This collection of papers focuses on advertising and its relationship to truth. It contains fourteen papers that are arranged in three sections: “Views, times and places”, “Demography”, and “Gender”. Apart from one, these studies are empirical analyses where authors deal with the question of (un)realistic representation of the content in advertising, describing the main distortions. Also, they suggest implications of such representations for the field in general. The aim of this edited collection is to provide space for studies based on empirical-cultural theories where the focus is on culture, rather than currently prevalent analyses framed in theories of effects. The editor, Amir Hetsroni, however, stresses that for various reasons, many of the studies have nevertheless relied on frameworks based on “effect theories such as cultivation, social learning, and modelling” (3), and that his aim to fill the academic gap in the area has therefore only been partially fulfilled.
The first section includes seven contributions. While Phil Hopkins and Yoel Cohen discuss perspectives from which it is possible to see advertising (the first author, from a philosophical perspective, the second author, from a theological perspective), the rest of the papers relate to time and space. Amir Hetsroni presents two studies: in the first, he analyses the change of values in Israeli advertising through time, while in the second he discusses the representation of the past and related nostalgia. Three authors situate their contributions in discussions of space: Dror Abend-David studies the “unique aspects” of translation in advertising, Michael L. Maynard discusses real and pseudo-real spaces as he compares Japanese and US TV ads, and Shaheed N. Mohammed presents a study on “Arab and western images in Middle East satellite television advertising.”
The underlying topic of the second part, entitled “Demography”, is the representation of the people featured in ads. Peter Simcock thus discusses the depiction of older people and provides a “state of the art review of studies on old people in advertising” (5). Christopher Chávez, Meghan Moran, & Sandra Ball-Rokeach highlight the workings of ideology in advertising; they conclude that “Hispanic advertising space is one of de facto segregation” (160). Finally, Wei-Na Lee & Sejung Marina Choi study celebrities and their representation in Korean and Japanese ads.
The last four papers are combined in the section related to gender. Here, the reader will find studies related to the representation of women and men in ads, such as that of Narissra Maria Punyanunt-Carter, Daniel Linden, & Kent Truett, whose historical study of the representation of masculinity and femininity in ads concludes that distinctions related to traditional roles of women and men still persist. The next chapter is a literature review of sexuality in advertising in the US context by Linda Godbold Kean &d Shekinah Thomas, but from the perspective of ethnic differences. The penultimate contribution, in which the author challenges the common opinion related to the use of sex and violence in advertising over the years, is Amir Hetsroni's third article in this collection. Finally, the collection concludes with a contribution related to fashion advertising. Here, Paloma Díaz Soloaga & Natalia Quintas Froufe demonstrate that advertising can assist in the elimination of fashion-related differences in various cultures.
