Essay Proposal

Title


"Identity and Desire in Consumerism"


In my essay i plan to talk about the brand Apple what it stands for and how it has build its brand identity through its advertising campaigns to not only make the brand well recognized but to make it a "necessary" commodity in today's culture. I will touch on the Ipod adverts and how they use celebrities to grab their identity so the brand will exist in society with the same identity.
I want to talk continue and talk about the message apples brand is sending society and how it is influencing people to buy their products within today's consumer society.

Main points

• Break down of apples brand and identity
  -detailed break down of what the brand stands for and how this influences buyers 
• Ipod adverts and how they use celebrity influence to help sell their product.
  -Integrating all the associations with celebrities within the actual product and promoting the product by you consuming it yourself back to you. 
• Consumer society and apple products

Potential points

• How apple's itunes has become the decline for HMV stores

Reading List:

Noami Klein - No Logo

Gives a good break down of adverts and how they integrate themselves within society to end up being a consumer commodity. Apple Case Studies.

Z. Bauman - Consuming Life

touches on consumerism within society, talks about how by falling into the consumerist society you invest in your own social status ect. Very good book for the break down of consumerism.

O. Wallis - On Brand / The Brand Handbook

Breaks down branding and large corporate identities,  also gives some Apple Case Studies.

The Rebel Sell

In Short, talks about how "rebellion" is cool and how its been marketed within society and the professional workplace.

J. Berger - Ways of Seeing

Always helpful, good old John, B.

G. Cook - The Discourse of Advertising

Theories


Michael Fuacult - Panapticism

How a brand can influence us to buy their product within the store for example the apple store and how their "brand experience" may influence buyers.

Karl Marx - Commodity Fetish

How we will buy things we dont need.

Lecture 6 - Cities & Film

Georg Simmel (1858-1918)

Simmel is asked to lecture on the role of intellectual life in the city but instead reverses the idea and writes about the effect of the city on the individual.

Urban Sociology

The resistance of the individual to being levelled, swallowed up the social technological mechanism. 

Architect louis Sullivan 1856-1924

• creator of the modern skyscraper
• an influential architect and critic in chicago
• form follows function

Details from Guaranty Building

Charles Scheeler

no figures present in his photographic work.

Photographing ford motoring company plant.

Severe Dyslexia and bad lecturers make a really good combination to not having a clue what this lecture is about, or what to write. Neither does it help to sit through a totally irrelevant lecture to my course. 

Stock market crash of 1923

Factories close, unemployment, Great depression.

"Man With a movie Camera"

explores the role of the movie camera within the city. It expores various types of camera shots, freeze frame, slow motion, double exposure. The camera has access to intimate moments like the bedroom and also the streets. 

Charles Baudelaire

"a person who walks the city in order to experience it"

art should capture this

Simultaneously apart from and a part of the crowd

Walter Benjamin

adopts the concept of the urban observer as an analytical tool.

Flaneuse

Arbus/Hopper

shows an inbetween moment, just after or before somehting has happened. Does not say what has happened but leaves it to the imagination. 

Sophie calle suite venitienne 1989

follows people round in Venice. Somewhere between stalking and a love affair.......... 

Venice

City as a labyrinth of streets and alleyways in which you can get lost but at the same time will always end up back where you begin.

The detective

Wants to provide photographic evidence of her existance

His photos and notes on her are displayed next to her photos and notes about him.

Set in Paris

She gets her mother to get a investigator, then she leads him round the city of to places of her childhood.

Weegee Arthur Felig

Followed round the emergency services so he knows when an incident happens, then goes to the crime scenes and takes photo's, he had a mobile dark room in his car. So he could develop the photos instantly and sell to the press.