ZUR 589o: Cultural History of Advertising

FINAL EXAM  /   2015



PART 1:  Choose any ONE of the ads included with the exam and analyze it using a TOTAL of FOUR
terms from any three of the authors/sets of authors below.   For each term chosen BRIEFLY:

        a. define each term (clearly but briefly) (5 points)

        b. analyze each term in conjunction with specific verbal or visual elements in the ad (5
points)



John Berger:

                “men act and women appear”

surveyor and surveyed (or the male gaze)

women and vanity

“free choice” of “a single proposal”

envy and glamour

anxiety and dissatisfaction


Erving Goffman:

                relative size

                feminine touch

                function ranking

family (esp. mother/daughter or  father/son pairings)

ritualization of subordination (choose only one from this list): lowering oneself physically on
bed/floor/sofa, men in

foreground or above women, bashful knee bend, canting positions (head cant, body cant), big smile,
“puckish” styling (unseriousness, childlike guises, clowning), mock assault, body lock/arm around
shoulder

licensed withdrawal (choose only one from this list): covering face or mouth (in shyness, fear, or
laughter),

biting or sucking on fingers, finger-to-finger position, head or eye aversion, mentally drifting,
withdraw gaze from scene at  large, talking on telephone, lying with bent legs, “participation
shield,” snuggling or nuzzling, asymmetrical configuration (e.g. grief embrace)


Judith Williamson:

raw vs. cooked (discuss both

cooked sex

time past: memory

time future: desire

patterns of organization in ads using nature (choose one): battle with nature, capture nature,

re-organize nature, the natural order

magic (choose one): alchemy, spells, genie in a lamp, or crystal ball/magic circle/world in a
bottle


Ellen Seiter (or Jan Pieterse/lecture):


nostalgia                                                                                  roles:
servant, entertainer OR  producers vs. consumers

                go-getter, bright/intelligent, adventurous explorer                  “edible” black

“tomorrow belongs to you”                                                    dandy

orphaned children                                                                   categories of
products (soap, tobacco, rum, sugar, cola,

clownishness or “primitive”                                                         cocoa,
chocolate, coffee, fruit, relief organizations)

                cool, hip, savvy, modern,
trendy




PART 2:  For the same advertisement you selected in Part 1, discuss it in relation to one
historically-grounded theme drawn from one of the decades below.  Briefly define the theme (4
points) and identify and discuss a specific visual or verbal element in the ad that relates to the
theme (6 points).


1940s/Graebner (war years: group/equality/democracy, nationalism, sentimentality;

peace years: individual/freedom, reversion to traditional gender roles, commitment to consumption)

1950s/Coontz or Ehrenreich (self-sufficient nuclear family; clear and distinct gender roles;
breadwinner,

                Playboy rebellion)

1960s/Morgan (equality, community, sacrifice, moral politics, social and political movements,
liberation from

                social oppression)

1970s/Shulman (narcissism, selfishness, personal vs. political awareness, ironic detachment, spirit
of malaise)

         or  1980s/Ehrenreich (feminist movement, conspicuous consumption, upscale vs. downscale
market segments,

                                rejection of middle-class values, fitness/body definition/war on
softness, food as edible status).