Friday, March 19, 2010

1. Interpellation:


Ideologies "hail" subjects. Images interrupt the individual, rendered a subject through this action.
• Images target their viewers as individuals even when the image is in the public domain
• Advertising interpellates consumers strongly or implicitly by constructing them within the "you" of the ad
• Producers of media aim to use codes and conventions that will most effectively interpellate the subject
• As subjects, viewers tend to forget that the image is produced and aimed to the public. Viewers subconsciously mistake themselves as the individual for whom the image's meaning is personally intended. - Practices of Looking

"I am sitting in class, it is extraordinarily boring and 'Oh My!', I get the sudden urge to go to the bathroom! I pick my favorite stall (the second one), I look around for a bit, and then my gaze stops on the only thing to really stare at in the stall: the green advertising on the wall. I start reading it without putting too much thought into it, until one particular sentence grabs my attention, "...unless YOU HAVE TO PEE or something." Wait, no, it must have been a mistake. Let me reread this... nope, that's right! That little Wind mobile ad definitely has my attention now! I feel awfully exposed all of a sudden."

Interpellation can be defined as an interruption of someone's narrative, "the way that images and media texts seem to call out to us, catching our attention" (Practices of Looking 2nd Ed, p.50), which is exactly what this ad does - really drawing us in to inspect the ad more fully, talking to us as a viewer, catching us right in that action which gives more weight to those specific words, making us all of a sudden all too aware of the ad, the bathroom stall, and our action. As creepy as this message is, how can one forget an ad that "caught" them during one of their most private moments? Admittedly, it is a very affective method, one that in bathroom stalls though, crosses the boundary of privacy.

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