Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising
Editorial Reviews
Cameron McCarthy, Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Champaign
"Katherine Frith's Undressing the Ad is a richly engaging and refreshing collection of essays on advertising and contemporary life. Throughout, the contributors steadfastly point us beyond the sometimes rarefied air and mythopoetic world of cultural criticism to the unequal and stratified social worlds in which advertising participates as a powerful and kinetic cultural force. A major feature of this volume is the concerted efforts of Frith and her collaborators to avoid the narrow-minded parochialism and insularity that has marred a good deal of recent writing on the cultural forms of life. Undressing the Ad is a rare treat: an anthology of essays written against the grain of mainstream and radical discourse on popular culture."
Book Description
Undressing the Ad aims to empower readers to become media literate through the work of deconstructing the consumer culture that surrounds them. By introducing critical scholarship on advertising in a way that is accessible, the book attempts to show how issues of race, class, and gender are expressed in contemporary advertising. The readings in this book take a decidedly critical political perspective and explore how representation in advertising upholds certain economic and political structures and subverts others, and exposes the myth that advertisements are merely messages aimed at selling goods and services. Rather they are texts that shape contemporary culture and shape our images of ourselves.
Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising,Katherine Toland Frith,Peter Lang Publishing,0820437557,Advertising,Advertising & Promotion,Business & Economics,Business/Economics,Media Studies,Pop Arts / Pop Culture,Popular Culture - General
Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising
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