Summary of Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture by Sut Jhally

If asked, would most Americans say that family, community, ethnicity and religion are the major ideologies that define contemporary culture?  If they did, Sut Jhully would vehemently disagree.  That is because this author of Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture asserted that advertising and our marketplace economy are the major tools that constitute today’s commercial society.  He argued that advertising, which has become an insidious force in our society, stresses consumerism by connecting the acquisition of commodities (goods and services) with happiness.  While surveys indicate that people define happiness within the context of social interactions, such as having valued friendships, relations with family, and the ability to control your own life, advertising touts objects as the focal point for achieving happiness.  This misplaced emphasis on acquisition of material items for self-satisfaction has two ultimately toxic downfalls.  The first issue is that while consumers are promised happiness, they become disgruntled when they seek but do not realize the guaranteed satisfaction.  Additionally, Jhully warned that environmental damage, caused by overuse of resources that promote consumerism, has created devastating effects which cannot continue unchecked.

What prompted society’s focus on objects? It began in the 1920s with the need to sell non-essential goods that were being produced by the fledgling manufacturers whose products grew out of the industrial revolution.  Interestingly enough, these early advertisers relied on selling products based on social values (family structure, status, authority) whereas their predecessors in the period from 1880-1920 focused on product strengths and utility.  As technology mass-produced images, starting with magazines, advertisers combined visual materials with written messaging to teach early consumers how to interpret images.  By the post world war period when consumers were introduced to television, they had become sophisticated in decoding advertising.  The commodity-image system had begun.  

What exactly is a commodity-image system?  It’s one where the core of a person’s identity (how they perceive their place in society, and how they gauge success) is defined by materials.  Since advertisers could not directly dispense positive identity, they used products to show worthiness.  For example, fulfillment can be derived by owning a certain car.  Jhully emphasized that a commodity-image system provides “self-validation connected with what one has rather than what one is” (252). 

What aspects of our culture did the commodity-image system influence?  Sut Jhully discussed four impacts.  First, gender became synonymous with sexuality, especially for women, because advertising took advantage of marketing products based on it.  Further, political opinion shifted from being issues-based to emotionality – voters being influenced by which candidate made them feel good.  Next, girls and boys were polarized as toy manufacturers expanded their market by defining male versus female play.  Last, cultural forms, such as music videos, were impacted, becoming a marketing experience.

 Jhully’s proposal to add high school course in visual literacy was decent, but not encompassing enough to make an impact.  In a world where advertising reinforces that style and appearances trump substance, a greater shift of public perception is needed. Just as public television can no longer advertise cigarettes and hard liquor, the Federal Communications Commission would have to exercise authority over commercial messaging, shifting it away from the commodity-image mode of today.  However, given the strength of materialism and its role in our economy of consumption, this would be impossible for one agency to administer.  In addition First Amendment Rights would likely be invoked should a government agency attempt to censor advertisers.  In summary, it would have to be the people’s voice, or bank account, that would have the final say.  If consumers failed to be wooed by commodity images, and correspondingly held back from purchasing products, then the message would get through.  Anything short of that would simply not have an impact.