Ways of seeing- Critical review

This is a critical analysis from chapter seven of John Berger’s ‘ways of seeing’ where he talks about the power of publicity.
Initially he talks about the thousands of publicity images that are present in our everyday lives. Such visual images have never been so concentrated before in the history of society. Subconsciously we absorb these messages and briefly take them in and can be successful in stimulating our imaginations either in our memory or through our expectations. As the audience, we are the ones who are constantly passing these images, either travelling, watching the television and even as far as turning over the page of a magazine. However we are the active agents and have the choice to look away, turn off the television or shut the magazine. Despite this, the media are continually bombarding us and the fact that we are static and the industry is dynamic we can never escape the bombardment of publicity.
Publicity is constantly talking and promoting the future even though they belong to the present moment, this is because they constantly have to be made up-to-date and renewed. Although this is the case we are however unaware of it, it is almost as if we have become so accustomed to it that we no longer notice it anymore.
Publicity can be described as a way of promoting Westernisation to the East and what they are lacking. Through capitalism, it is advertising the ideology of a better way of living and making the Eastern culture feel inadequate in the sense they are miles off living in this luxury. This sense of distance is why publicity is about the consumer who is not yet enjoying it thus why it talks in the future tense. Publicity is about social relations and promises happiness as opposed to pleasure. The happiness is what is judged by others on the outside.
It is true that the manufacturers compete against each other, they also enhance each other. It is not just competing messages; it is a language in itself making the same proposal. It is a way of offering one brand against another but ultimately only being one proposal. It is a way of advertising to us that we can improve and transform our lives by buying something more and into the hands of publicity. It promotes the idea that by buying into consumerism we will become in some way richer- even though we will have spent money and therefore be worse off.
The product or opportunity that is being sold offers the buyer the image of themselves being made more glamorous. This then makes him enviable by others. The happiness of being envied is by others, it is a reassurance that you are being observed with interest. We are persuaded of a transformation by showing us people who are supposed to be enviable, and this is what is glamorous. Publicity is the manufacturer of glamour.
I would conclude by saying that John Berger has made several strong arguments against publicity and the effects it has on the world. I agree with the notion that it is yet another capitalist power over society that is gradually sucking us into a Western ideology that is totally biased.