theeconomy of mass production andmass consumption will evolve itsown myth in the form of the com-mercial. Like myth it touches uponevery facet of life, and as a mythit makes use of the fabulous in itsapplication to the mundane." (156)

The sociologist Peter Berger, notquick to embrace the structuralist ap-proach of Leymore, defines myth as"a conception of reality that positsthe ongoing penetration of the worldof everyday experience by sacredforces" (1967, 110). A few hours'worth of television will show you"sacred forces" at work transformingpeople and products, working magic,causing cats to sing, rescuing victimsfrom halitosis, body odor, and otherfates worth than death--all on corn-

6 "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful" © 1988 by Gerald Grow

8

' rnercils which are strong candidatesto meet Berger's definition of myth.

In order to understand why themakers of a commercial would want toevoke hate and envy, we must recall acentral function of myths. In his bookcomparing Piaget and Levi-Strauss,Howard Gardner wrote:

"Myths are designed to deal withproblems of human existence whichseem insoluble; they embody andexpress such dilemmas in a coher-ently structured form, and so serveto render them intelligible.Through their structural similari-ty to given 'real world' situations,myths establish a point of reposeor equilibrium at which men cancome to grips with the crucial com-ponents of the problem, and becomeaware of the 'fix' they are in.Thus, a myth is both intellectuallysatisfying and socially solidify-ing." (148)

The sharpest summary of this viewcomes from Jonathan Price, at the endof his anecdotal study, The BestThing on TV: Commercials:

"Myths [and commercials] alsohelp us express and control in a safeway, impulses that could poten-tially tear our society apart....They arouse our deepest impulsestoward sex, violence, and faith,and they express these instinctswhile at the same time keepingthat expression aesthetic, ratherthan physical, thus saving our so-ciety from the potential chaos oforgies and massacre." (158, 162)

To see evidence for this kind of my-thology at work, turn to the maga-zine version of this television com-mercial--as it appeared, say, in theMay, 1988, Elle. On the left, a full-page, color picture of the model's gor-geous face bears the bold headline:"Don't hate me because I'm beauti-ful." Facing her is a page containing ablock of text and a small black andwhite photo of the same model look-ing like a wet puppy: her hairstringy, disheveled, and (especially)dull, half her face pleading, the oth-

er half pained and shadowed. Theviewer of this ad does not need to pon-der an envious attack upon the gor-geous model; the attack has been ac-complished for you in the small pic-ture. It is a ritual, surrogate deface-ment. One is given the satisfaction ofseeing her defaced, without havingto feel the full power of envy, vio-lence, and guilt. The print version ofthe commercial supports the possibil-ity :hat the ad was designed toarouse and appease the specific emo-tion of destructive envy. From thisperspective, the commercial acts as asurrogate myth for viewers whosecultural myths are not adequate tohelp them identify and deal withthe socially destructive emotion ofenvy.

Beauty, Hate, and ReligionNow that I have reached a neat

conclusion, I have to complicatethings by emphasizing that envy isonly part of the story, and there is an-other way of looking at "myth." InThe Rhetoric of Religion, KennethBurke analyzed the opening chaptersof Genesis as the sequential spinning-out of a series of relationships thatwere essentially simultaneous--ahorizontal version ofa vertical story, so tospeak. Burke wrote,"'Myth' is character-istically a terminol-ogy of quasi-narrative terms forthe expression of re-lationships that arenot intrinsically nar-rative, but 'circular',or 'tautological."(1970, 258) The context in which Iwant to view "Don't hate me becauseI'm beautiful" is mythic in Burke'stechnical sense. It is a linear, narra-tive version of what I believe to be aset of cognitive and emotional struc-tures inherent in the kind of adver-tising we have been discussing.

I am proposing a map that locatesbeauty, advertising and hatred in arelationship to one another. Hate, onthis map, can be reached from sever-al directions. The fullest route comesthrough envy, after passing through

the despair caused by believing inmedia images that offer inadequatemeans for attaining the ideals theydepict. Beauty--with highlights inits conditioned hairsits among thoseunattainable ideal images. (See Fig-ure 1). After finding out ten thousandtimes that the product does not pro-vide the psychological reward im-plied in the commercial, why shouldone not hate the teasing, unattainableimage of the beautiful model whomakes the promises?

