The content of advertisements reveals a great deal about a society. They reflect the culture’s attitude towards race, gender, and class, in addition to how individuals are expected to behave in the society. Advertisements are out to sell, and the notion of being relevant to the lives of the audience is paramount in influencing consumers. For this reason, advertisements can so effectively expose characteristics of a civilization’s culture. However, advertisements rarely depict ordinary lives. Rather, they show idealized, embellished models of the attitudes, expectations, and behaviors of the various groups. Characters in advertisements are not everyday people, but rather symbols of how that race, class, or gender is expected to be. This causes an often invisible disconnect between real life and the lives of those depicted in ads. As a result, the idealistic stories told through advertisements end up crafting a society’s culture in addition to merely displaying its attributes. (more…)