Portrayal of Women in Advertisements: A Sri Lankan Experience
by To analyse the portrayal of women in media, the idea of women in the world view should be understood clearly. According to the media advertisements, women should live in their houses as good housewives and mothers. This view exists mainly in the Asian countries where modern social changes were unable to bring many change in the structure of the society firmly rooted in religious beliefs and practices. The media in Asia capitalise on this issue and portray women as obsessed by the family and caught in its web of emotions – emotions spun by a male psyche dominated by the enigmas of a masculine imagination.
PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN IN ADVERTISEMENTS: A Sri Lankan Experience
The advertisement industry has come to play a very big role in the media, purely because the media needed finance for its functions. The advertisers assist the production cost or sometimes pay the full production cost to the producer, so that they can include their advertisements in the programme. This has created advertisement dependent media and the advertisers have become the sole controllers of media production. The entire media structure, technology, power and values became interconnected with economic interests. The advertisers exploited both audio and visual technologies to manipulate, control and direct the buying behavior of customers. The images have been created to penetrate to the unconscious level of the people with their techniques.
Margaret Gellagher says in 1993 $755 billion was spent around the world solely on advertising, which is 4.3% of total world-wide gross national product (GNP). The economic interests of the media have indirectly encouraged the growth of the advertisement business. Scientific methods of producing advertisements, methods of approach and psychological impacts were studied by the advertisement experts and used. Advertisement consultants, designers, and producers have emerged in all cities and countries.
The general philosophy of an advertiser has been stated clearly by Kenneth Bromfield, “If you are a lousy, smelly, idle, underprivileged and over sexed, status-seeking neurotic moron give me your money…” The enormous growth of the world advertising industry has made the sociologists and media people worry about the influence that the advertisements had on the people. Richard Findlay, Managing Director of private radio station explains the influence of the advertisements as ‘Marketable Images’. He says that the media have created marketable images to attract audiences. The advertisements were found to be very powerful, and they were able to change the culture and the life styles of people. The powerful influence of these images is not to be under estimated. From the moment of birth we are exposed to them and as we grow up, we internalise these messages using them to build our own self-image. The advertisements are to be examined to discover the hidden meanings implanted in them. Asian cultures have the traditional oppressive values that domesticate the economically affected sections of society; these were often reinforced by the advertisements. For example, a lottery advertisement appeared in a Sri Lankan daily Dinamina with a face of a sad looking young woman and the caption read, ‘Help her to go abroad and do higher studies buy a development lottery ticket’. While life style, culture and poverty were taken and reinforced by the advertiser, they were also used to boost sales of lottery tickets.
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