Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising (Open Forum S.) - Tapa dura

This book sets out not simply to criticize advertisements on the grounds of dishonesty and exploitation, but to examine in detail, through over a hundred illustrations, their undoubted attractiveness and appeal. The overt economic function of this appeal is to make us buy things. Its ideological function, however, is to involve us as 'individuals' in perpetuating the ideas which endorse the economic basis of our society. If it is economic conditions which make ideology necessary, it is ideology which makes those conditions seem necessary.

Judith Williamson is an academic who teaches media studies at UK universities. She is also a writer and critic and lives in London. She is the author of two other acclaimed books on culture and imagery, Consuming Passions: The Dynamics of Popular Culture (1986) and Deadline at Dawn: Film Criticism 1980-1990 (1993)