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Leslie Savan, The Sponsored Life: Ads, TV and American Culture (Temple University Press, 1994) In The Sponsored Life: Ads, TV, and American Culture, Leslie Savan, a Village Voice columnist and advertising critic, puts forth the notion that consumers increasingly understand themselves and the world around them within the context of the omnipresent advertising to which they are exposed. Scathingly critical but written with wit and humor, The Sponsored Life is a collection of Savan's columns written for the Voice from 1976 to 1993. Savan tackles topics ranging from the phallic implications in ad cartoon characters to the font favored by advertisers. Rather than organizing her essays chronologically, Savan loosely groups the essays by topic, so we get her earliest work standing alongside her more recent pieces. Since Savan's columns are consistently engaging, this doesn't pose a problem. One of Savan's key arguments throughout is that it is less the product than the idea behind the product (carefully constructed by the advertisers) that influences consumers' sense of identity. Bombarded by powerful images that always represent some product, consumers form associations between brands and personality. "We don't buy the products, we buy the world that presents them," Savan writes, adding that there is often no relationship between a brand and the images that surround it. Savan explodes the myth that viewers can be immune to ads if they so choose, exploring how advertisers attack viewers on a subconscious level, in areas where they are most vulnerable. The key danger of ads, according to Savan, is that they mislead consumers not only about the quality of the product, but also (and this is far more disturbing) about how the world works. Ads twist consumers' sense of logic, implying that success, personality, and solutions to problems can be bought. Equally dangerous is the subtlety of most ads; they can work on a subconscious level influencing the viewer in ways she is not even aware of. According to Savan, there is virtually no escape; even ironic detachment fails to immunize an individual against the power of ads. Since its publication in 1994, The Sponsored Life has enjoyed great popularity among critics and readers alike. The New York Times assessed the book as "[a] smart, stingingly funny collection." A review in the Los Angeles Times was also highly complimentary: "[Savan's] delectably sarcastic analyses offer disturbing insights into the images that millions of citizens seek to adopt." For the most part, critics seem to agree with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dean at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, who offered nothing but praise for Savan's book: "Original. Provocative. Breathtakingly insightful." MORE: “The Inversion of Subversion” Mark Hosler interviews Leslie Savan Savan's Article “Billboard Bashing” on AlterNet |
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