- Sigmund Freud - Instinctual desires and the 'Pleasure Principle' which talks about the way in which one of our desires has been met, we will briefly become happy and docile. This is incompatible with society and all of its rules that prevent us from doing what we really want to do, thus we shall never be truly happy.
- Edward Bernays - Consumption to satisfy desires. Applied the theories and principles of Freud in order to help companies and eventually even politicians began using these principles for social control.
- Fordism - Mass production began which caused people to have more disposable income, increased consumption and the start of brand culture and brand competition.
We were the given John Berger's 'ways of seeing' to analyse in groups, we were given the last section of the extract that discusses
- The idea of a serious issue being used in order to sell a product or idea, which can be seen from the picture on the very first page (using war to sell products)
- The image on the second page depicts a newspaper lay-out were an advert has been placed directly under an image of poverty and famine. Berger talks about the 'cynicism of the culture which shows them one above the other' and the way in which it can be argued that this wasn't intentional but nether the less, everything about it is produced by the same culture.
- It is not the moral shock that is most important aspect here, but is in fact the way in which the advertisers see it. 'Aware of the commercial danger of such unfortunate juxtapositions... deciding to use less brash, more sombre images'. This shows that they only see these images as having a negative impact on the adverts success.
- For publicity, these things 'happen only to strangers' and don't effect them directly.
- 'The act of acquiring has taken the place of all other actions, the sense of having has obliterated all other senses'. The 'power to acquire' becomes the most dominant feeling and dulls the senses that are evoked from the other image, simplifying them.
- In conclusion, 'capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible' and 'by imposing a false standard of what is and what is not desirable'.