Overview
Undressing the Ad aims to empower readers to become media literate through the work of deconstructing the consumer culture that surrounds them. By introducing critical scholarship on advertising in a way that is accessible, the book attempts to show how issues of race, class, and gender are expressed in contemporary advertising. The readings in this book take a decidedly critical political perspective and explore how representation in advertising upholds certain economic and political structures and subverts others, and exposes the myth that advertisements are merely messages aimed at selling goods and services. Rather they are texts that shape contemporary culture and shape our images of ourselves.
Full Product Details
Author: Katherine Toland Frith ,
Katherine Toland Frith
Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing Inc
Imprint: Peter Lang Publishing Inc
Edition: 3rd Revised edition
Volume: 54
Dimensions:
Width: 16.00cm
, Height: 1.90cm
, Length: 23.00cm
Weight: 0.370kg
ISBN: 9780820437552
ISBN 10: 0820437557
Pages: 250
Publication Date: 23 October 2006
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Available To Order
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Reviews
Katherine Frith's 'Undressing the Ad' is a richly engaging and refreshing collection of essays on advertising and contemporary life. Throughout, the contributors steadfastly point us beyond the sometimes rarefied air and mythopoetic world of cultural criticism to the unequal and stratified social worlds in which advertising participates as a powerful and kinetic cultural force. A major feature of this volume is the concerted efforts of Frith and her collaborators to avoid the narrow-minded parochialism and insularity that has marred a good deal of recent writing on the cultural forms of life. 'Undressing the Ad' is a rare treat: an anthology of essays written against the grain of mainstream and radical discourse on popular culture. (Cameron McCarthy, Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Champaign) Teachers will find that its eleven essays provide common ground for the introduction and examination of ideas about what ads mean and how they shape their meanings. All of the chapters in this book are original and written with undergraduates in mind - and it shows. From Frith's opening titular chapter through Angharad N. Valdivia's analysis of gender, class, and sexuality in lingerie catalogs, the audience is clearly kept in mind and spoken to with intelligence and insight. (David Slayden, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly)
Author Information
The Editor: Katherine Toland Frith is associate professor and past chair of the advertising department in the College of Communications at the Pennsylvania State University. She has a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts. Before joining academia she worked in New York as an advertising copywriter for J. Walter Thompson, N.W. Ayer, and Grey Advertising. She taught advertising as a Fulbright Professor in Malaysia in 1986-1987, in Indonesia in 1993, and recently published her first book, Advertising in Asia: Communication, Culture, and Consumption.
