Advertising in Contemporary American Culture - Assignment Example

Advertising is intensely an insidious aspect of life in the consumerist economies. The average person in America is flooded with numerous advertisements on a daily basis that include TV commercials, internet ads, newspaper ads, billboards, radio blurbs, and magazine ads. Advertising is a popular culture and entails an important means through which people learn how to make the meaning of other forms of popular culture. Advertising is a means of socialization that tells people how to feel and think and what issues they need to be concerned about.

 Even though advertising in America does not guarantee increased sales, it strives to maneuver customers into purchasing goods they neither want nor need, besides developing corporate status. Advertising reacts to shifting business demands, cultural contexts, and media technologies. Advertising does not merely sell products but is produces consumers and promotes consumerism.  As a result, consumerism has become the way of life for Americans (Gregg 8). Cleaving and walking fast is exactly what the people of America dream of.

The American society dream of rising above others and obtain a social pinnacle that is past the reach of the common citizens. Instead of promoting gratification, the American dream promotes desire. For instance, the Magic Fingers advertisement is a true representation of an ad presentencing the American Dream (See Figure 1).