ABSTRACT
When we talk about advertisements or attempt to analyse them, most of us tend to assume that they are vehicles for the communication of usually somewhat distorted or exaggerated publicity; and that they are ‘transparent’ or invisible carriers at that. We tend to take for granted that what is on the screen or page is what the ad means and we ‘measure’ ads against some assumed reality which could replace the ‘unreal’ images which constitute most ads. The images of men and women in ads, for example, are usually considered to be mythic rather than real, and also stereotyped. This kind of criticism usually gets bogged down in arguments about the extent to which such images are true or false and seeks to replace distorted images with representations of people and situations as they really are. It assumes that there is a simple and better reality with which to replace the stereotypes and myths and ignores the fact that ads are in themselves a kind of reality which have an effect. In this sense ads are not secondary to ‘real life’ nor copied or derived from it. Ads are what some critics call ‘specific representational practices’ and produce meanings which cannot be found in reality. There is no simple reality with which to replace the falseness of ads, and there are no simple alternatives to stereotypes. In order to gain better understanding of the role that advertising plays in our society, we need to ask how advertising organizes and constructs reality, how ideology and meanings are produced within the ad discourse and why some images are the way they are, or how they could have been constructed.
