Pat Boyle                                                                                                      December 4, 2006

 

Challenges to Faith Web Assignment                            Fr. Kavanaugh/Merchants of Cool

 

           

            In his video on advertising shaping culture, Fr. Kavanaugh argues some very strong points, which he backs up with evidence, on how advertising can shape society’s image of what it means to be happy.  Kavanaugh worries about this issue because, as he states, these products do not really fulfill the promise they are making.  He takes many everyday items, ranging from cologne to alcohol, and explains how the advertising of the product promises things such as happiness, sex, and money.  As we know, these products cannot really fulfill these promises.  Kavanaugh argues that through the advertisements of products which promise these values, the values themselves are changes.  For example, in one advertisement, love comes in the form of a watch.  In another, perfume represents happiness.  These products are false images of these values, and Fr. Kavanaugh brings up a very good point in addressing this problem, and I agree with him when he says it is time for a change in the advertising industry.

           

            The next video that we watched was called “The Merchants of Cool.”  This addressed the same issue as Kavanaugh’s video, but it did it from the advertising point of view. In the video, we got to see how the advertisers actually decide what really is “cool,” and how they try to put that into their advertisements.  To find out the image of “cool,” the advertisers would interview teenagers from different backgrounds and get their feedback on the latest trends and fashions.  However, when they showed this, I was surprised to see that the teens were pretty unresponsive.  Until that point, I had the idea that culture decided what was cool, and the advertisers responded to culture.  However, upon seeing how the teens reacted in the interviews, my opinion was changed, and I realized that maybe Fr. Kavanaugh was right after all.  Kavanaugh argued that advertising shapes culture, and the advertisers argued that teens ahpe culture, and they respond to those teens’ trends.  After viewing the issue from two different perspectives, I would have to side with Kavanaugh, and say that these advertisers create false promises of values that are not upheld in the products that try to sell the values.  

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