Advertisement is an industry that has been refined over decades of experimentation to be an effective and manipulative tactic utilized by a variety of corporations and businesses. Although the works of Sigmund Freud in “Fetishism,” Jacques Lacan in “Ecrits: A Selection,” and Laura Mulvey in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” are not specific to the practices of advertisement, theories presented within them are applicable to understanding why certain advertisements are successful. While all advertisements are expertly engineered to manipulate an audience into purchasing a product, advertisements which depict and objectify women in order to sell their merchandise present psychological complexity and the incorporation of ideas of psychoanalysts and theorists. Fetishism, in particular the Freudian definition of fetishism, is essential in many advertisements. A common image is that of the product being advertised placed so that it completely obstructs the genitalia of an …show more content…
In this singular visualization, the feminine figure is simultaneously objectified and fetishized by the advertisement, displaying that fetishism as utilized in the lens of an advertisement’s camera supports and enforces societal patriarchy.
In his work titled “Fetishism,” Sigmund Freud defines fetishism as “a substitute for a woman’s phallus which the little boy once believed in and does not wish to forego” (Freud 199). His simple and succinct definition of the fetish applies directly to the presence of an object obstructing the vagina from a consumer’s view. The obstruction of the vagina from view with the product being advertised suspends the belief that a woman has a physical phallus even though a fetishist