Commrc 1126

Introduction:

The so-called postmodern era is often described in cultural terms: as postmodernity. Postmodernity is defined as a significant cultural shift having two principal and related components: self-reflexivity and the hyperreal (or hyperreality). Advertising is at the forefront of this cultural change and ads have become increasingly self-reflexive and hyperreal since the 1980s. Goldman and Papson suggest that the shift toward self-reflexivity and hyperreality is a kind of crisis. The ongoing sign wars and the need to cut through an increasingly cluttered advertising landscape has led to a kind of cultural implosion where advertising (and the culture as a whole) has lost its ability to represent reality and can only reflect back upon itself. Ads are less and less about its referent (the products themselves) and more and more about the process of representation. Put another way: hypersignification is found in ads that no longer signify anything but the process of signification itself, often taking the form of parody or spoof. You have all seen the Geico ads that barely mention car insurance, the fashion ads that don’t really show the clothes and all the parody and spoof ads that suggest that the viewer is too savvy and jaded to be fooled by advertising.