#appeal

The television commercial has mounted the most serious assault on capitalist ideology since the publication of Das Kapital. To understand why, we must remind ourselves that capitalism, like science and liberal democracy, was an outgrowth of the Enlightenment. Its principal theorists, even its most prosperous practitioners, believed capitalism to be based on the idea that both buyer and seller are sufficiently mature, well informed and reasonable to engage in transactions of mutual self-interest. If greed was taken to be the fuel of the capitalist engine, the surely rationality was the driver. The theory states, in part, that competition in the marketplace requires that the buyer not only knows what is good for him but also what is good. If the seller produces nothing of value, as determined by a rational marketplace, then he loses out. It is the assumption of rationality among buyers that spurs competitors to become winners, and winners to keep on winning. Where it is assumed that a buyer is unable to make rational decisions, laws are passed to invalidate transactions, as, for example, those which prohibit children from making contracts...Of course, the practice of capitalism has its contradictions...But television commercials make hash of it...By substituting images for claims, the pictorial commercial made emotional appeal, not tests of truth, the basis of consumer decisions. The distance between rationality and advertising is now so wide that it is difficult to remember that there once existed a connection between them. Today, on television commercials, propositions are as scarce as unattractive people. The truth or falsity of an advertiser's claim is simply not an issue. A McDonald's commercial, for example, is not a series of testable, logically ordered assertions. It is a drama--a mythology, if you will--of handsome people selling, buying and eating hamburgers, and being driven to near ecstasy by their good fortune. No claim are made, except those the viewer projects onto or infers from the drama. One can like or dislike a television commercial, of course. But one cannot refute it. ↗

— Neil Postman

#commercials #drama #emotional-appeal #falsities #idiocy

His voice was like soothing melted chocolate. I wanted him to ooze his lovely voice all over my naked body. ↗

— James Lusarde

#erotic-romance #erotica #language #love #men-s-voices

I had to admit the man looked amazing in jeans. The ancient denim clung lightly to his hips and followed the long lines of some remarkable thigh muscles. And although I made a point of not checking out his rear view, my peripheral vision was having a very good day.” ~ Haven Travis on Hardy Cates ↗

— Lisa Kleypas

#rear #sex-appeal #sexy #sexy

I would do it today because the thing that appealed to me was not necessarily the mechanics of the robot, but it was his personality and how funny and charming he was. ↗

— John Badham

#because #charming #funny #his #how

I don't have an iPod! It's never appealed to me, really. ↗

— Freema Agyeman

#i #ipod #me #never #really

As I pass it, I feel as if I saw a dear old mother, sweet in her weakness, trembling at the approach of her dissolution, but not appealing to me against the inevitable, rather endeavouring to reassure me by her patience, and pointing to a hopeful future. ↗

— Thomas Edward Brown

#appealing #approach #dear #dissolution #endeavouring

No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction. ↗

— Samuel Butler

#beyond #cases #common #her #jurisdiction

But short films are not inferior, just different. I think the short gives a freedom to film-makers. What's appealing is that you don't have as much responsibility for storytelling and plot. They can be more like a portrait, or a poem. ↗

— Jane Campion

#different #film-makers #films #freedom #gives

To consider only one other such witness: the followers of the Buddha have at least as much right to appeal to individual and social experience in support of the authority of the Eastern saviour. ↗

— William Kingdon Clifford

#authority #buddha #consider #eastern #experience

I think opera has gained a kind of glamorous appeal. It's a live performance that aligns all of the arts, and when it is represented in the media, in film in particular, it is presented as something that is really a special event, whether it's a great date or something that's just hugely romantic. ↗

— Renee Fleming

#arts #date #event #film #gained