This ad directly tells us, the Filipinos, who are naturally brown, should adjust and use GlutaMAX so we can get the same treatment given to those who have fairer skin.
If you are brown or black, I’m sorry but you are disfavored in our society. This is the message and the message must be critiqued.
Whitening products do not empower women, they impose false needs.
1. This is an example of how images, videos, articles on the Internet are controlled by the dominant power to spread their ideology.
2. Such ideology that white is more superior than brown/black is also a product of modern capitalism. It created false needs and false consciousness geared to consumption of commodities. This is commodity fetishism.
3. At the second-order mythological level, this ad of GlutaMAX signifies something else: the idea of white is more superior than brown or black. This is white supremacism.
4. In the Philippines this can be an aftermath of Western colonialism which brought us the notion of white supremacy. This ad still carries visible traces of what postmodernists call “the metanarratives of our colonial culture and history”.
5. The advertising industry has helped shape ideal lifestyles by selling products on the basis that they conform to said ideals. They dictate what real beauty is that put pressures on people. This is hegemony.
6. Hegemony implies the dominance of one social group and its ideas, values, and beliefs over other social groups. The ideology of the ruling class, media included, become the dominant worldview of a society.
7. Stereotyping cannot be denied. This ad exaggerates difference that results to antagonisms between groups which have empirical evidences based on the reactions of the netizens in the comment section.
8. If we take intentional approach in Stuart Hall’s “representation”, this ad of GlutaMAX represents the intention of the producer. This would mean that the communication and marketing staff, bosses included, would persuade us to believe a certain ideology so they can use our buying power. For their benefit, of course.
9. That’s why Stuart Hall’s encoding and decoding model is very timely nowadays especially in the advent of social media. For example, the ads that we see on Facebook like GlutaMAX must be analyzed first before we give in to their marketing strategies.
10. It may seem harmless for you but you’ll never realize it until Ideological State Apparatus in the form of communication and media work in you. Althusserian media disseminates ideology to the masses. Therefore, decode the message critically, and not passively.
Whether white or black, it doesn’t matter. Conforming to the hegemonic standards of beauty imposed to us by society should have been debunked in this day and age.
Being a communication and media practitioner is not bad, insensitivity does.
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*images CTTO
Here, I win. 