Saturday afternoon around 3:30 PM,
I have decided to go to the mall and take a look around for my blog. When I arrived
at the mall, my face was slapped with an ad that gave me a concerned thought as
I continued to stare at it. It said, “Always Inspires Never Expires,” from this
I realized that if I use any biblical reference to this it would work. Jesus always inspires never expires. Then I left and wander around the mall.
In the recent documentary of the Persuaders, there are signs and companies that will try to grab our attention. If one place will lower their price, then another would do the same. These ads are there to inform us of their new goods and prices for us to buy. They are there to get more recruits to support their company so that they would survive in the world of business.
After browsing their goods at the mall, I started to notices some ads that are odd in a way, but provided some sort of law in the mall. These ads portray a pig, a vegetable, a tool, and a goat. Each with their own signs by saying, “Be a Tool, Be essential, Be strong, and Be constructive and in the end almost all of these ads say, “You are what you give be a ________,” These signs seems to be innocent at first, but after giving it some thought, it almost as if these signs are rules and laws to manipulate the people’s minds to improve consumerism by obtaining money and selling them for their needs as a tool, a pig, a goat, or whatever the mall tells us. Now I understand a bit better why malls are starting to become more like churches like what Jon Pahl was explaining about in his works along with other professors and thinkers that contributed to his works. If these are the laws and rules of the mall, then the information center of the mall is the book of the mall. Despite, there are so many ads that attracts us to buy certain thing, I see another way method that also attract us to a certain product; our background.
If I were to add one thing to Jon Pahl's paper about shopping, it would be the background that we were raised in that makes us buy certain products. For me, I like coffee, because I grew up with a background of drinking coffee. It just clicked with me and made me want to buy a nice cold cup of coffee. As I looked around with a nice cup of coffee I noticed coffee bags of the coffee shop around me and it seems like idols to me for some reason. It feels like it tells me, “Buy me and you can make your own Idol and drink from it.” So I threw what is left of my coffee and left the mall.
In the recent documentary of the Persuaders, there are signs and companies that will try to grab our attention. If one place will lower their price, then another would do the same. These ads are there to inform us of their new goods and prices for us to buy. They are there to get more recruits to support their company so that they would survive in the world of business.
After browsing their goods at the mall, I started to notices some ads that are odd in a way, but provided some sort of law in the mall. These ads portray a pig, a vegetable, a tool, and a goat. Each with their own signs by saying, “Be a Tool, Be essential, Be strong, and Be constructive and in the end almost all of these ads say, “You are what you give be a ________,” These signs seems to be innocent at first, but after giving it some thought, it almost as if these signs are rules and laws to manipulate the people’s minds to improve consumerism by obtaining money and selling them for their needs as a tool, a pig, a goat, or whatever the mall tells us. Now I understand a bit better why malls are starting to become more like churches like what Jon Pahl was explaining about in his works along with other professors and thinkers that contributed to his works. If these are the laws and rules of the mall, then the information center of the mall is the book of the mall. Despite, there are so many ads that attracts us to buy certain thing, I see another way method that also attract us to a certain product; our background.
If I were to add one thing to Jon Pahl's paper about shopping, it would be the background that we were raised in that makes us buy certain products. For me, I like coffee, because I grew up with a background of drinking coffee. It just clicked with me and made me want to buy a nice cold cup of coffee. As I looked around with a nice cup of coffee I noticed coffee bags of the coffee shop around me and it seems like idols to me for some reason. It feels like it tells me, “Buy me and you can make your own Idol and drink from it.” So I threw what is left of my coffee and left the mall.
Good observations, Joseph. I read another post that referred to the "be a pig" and "be a tool" ads, so I did some searching because I was curious what those ads were for. Interestingly, they're for an Oxfam campaign that many of us would support, to buy resources for people in developing countries:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.oxfamamericaunwrapped.com/
It's interesting that in the context of the mall, these ads seem to lose their altruistic meaning.