I wanted to share these two wonderful articles written by
Dr. Lisa Freitag on the relationships between advertising, medicine, and
our bodies.
This one deals with the concept of the "medical gaze," a perspective from which we differentiate our thinking, feeling personhood from our physical bodies. Dr. Frietag describes this from her own perspective as a pediatrician and as a patient, as both the gazer and the gazed-upon.
She touches briefly on the effects of this perspective on advertising: if we view the body as something that is broken, we can jack up the price for the repair.
We, even as non-doctors, develop a perversion of the medical gaze as we distance ourselves from our bodies. In doing so, we help feed the corporate machine. It is infinitely more difficult to turn a "temple of the soul"-- the body as an inextricable part of a living being with thoughts and feelings-- into a cash cow.
This one deals with the concept of the "medical gaze," a perspective from which we differentiate our thinking, feeling personhood from our physical bodies. Dr. Frietag describes this from her own perspective as a pediatrician and as a patient, as both the gazer and the gazed-upon.
She touches briefly on the effects of this perspective on advertising: if we view the body as something that is broken, we can jack up the price for the repair.
We, even as non-doctors, develop a perversion of the medical gaze as we distance ourselves from our bodies. In doing so, we help feed the corporate machine. It is infinitely more difficult to turn a "temple of the soul"-- the body as an inextricable part of a living being with thoughts and feelings-- into a cash cow.
The idea of viewing your body as an object separate from
yourself is a version of the medical gaze.
yourself is a version of the medical gaze.
Examples of "sickness-cure" language derived from
a medical gaze perspective.
The other one focuses on the use of the word "care" in medical advertising. Dr. Freitag uses Joan Tronto's (of the University of Michigan) "phases of action" of care to try to determine which kind of care the advertising refers to. She concludes that the word "care" has very little to do with actual practices and more to do with making a billboard that sounds nice and inviting. So who's really doing the caring? Dr. Freitag leaves us with this:
Parents change diapers and give nighttime feedings, nurses change dressings and pass medications, and daughters bring dinner to their aging mothers. None of those doctors and clinics and insurance companies are doing any of this, except to sometimes prescribe procedures to be done by others. The work of caring happens out of their sight, and they barely acknowledge its existence or its necessity. “WE CARE” all right.
All ads from: http://www.genderads.com/page3/slideshow-14/
No comments:
Post a Comment