Setting aside Banksy's inability to comprehend that his message is more likely to get his followers arrested or fined than initiate some sort of awakening in the public about how advertising affects them, I would like to discuss the more core issue of whether or not we determine what is advertised or advertising tells us who we are and what we should want. Do we shape the world or does it shape us? For me, the answer to this question is "both", but others believe the answer falls on one side or the other.
People like my friend seem to regard the rest of the world as being filled with mindless drones who have shiny objects and tasty treats dangled in front of them and that makes them value those things. There is something to that viewpoint. If you see a commercial for a pizza place, you may find yourself wanting to eat pizza. This is "cuing". However, I don't think people who dislike pizza or who have never eaten it would be persuaded to have it as a result of advertising. The seller is showing you something you already like and want and trying to convince you to have it more often, preferably right now. Essentially Pizza Hut isn't teaching you to love pizza. It's reminding you that you already love it. This is not programming you to behave or think in a certain manner, but convincing you to repeat past thinking and actions.
This is the crux of the argument I tried to make with my friend who thinks that we buy into societal messages about beauty, wealth, youth, race, etc. because we're "told" to. I told her that, if you pay attention to advertising and how it works, you will see that advertisers are pandering to and catering to their audience's existing mentality, not telling them what to like. If women's magazines are full of ads about skin cream, it's not because they're telling you to worry about your aging skin. It's because they know you're already worried about it. If men's magazines are full of ads for collectible coins, it's not because they are telling you that you'll enjoy that particular hobby, but they're wanting to sell you on their goods which fit into your existing lifestyle.
Nothing provided stronger evidence that I have a point than a recent ad that I saw in Eating Well magazine. The picture above is a scan of a page from their September/October 2014 issues. The woman in the picture is Gina Belafonte, daughter of famous singer Harry Belafonte. The text that is quoting her talks about social equality and mentions that she's an activist and the headline calls her a "game changer". I had never heard of her before, so I looked her up to figure out what she has to do with social equality. There's not much of an internet track record except that she's commented that people are taken aback when they discover that her father is black. Most of the readily accessible information on her talks about how she's an actress and a producer, but this ad makes it seem like she's all over issues of privilege.
The ad isn't about social awareness or equality. It's selling vitamins. Why are they using talk of her political activism to sell vitamins? They're using it because all of those people who can't help but keep telling people to "check their privilege" are privileged (generally wealthy or upper middle class) people who buy a magazine like Eating Well as it has to do with exotic and nutritious food. The issue that this ad was in focused on Italian food and had a focus on all of the various sorts of olives.
The message of this ad is that, if you're socially aware and have your privileges all in check, you're going to be like this woman, and this woman is endorsing these vitamins, or, if you use these vitamins, you can feel good about yourself as you are part of the tribe that feels strongly that social equality is important. Either way, this ad isn't telling you what to think about social equality. It's pandering to an existing state of mind and a need to be linked through material possessions (in this case, vitamins) to someone with a parent of color.
This ad is using someone's values to sell things. Those values weren't programmed by advertisers. They are exploited. The irony is that my friend who promoted Banksy's "destroy all advertising" message is exactly like this woman. Now that she's part of a group that has defined itself, she is now a demographic to be sold to. These are vitamins for her and others who want to eliminate privilege and they're using a privileged face (famous, successful, thin, attractive, heterosexual, rich) to sell them. Note that Ms. Belafonte is 53 years old. Pictures of her online look very different than the one in the ad. It has obviously had considerable tweaking in Photoshop to bring her image more in line with what is conventionally appealing. You know, making her look more youthful and attractive (both privileged states of being that one does not earn yet society rewards).
My friend is all over talking about destroying privilege in our society. She thinks that white privilege and the preponderance of white values are programmed into us and that defacing ads will send some sort of message that those ads are keeping down people of color, lesser socioeconomic status, and less conventional beauty. She would not accept that people shown in ads are chosen because they cater to existing desires and preferences. This is despite the fact that her last girlfriend was chosen mainly because she thought she was sexy (and she was conventionally considered appealing and two other people were pursuing her at the time that my friend "won" her over). That relationship crashed and burned rather badly because choosing your partner based on looks tends to not work out so well in many cases. Her actions support the idea that the reason tall, thin, symmetrical people are in ads are used in media is that the majority of people like these "hot" women/men. My friend also wants to have lots of money in the future, wears hipster clothes, and spends her time hanging out with other young people drinking beer. She may not see herself as privileged, but her values elevate people possessing certain characteristics to their privileged state.
The truth is that people have always valued a certain type of beauty (and wealth). There is a famous bust of Nerfertiti which we've all seen because she was clearly gorgeous. Do people know a similar bust of Cleopatra as well as the one of the Egyptian beauty? No, they don't, because the real Cleopatra wasn't gorgeous. We know Elizabeth Taylor made up as Caesar's main squeeze, but she was beautiful.
Back before there was television and advertising, the same type of beauty was valued and the same qualities that are considered unappealing today were not attractive then. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and stories told in pictures show the vanquished leaders of other tribes as short and fat because those qualities were unappealing even then. Enemies were shown as being ugly whereas the victims were tall, thin, and elegant-looking. It's not about what we're programmed to think by the media. It's about what we already think due to our genes. Media just panders to those existing qualities and enhances our sensibilities in this regard. It confirms our values and encourages us to hold them and build on them, but it doesn't inculcate us with them.
My friend is part of the tribe that talks a big game about things like privilege while she continues to act on the same shallow desires that create a privileged status for those possessing certain qualities (youth, wealth, beauty, thinness). She asked me how I would go about eliminating privilege, but I don't think we can and I think it's Quixotic to try, at least in some cases. As long as people are biologically inclined to prefer certain qualities, they will elevate people possessing those qualities to a higher status in society. You cannot re-write the genetic code and the resulting preferences in every being on the planet, and that is what would be required to eliminate privilege.
Of course, it should be noted that my friend spoke of "privilege" as a concept, but the only privilege she was concerned about was "white privilege" and heterosexual privilege. It's okay to offer people beauty, youth, thin, wealth, status, etc. privilege. The only privilege she really cares about managing is the one which comes along with white skin and sexual preference. Since she is Asian and a lesbian, she's only really focusing on the ones which she feels affect her. The rest don't really matter. So, she wasn't really concerned with eliminating privilege so that we lived in a socially equal society. She was only concerned about elevating her status in society.
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