Pop Culture

Media messages are representations of the world. We depend on the media to understand our world and different cultures.

This statement is true, that the media represents the culture and the world. Which means, the people who are from totally different countries might get ideas(even though some stereotypes) based on the media. Because of that, we need to be conscious about our behaviors based on the media, which might harm and misrepresent our own culture and life. For example, there was one girl from a foreign country have told me that she had some stereotypes before she actually came to Korea because some of the Korean dramas are handling the episodes about early eras of Korea. Therefore she got stereotypes such as "Koreans still wear traditional clothing" or "They still have the traditional building all around", etc.

There could be some misunderstanding of my culture, therefore I always am conscious of my behavior on the social network service, such as Facebook, because my behaviors are being recorded on the system and everyone can see it.

It has to be the same in the pop culture, as the pop culture represents the basic culture of the society or community or even a country. Therefore people need to be conscious while being on the pop culture as it can be the basic information for the people who aren't familiar with.

Target audience

 https://swashleycreative.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/tomsspread_wired_for-web1.jpg

This advertisement is targeted for men, who are willing to hide their smell of sweat after playing sports with deodorants, therefore this advertisement is appealing for the need to achieve. It shows a cropped image of man; half of it is wearing a sports uniform and holding a dirty soccer ball, and the other half is wearing a black suit with a watch- which visually shows the effect of the deodorant: that it will hide any other messy smells and clear them to magically make other people that the man is neat and tidy, compared to what he actually looks like. This advertisement is using pathos as a way to persuade, to appeal to emotion that men want to smell nice to women. The idea that women like sportive men, however, they don't like their body odor. This advertisement is using that idea as the way to persuade.

Does advertisers have a moral duty to avoid stereotyping?

Advertisers use stereotypes of people to persuade. Because of that, the debate is becoming bigger that as a form of mass media, advertisement creators should have moral duty to avoid stereotyping people. In my personal opinion, I disagree this statement. The reason why the idea "advertisers should have the moral duty to avoid stereotyping people" is the size of mass media is huge, therefore it might give stereotypes to the consumers while they watch the advertisements. However, if the consumer gets stereotypes based on what they watched advertisements on YouTube or television, that is because of their gullible personality, not because of the advertisement. In that case, young children are more gullible then adults, therefore the duty is on adults around the children. For example, if some advertisement shows stereotype in their commercial and young kids have watched it, their parents have the duty to tell them the reason why the advertisers have used the stereotype to persuade, and tell them to not to have the stereotype because of the advertisement. However, this education at home is not working well. As kids are getting more closer to the mobile phones and SNS as time flews, they get more time using their devices then talking to their parents face to face. Because of that, children get easily exposed to stereotyped advertisements, and they also get stereotyped ideas in their mind. The worse thing is, if the stereotype gets recognized by younger age, it is easier to fix. However, as time goes, people tend to have more time on their devices compared to having conversations with people offline, therefore it becomes a vicious cycle. For example, now in South Korea, students who are between 14 to 18 are too much affected by the stereotyped commercials, now they think the ideal look of women are pale skin color, red lips, big eyes- especially they use colored contact lenses to make their pupils look bigger. Which leads to another bad vicious cycle, that teenagers don't have much money on their hands, they search for cheaper items, which doesn't have any information about health effects. 

Of course, the advertisers are the one who made the advertisement stereotyped, therefore they should be changing their commercials to not to be too stereotyped. However, as consumer's sight, the advertisements should be attractive, natural, and unaffected. Also, it has to be more attractive compared to other competitors, they need to create their commercial more stimulate and sensational. I personally tell my friends that commercials are made to convince you to buy their products, not to tell you the ideal type of people, therefore you all need to get more self-attachment and confidence about yourselves.

Gender inequality Advertisements

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvjUtU9viuc

This YouTube video contains 6 different advertisements that show gender roles in life due to gender stereotypes that women are the people who are housekeeping, and working as the housewives. Therefore those commercial easily shows women using their product due to creating familiarity. But gender roles are mostly quite not right as the ideas come from stereotypes of gender. Not only women are working at home and cleaning, men also belong to housework. In Korea, this kind of gender roles were more serious issue coming through 21st century, because as most of the Asian countries do, due to Confucian ideas, some aged people still have idea that men are better than women, and women need to stay at home looking after the kids, be housewife and men are the people who are mainly getting profit for the family as the idea of men are in higher class compared to women. However, since the beginning of 21st century, people started thinking of both women and men are equal and there are no differences between anyway.

What commonalities/differences exist between your chosen advertisements in terms of how gender is presented?
In my personal opinion, this advertisement was created with gender role which is an old type stereotype in the society- that women only do the housework and men are not. However, as time flew, people's perspective has been changed, which led to the idea of women also can work outside the house, men also can do housework and look after the kids. But, women are the people who bear babies and easily gets most of the responsibilities while looking after the baby at home. That caused the stereotype that women are the people who work in-house.

What do your chosen ads reveal about how your industry/product is marketed to consumers?
As I explained earlier, advertisements should create familiarity, not abnormality- as the company wants consumers to buy their product and use them in real life. In that case, the role of advertisement is to show how comfortable/easy the product makes during the real-life situation and make the customers have an idea of purchasing the item.

What do your ads reveal about society?
It reveals about society's stereotypes on gender roles. Commonly, in the media, gender role of women are housewives, looking after the kids, etc and for the male, it is working outside and get profit. Which was quite true in the past, but the world has been changed. However, the advertisements are showing the stereotypes which are still there in people's mind.