Investigating on the Aura Breakage Process and Genuineness of Woman's Concept in the Propaganda of the Postmodern Era and Its Reflection in Iran

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Master of Arts Research, Kamal-ol-Molk University of Art and Architecture, Nowshahr, Iran (Corresponding Author).

2 Associate Professor, Department of Performing Arts, Faculty of Performing Arts and Music, Fine Arts Campus, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. mbakhtiarari@ut.ac.ir

Abstract

 
Women have long been object of attraction for monetary purposes, and history has proven that women and their appearance have always been considered as a major part of ads for several industries. Even in some Islamic countries such as Iran, this use is possible to be traced, and this important issue has not yet received the attention it deserves.  The major concern of the present research is considering  woman as the object and content of the artistic works for financial purposes. Also, the present article aims to study the issue of women as objects within the framework of the ideas proposed by the famous German philosopher of the Frankfurt school, Walter Benjamin. The research starts its discussion with the evolution of the concept of women in the realm of conceptual arts, and more precisely in pictures, photography and the huge wave of pop art movement in the consumerist era in which we are living. The study makes use of Benjamin’s idea named “Breaking of the Aura of an Artistic Work”, and the mechanical reproduction which follows it. By breaking the Aura of an artistic work, we mainly mean the decrease of the value level of the artistic works from a sublime level to a very popular one, and changing the artistic productions in terms of the value they always enjoyed and were respected for. The current research tries to answer the question that why women are the undetectable and undeniable parts of the consuming goods in the advertisements, and how this tight relation can be explained in terms of Walter Benjamin’s ideas. Has really the value of arts, and the value of the women used as the object of these advertisements been decreased? Why is it so, and what has paved the way for the current situation? To what extent is the industry responsible for this, and to what extent the capitalist approach to life style may be blamed? How is it that even the Islamic countries and the countries who claim to be opposing the capitalist life style have also been affected by this wave? The present article tries to touch these issues, although it puts Iran in the priority of its research. Therefore, the article also deals with this issue in the modern Iran, before and after the Islamic revolution of 1978, and considers the emergence of breaking of women’s Aura in the Iranian ads and slogans, considering the limitations that the Iranian culture considers and sometimes imposes for this work. As we know, women should be covered in social media, no nudity is permitted, and women should not wear revealing dresses. Also, heavy makeups and close up camera shots were not allowed for a long time from women, and all these seem to be some major obstacles in showing women and making them the objects of the ads. However, It seems that among the several arts that we may consider to be attacked by this idea, photography and cinema are more vulnerable. But how can this gradual change of women to “goods” can be explained? This question may not be answered easily, and a comprehensive reply is beyond the scope of an article. Also, the present article is not supposed to consider all sorts of advertisements, and limits itself to the painted and printed billboards used for this purpose, but  in order to achieve the important objective of this article, several instances of advertisements have been considered and introduced, and have all been later on analyzed in terms of the ideas put forward by Walter Benjamin, in the hopes to pave the way for further studies. The results are interesting, in that they represent some inevitable and undeniable similarities in different cultures, and no matter if the advertisement has been produced in an Islamic country or a western one, similar approaches to the presence of women are seen in the design of advertisements. No matter to what extent the culture of the question claims to defend the social rights of women, it seems that when it comes to money making for the industry, women are degraded to some simple objects to draw the attention of the customers, many of whom believed to be men.
 

Keywords

References

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URLs:
URL1.www. Buzzfeed.com
URL2.www.qiachb.ir
URL3.www.pinterest.co.uk
URL4.www.vista.ir
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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