Jeremy Jackson
Dr. Joe Marohl
ENG111-4223
16th Sept. 2015
Advertisement and Self-Awareness
Published in 1854, Walden is a memoir from Henry David Thoreau. The book opens up with “Where I Lived and What I Lived For”, where Thoreau describes trying to find an estate before finally settling in the woods to live by his lonesome for a year to live a life free of obligations and enjoy personal leisure. After moving into his dwelling, completely separated from the rest of society, Thoreau states that now he does not view himself as a slave of time; instead he is choosing to participate in the flow of time whenever he wants. Trying “to live deliberately”, he is trying to get in touch with nature rather than the industrialized world, which is concentrated with people who are easily distracted from their personal interests by media, and their peers surrounding them. Thoreau would most likely be disappointed in today’s use of media. Advertisements on television and in magazines are pushed towards a target audience each month, leaving people to question if they should spend money to get in with the crowd. Products such as toys and clothes are advertised in a fashion that suggests that an individual would be better off with it, even if it’s a want and not a need. This paper will analyze how advertisements are detrimental to self-interests, personal behavior, and how they affect the self-esteem of young men and women.
The first television advertisement aired on July 1st, 1941. Since that day, the day commercial licenses went into effect for TV stations, companies have used TV broadcasting as a tool to attract consumers. Over the past couples decades, as the quality of TV has changed, so has marketing strategies. Companies seem to be trying harder and harder to get individuals to change their way of thinking and feel as if they need something that would be considered a want to most people. Advertisements for products such as toys or cars might display...