Iconography and Consumerism: Advertising Imagery in John Berger’s Ways of Seeing

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-535-5_17How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Glamorous; Pastiche; Spectatorship and Ownership; Consumer culture; Semiotics; Visual impact; Iconography

Abstract

This research paper looks at advertising and how it relates to Marxist theory, highlighting how it contributes to social inequality, capitalist exploitation, and the upholding of prevailing ideologies. In Chapter 7 of his well-known book Ways of Seeing, John Berger explores the societal ramifications of advertising and how visual images affect our perception of the world. This essay analyses how advertising is used by capitalist systems to encourage and sustain consumerism by applying Marxist theory. It looks at how fictitious needs, desires, and commodity fetishism combine to create a solitary and shallow consumer culture. The study also investigates how advertising reinforces prevailing ideologies and maintains class distinctions by acting as a tool of ideological control. Additionally, the study examines how gender and class intersect in advertising, closely examining how images uphold capitalist and patriarchal standards. It investigates how women and other marginalised groups are objectified and exploited, which maintains their subordination and strengthens gendered power relations. By encouraging a critical awareness of the deceptive nature of advertising in capitalist systems, this research paper benefits society.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Sukhpreet Kaur
AU  - Manju
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/03/16
TI  - Iconography and Consumerism: Advertising Imagery in John Berger’s Ways of Seeing
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Creativity, Innovation & Design (ICCID 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 221
EP  - 229
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-535-5_17
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-535-5_17
ID  - Kaur2026
ER  -