10/24/11

Mad Men and Barthes


   ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’, the first episode of the well-known television series called Mad Men, mainly focuses on showing what this show is about. The most obvious aspect of this television drama is that it goes on in an advertising company of the 60’s. This episode of Mad Men, and probably many episodes to follow, shows the viewers that one of the main purposes of advertising is to sell a product to a specific group of buyers by showing the good sides of it. Although many products have very positive effects on human life, some other products have the exact opposite effect. A commercial about let’s say ‘healthy organic fruits’ very probably does not have anything to hide from the targeted consumers. However a product that has negative sides that can effect people, such as cigarettes, have many facts to conceal.
    In order to sell something as unhealthy as cigarettes, one must cover up all the dangerous aspects of it with the use of advertising. In his essay on myth, Roland Barthes names this technique of covering up the evil as ‘the inoculation.’ Inoculation is one of the ‘rhetorical figures’ that he emphasized in his text. The way advertiser characters in Mad Men try to prevent cigarettes from being considered unhealthy and deathly, is definitely what Barthes calls ‘inoculation.’ Their most important goal in making a cigarette commercial is to conceal the negative sides of it, so that the consumers will continue buying more and more.

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