Studliness: Postman, McLuhan and a Moment of Marketed Masculinity
Imagine an advertisement in your favorite magazine. You come across it as you are flipping through the articles on muscle building, or bird houses, or flowerbeds, or Dior bags, or parenting, or whatever it is you read about. The advertisement is generally nonstriking… typical even. The advertisement is for a new truck and contains nothing outside the ordinary: big truck, desert or mountain scene for the background and lots of fine print at the bottom. However, there is one word that stands out, and it is really the most noticeable feature of the ad: the word STUD. Just like that, in all caps… maybe even BOLD: STUD. Maybe you just keep going; well, likely you just keep going and think nothing about what you saw. But, that image, and the word, pose many questions: What is the role of vehicles in our lives? Are they for transportation or for status? Are they connected to masculinity or femininity? Penis size? If the background was a city scene would the company still be advertising a truck? Would they still use the word STUD? And in all caps? Most importantly, what are the consequences of adverting like this?
That’s a lot of questions, and I don’t all the answers. What I do know is this: Marshall McLuhan said “All advertising advertises advertising.” And that is true. All advertising is just an advertisement for an idea; this is an economy of ideas – bought and sold. And our truck advertisement… well, it is just selling the idea of masculinity, or “studliness” perhaps. The message is clear: buy this truck and you will be a stud. In fact, by presenting the truck with the word stud, the truck becomes analogous with the word/idea of “studliness” – if the truck is achievable, so is the idea.
If you take this advertisement, along with McLuhan’s quote, and apply it to the ideas Neil Postman expressed in his essay “The Word Weavers/ The World Makers,” it becomes clear that truck in the advertisement is physically an “a definition.” Sure, that sounds funny, but what Postman means by “a definition” and not “the definition” is that definitions are fluid, changeable and numerous. In the instance of the advertisement, the truck is a definition for masculinity, for “studliness.” Postman argues that the definitions we accept as our own shape our would view, as definitions exist only to help us put the world into understandable packages. If we follow Postmen, it means that by buying to the idea that the truck really is a physical manifestation, a physical definition, of masculinity, then if we want to be masculine we must posses the truck. This is a scary though… it points to how we become manipulated by advertisements and how our would views become skewed.
Before you decided to buy, think: am I buying the object or the idea.
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