Blog Post #3

    1. According to Berger, “publicity”–what we would call advertising–images influence consumers by “images of an alternate way of life.” Berger describes how publicity influences people to shop for more items that present themselves as richer or glamorous. Berger goes on to explain that we are spending money on things we do not need because glamor comes from the eye and the mirror. The same background the photographers are using for their publicity pictures is the same as the oil paintings. The models used in the pictures replaced the goddesses in the oil painting. When people owned these paintings “glamor” didn’t exist. 
    2. Berger argues that oil painting “showed what the owner was already enjoying among his possessions and way of life;” “it enhanced his view of himself as he already was.”  Whereas publicity pictures, “appeal to a way of life that we aspire to or think we aspire to.” These differences are important because when people see publicity they want to be just like them. They want to fit that same “glamorous” lifestyle to feel enviable. We spend more money to fit the description that we witness from models, high-end products, and gorgeous backgrounds. In the past, these oil paintings represented the owners because they were already from a higher class and wealthy. The productions of images for “publicity proposes to each of us in a consumer society that we change ourselves or our lives by buying something more.”
    3. In “The Dream a Far Away Place”, Berger basically explains how fantasy is far from reality. It creates a different world for the consumer. This world is the life consumers aspire to achieve. Advertisement basically manipulates consumers with empty promises to gain value. We are so tempted to fit ourselves in this fantasy because reality doesn’t compare. We as people are dreaming of this fantasy being our world so they can become more glamorous and desirable.