For tomorrow you will be reading a selection from Michael Schudson’s book Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impacts on American Society. (For those of you who don’t know, Schudson was a professor in our department until a couple years ago.) As you’re reading think about how you relate to advertising and what you think about as you watch or read an ad. Schudson claims that ads rarely work (i.e. to get you to buy a product), but there is work that they do. What is it? What does Schudson mean by “capitalist realism”? What is Schudson’s argument for advertising as “state art”?
As a reminder, please bring in an example of an advertisement that you find interesting, really good, really bad, or just memorable. Don’t print anything out, just a link is fine.
[img source: Forbes.com]