We ready ourselves for the supposed apocalyptic moment when the 20th century becomes the 21st and we will all be turned into pumpkins or geeks or cyborgs. Some call it postmodernism, others the end of history. Still others claim we cannot possibly give a name to something we hardly understand yet. At the very least, it seems, the print world we have known and loved is in the process of being transformed into electronic blips, a cyberspace of hypertext and Internet where sound, word, image, and millions of people intermingle. The potential for advertising, and for advertising revenues, has corporate America falling all over itself to go on-line and extend the reach of advertising's pervasive public discourse to this emerging cybernation of consumers.
Advertising is, after all, indigenous to American culture.
Indeed, this book argues that advertising, in its omnipresent public words and images, plays a determining role in creating that culture. Yet our experience tells us otherwise. We learn from watching television that buying things is supposed to make us happy, and we learn to shop, participating in the system by choosing and consuming products. Half-consciously, even cynically, we let commercials modify our behavior and construct our identity as they teach us how to act and how to dress, what to eat and what to drive. We thought Andy Warhol was just kidding when he painted all those rows of Campbell's Soup cans, but pop art was about the ads and the brands rather than the soup, and it ruthlessly made clear the culture of brand names and hype we took for granted.