If we hate her, it may not be for be-ing intrinsically beautiful in her ownright, but because she is part of a con-spiracya conspiracy, among otherthings, to appropriate our idea ofwhat is beautiful, along with otherideals, values, and longingsand tellus that only by consuming products canwe attain them. We may hate herbecause, being "beautiful," she re-minds us of all the values that weasgood viewers, bombarded by yearn-ings, yet left with no instructions butto consumeare cut off from. We mayhate her not for being a sexual tease,but for being part of a system thatteases and frustrates our need for val-ued states of beingsuch as family to-getherness, community, self-confi-

denceand beauty.There may, then,

be reasons to hateher--"her" beingthe image in thecommercial. Hate,however, is but onenode in a web of re-actionsand a par-ticularly difficultplace to settle. Youmight be able to

sustain hatred if you had a specificobject: something, someone to becomethe hated center of your life, thegreat counter-motivating force. Butless-focussed hatred is nearly impos-sible to sustain; it leads past thebeautiful models and their beautifulproducts to a soul-wearying exhaus-tionfatigueinertia. No doubt peo-ple arrive at apathy through otherroutes; but this pathway will suffice:from impossible ideals, through dis-iullusion and envy to the exhaustionthat lies on the other side of a wea-

In using techniques thatare fundamentally relig-ious, advertising inad-vertently advertises relig-ion.

"Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful" ®1988 by Gerald Grow

9

7

rying and impotent hatred.Because products do not provide the

kind of psychic payoff promised bythe imagery of advertising, we areleft to doubt whether anything can.If we follow this doubt, we wind upcontemplating the state of mind inwhich a black hole surrounds almostevery product like a ghostly negativeof its radiancethe black hole offailed promise.

And into this black hole, dug by ad-vertising's exploitation of so manyideal images, steps any religion thatpromises to cut through the cycle ofidolatry and connect us with the onegreat ideal that transcends all oth-ers: God, immortality, cosmic con-sciousness, enlightenment, the spiritworld, the deep self, the light, orwhatever name It has. In using tech-niques that are fundamentally relig-ious, advertising inadvertently ad-vertises religion.

Conrad (1982, 117), jhally (1987,197, 203), Williamson (1978, 12) andothers have plainly labelled adver-tising a form of religion. Jhally citesa marvelous passage from drama crit-ic Martin Esslin:

8

"The TV commercial, exactly asthe oldest known types of theater,is essentially a religious form ofdrama which shows us human be-ings as living in a world controlledby a multitude of powerful forcesthat shape our lives.... The moraluniverse...is dominated by a sheernumberless pantheon of numberlessforces, which literally reside inevery article of use or consumption,in every institution of daily life.If the winds and waters, the treesand brooks of ancient Greece wereinhabited by a vast host ofnymphs, dryads, satyrs, and otherlocal and specific deities, so is theuniverse of the TV commercial.The polytheism that confronts ushere is thus a fairly primitive one,closely akin to animistic and fet-ishistic beliefs...We may not beconscious of it, but this is the relig-ion by which most of us actuallylive, whatever our more conscious-ly and explicitly held beliefs andreligious persuasions may be. This

is the actual religion that is beingabsorbed by our children almostfrom the day of their birth."(Esslin, 1976, 271)

If you consider the resemblance be-tween advertising and religion, thispaper's use of traditionally religiousmoral terminologysuch as envy anddespairwill appear less arbitrary.Considered in terms of religion, ad-vertising encourages people to believethat the most vivid and appealingideals of our culture can be easily at-tained, if you just find the right prod-uctor, by extension, the right savior,philosophy, church, guru, cult--oreven drug. (I first made the connec-tion between advertising and drugpsychology before a U. S. Senate sub-committee in 1971.)

That is a disturbing possibility; butanother possibility is even more dis-turbing. Years ago, Hayakawa point-ed out how "poetic language is used soconstantly and relentlessly for thepurposes of salesmanship that it hasbecome almost impossible to say any-thing with enthusiasm or joy or con-viction without running into the dan-ger of sounding as if you were sellingsomething." (1972, 223) Could we beproducing a genera-tion that distrustsideals altogether,because the mostpowerful, forceful,convincing presenta-tions of those idealsoccur on TV commer-cials- -where theideals are prostitut-ed in the service ofsales? Are we creat-ing a disillusioned generation? A gen-eration that will have difficulty nothating beauty of the kind used to ma-nipuiate and disappoint them in ad-vertising? And will they also hatebeing delicately overpowered by realbeauty when they encounter it in theworld? After being nibbled to deathby little broken promises, will peoplecontinue to be able to hope, havefaith, set goals, and believe in some-thing beyond themselves?

In view of such questions, is itenough to reach the neutral conclu-

sionas some recent authors have-:-that advertising is merely a "modern'myth," serving the same function asthe mythology of traditional cul-tures? (cf. Leymore). That approachfails to reckon with the possibilitythat a mythological system may bedebased, manipulative, life-negative, or one among several com-peting value-systems. If advertisingis a genuine mythological system(which I doubt), it is surely a myththat has failed in its primary re-sponsibility to give personal identity,community, and spiritual meaning tothose it reaches.

