Defining advertising: A carnivalesque perspective IJJMC Defining advertising: A carnivalesque perspective Gulnara Z. Karimova Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research, Almaty, Kazakhstan Email: gulnara.z.karimova@google.com Using the concepts of literary criticism advanced by Mikhail Bakhtin, this paper provides an alternative methodology for reading advertising text and demonstrates how carnival culture is incorporated advertising texts, such as an on-line commercial for JBS Men’s underwear, and print advertisements for Glassing Sunglasses and Mattel-Scrabble. Carnivalesque analysis suggests that advertising has always been part of popular culture and is influenced by earlier carnivalesque forms. When analyzed within the carnivalesque framework, advertising text can be understood not only in terms of a cultural narrative reproducing the capitalist social order, but also running counter to dominant capitalist ideology. This paradox has an important implication on how one perceives and defines advertising. Keywords: Advertising, Bakhtin, carnival, laughter, popular culture Word count: 6, 613 INTRODUCTION Various textual practices have been interpreted within the Bakhtinian framework of carnival, including films, such as The Big Lebowski (Martin & Renegar, 2007), Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and 12 Monkeys (Dimitrakaki & Tsiantis, 2002); 1950s British comedies (Sobchack, 1996); the animated series The Simpsons (Gray, 2006); the news and entertainment journal The Onion (Achter, 2008), horror fiction such as The Shining (Holland-Toll, 1999), and Frankenstein; The Modern Prometheus (Holquist, 1994); TV program Jackass (Brayton, 2007); and the political campaign of Jesse Ventura (Janack, 2006). These carnivalesque interpretations have classified popular culture in many different ways: as escapist, as resistant to the ideology of capitalism, containing “visions of utopia, collectivity or even emancipation” (Dimitrakaki & Tsiantis 2002: 209). Although advertising is one of the most ubiquitous manifestations of popular culture (Jowett, 1996: XI), it has never been examined as a form of resistance to the ideology of capitalism. On the contrary, advertising is seen as central to the reproduction of capitalist social order (Jhally, 2000). However, the concept of carnival can form an analytical framework that views advertising as containing ambiguous voices that support and at the same time, resist the dominant ideology of capitalism. Thus, a carnivalesque analysis provides additional information to various phenomena of popular culture, including advertising, by revealing the liberating power of popular-cultural texts and defeating the fear of death that is used by official institutions to expand their hegemony (Bauman, 2004; Lachmann, 19880-1989). By revealing the paradox embedded in advertising texts, a carnivalesque analysis leads to reexamining the definition of advertising. This article opens with a discussion of the concept of advertising followed by an analysis of the Bakhtinian notion of carnival. The study continues with an analysis of various advertising text – the representative examples of carnivalesque imaginary, – such as on-line commercial for JBS underwear, print advertisements for Glassing Sunglasses, and Scrabble. The article‟s conclusion discusses the author‟s findings based on the analysis of the aforementioned text and proposes a revised definition of advertising. International Journal of Journalism and Mass Communication Vol. 1(1), pp. 002-010, March, 2014. © www.premierpublishers.org. ISSN: 2143-2686 Conceptual Article