The Broke_t ConnectionFigure 1 depicts the thesis of this

paper as a linear chain of responses.Linear sequences, however, are notori-ously poor ways to represent complexinterrelationships. I would like toopen up Figure 1 to suggest not a se-quence of emotional states that followone another, but a network charting aset of emotional potentialities struc-tured by advertising's appropriationof the ideal. What I am trying to sug-gest is not an individual paththrough the landscape, but a map ofthe landscape itself.

Figure 2 is better.At every stage,

It is precisely this breakingof the connection betweenvalues and means that ismy real subject.


10

other responses arepossible. Theviewer can loopback to an earlierstage (for example,by becoming ad-dicted to products)or cut across to re-join another branch.

The viewer canalso leave this network of reactionsand enter another contextsuch as go-ing to church, writing letters tofriends, or polishing rocks--in whichthe reactions I describe are minimal.The "off" switch should appear as anoption in every step. Figure 3 is an-other attempt to portray the basicelements of the context in which wehave interpreted the commercial. Asyou can see, I have not been able topull all the ramifications of even asingle line on a single television com-mercial into a tight focus. If this


.were a large topic, I would feel badabout reaching such a diffuse conclu-sion; but the small moments of dailylife are, I think, the most complicat-ed to explain.

To summarize: From what appearsin advertising today, I conclude thatcreative, resourceful, insightful, andunscrupulous people constantly try todiscover what others value most- -then look for some way to hitch theirproduct to that star. There need be noconnection whatsoever.

It is precisely this breaking of theconnection between values and meansthat is my real subject. By their verynature, few products can help us at-tain the ideals that are "visuallypromised" in so many commercialsideals such as family togetherness,personal power, self-esteem, sociabil-ity, authoritativeness, security, sexappeal, and clear orientation in aconfusing world. The promiscuouscoupling of so many products with somany ideals promotes a deep confu-sion. Williamson called the results akind of surrealism:

"All ads are surreal in a sense:they connect disparate objects instrange formal systems, or place fa-miliar objects in locations withwhich they have no obvious con-nection. We are so familiar withperfume bottles haunting desert is-lands and motor cars growing infields of buttercups that their sur-real qualities go unremarked.(Da li's 'Apparition of a Face andFruit Dish on a Beach' could be thedescription of an everyday adver-tisement." (1986, 69)

Advertising is a diverse field, and notall commercials exploit ideal imagesor promise that products will delivervalues. But commercials driven byvalue-laden images which are unre-lated to the product may be alienat-ing us from the very values they ex-ploit, confusing us about how to attainthose values, laying the groundworkfor despair, resentment, and apathy,and even prompting us to turn outsidethe culture to seek ideals that do notseem corrupted. Perhaps advertisingwill make Buddhists of us all.

Head-down in the midst of this tan-gled web hangs hate--hatred of theproduct that fails to link us to theideal, haired of anything that re-minds us of the tormentingly unat-tainable ideal, hatred of ourselvesfor still yearning for the exhaustinglyunattainable ideal, hatred of com:mercials for exploiting our deepestyearnings, and hatred of those hy-pernormally beautiful women whopromise us values but deliver onlyproducts.

If my analysis is right, the makersof this commercial have gained anaudience by giving voice to a painful,elusive sentiment deep inside manyof us. Not only does the commercialserve a "mythological" function ofraising and ritually laying to rest adifficult emotion, the line has a morepurely cognitive appeal. It playsupon us, it attracts us as problem-solvers and active interpreters ofwhat we see and hear (Ball-Rokeachet al., 15). It works because we arecontext-creators: We seek to makesense out of experience. The inner res-onance that it evokes (Schwartz,1973) is so deep and so puzzling thatthe line gathers our attention for therest of the commercial.

Human beings are, by nature, mak-ers, combiners, and shifters of context.Human meaning iscontext-sensitive. Ona perceptual level,we see "intell-igently" by providingcontext, filling gaps,and extrapolatingfrom cues (Gregory,passim). On a morecognitive level, wetry to interpret everysituation in terms ofthe contexts that make sense of it --for meaning is not given to us whole,but it is made through a rid conspir-acy of communication and creativity(Berger & Luckmann, 1967;Bartlett, inMayer, 1983, Ch. 9;).

Because our survival in the worldand cur understanding of it requires somuch problem-solving, human beingsare makers and solvers of puzzles.Hardly anything holds the attentionas well as a mystery. It threatens our

understanding of everything else. Itnags to be integrated into what weknow.

"Don't hate me because I'm beauti-ful" presents the viewer with ananomalous situation, a problem tosolve, a dissonance calling for resolu-tion. It tells us to stop doing someth-ing we were not doing and had not con-sidered doing. It is strangeand thevery strangeness is part of whatmakes it work.

The line, though, is more thanstrange: One can think of many linesof a similar construction that do nothave holding power. For example,"Don't think of running this articlethrough a garbage compactor." Theline in the commercial works not onlybecause it is strange, but because itconnects to something real. It drawsus in by resonating with experiencesthat are available to all participantsin consumer culturethe deep disillu-sionment created by ads that promisevalues but deliver only products. Toanswer this commercial, you have toreply with a context powerful enoughto subsume the commercial and neu-tralize its challenge.

Meanwhile, having roused your at-tention, the advertiser makes thepitch for hair conditioner, then van-ishes--leaving us to our own devices

for solving thepuzzle of beauty

To answer this commer-cial, you have to replywith a context powerfulenough to subsume thecommercial and neutral-ize its challenge.

and hate.During the re-

maining 28 secondsof the commercial,the script does em-phasize thatchange takes time--even change in theway your hairlooks. The writers

of the commercial probably hopedviewers wouldn't dismiss Pantene asyet another product that promised(and failed) to transform you instant-ly.

On the other hand, perhaps theywere just trying to get you to use theconditioner for a longer time beforemoving restlessly to another packagewith another promise. Does this com-mercial redeem itself by saying thatbeautiful hair comes about slowly,

"Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful" 0 1988 by Gerald Grow 9

through dedicated effort? Or does iteven more subtly exploit consumer de-spair by saying that, since beautycomes out of a bottle (albeit a littleslowly), if you don't look like thismodel, you just don't have what ittakes?

In discussing a single line on a singletelevision commercial, I have soughtto provide the most fundamental re-quirement for interpreting meaning: acontext that makes sense of it(Douglas, 1970, 37). Unfortunately,there is no procedure for identifyingthe correct, best, or even a good con-text by which to bring meaning to agiven event. But because the lineturns on "hate" and because it usessome of the strategies that have ledcritics to call advertising a form of re-ligion, perhaps terms from the tradi-tional moral vocabulary have pro-vided an appropriate context for in-terpreting the commercial. I haveconsidered the commercial a"mythic" way for ritually discharg-ing envy, and I have argued that theneglected universal emotions of de-spair, envy, and hate are potentialbyproducts of the cognitive strategiesemployed in certain types of adver-tising.

This paper has sought to open up afleeting, seemingly trivial moment-a single line of a single televisioncommercial--in order to glimpse theintricate symbolic resonances that weshare under the guise of ordinary re-ality.

References

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12

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Reform

Anger

,Women put

down byimpossible

ideal

Imitation,fashion

I

Envyas

coveting

Idea ized,hypernormal

images ofbeautiful

women

Promise ofvalues,

ideal statesthroughI oduds

Destructive "Don't hate meEnvy

because I'mbeautiful."

Degrades allideals andidealized

images

Product failsto deliver

idealpromised

Cynicism,rejection ofall Ideals,apathy

Religion,eults,gui s,

drugsCOMM mg

Rejection ofcurrer tmediavalues

Figure 3. The context proposed for "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful," connecting hate, beauty, and advertising.

w

n

Ourresponses

responses

Idealuedkluges in

adverusuig.

Accept product as

sole mediator tothese ideals.

Accept product as only co-- of many

ways to the idea.

Aspire to other ideals.

Ignore the commercial.

Reject the ideal presented.

Recognize product as symbol

of many ways to the ideal that

is depicted in commercial.

Addiction Connection ideals is

More TV

Other

respons.s

More TV

Otterresponses

More TV

Product fads toconnect you to

these ideals.

Despair ofattaining ideal.

Envious urge todestroy the un-

&namable ideal.

More TV

lisle of anythingthat reminds you

of the ideal

satisfactory.

eject product as mediator.

Reject ideal.

Quest for other ideals.

Mimic the ideal through fashion,fad, modeling, pretense.

Go straighe to apathy.

TV violence

Destrucuve thoughts and

acts. Aggression.PornographyExit (possible from every step).

TV violencefrip Destructive thoughts and

acts. Aggression.Cynicism.

ai "Don't hale me becausefm beautdurLow selfimage.

More TV

Other

responses

Apathy,

depression.

Quest for

relief.

Less work.

Less family life

Drugs.

ti Diversions. Tvn

Shopping

Religion

TV Religion.

Mom TV

More TV

Oder

responses

Quest farother ideals

and means.

More commercials.

more produce

Other value systems.

Figure 2. Chain of hypothetical responses to'IV commercials depicting idealized images,

with other responses suggested.

14

DOCUMENT RESUME - ERICDOCUMENT RESUME ED 297 376 CS 506 173 AUTHOR Grow, Gerald TITLE "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful": A Commercial in Context. PUB DATE Jul 88 NOTE 14p.; Paper

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