Ways Of Seeing
I found Berger's perspective on publicity very engaging but also limited. I feel it true of most types of publicity that it is a medium that acts upon anxiety and people's feelings of inadequacy. I feel he takes this a bit to the extreme when he writes things like publicity thrives off of an idea that through having nothing you are nothing. Fortunately not all of the masses buy into this, AND not all companies/ organizations are publicizing the pursuits of false happinesses. I start thinking about public service ads and how they promote giving back the community or publicity that brings awareness to under known plights (like world hunger, alternative fuel, global warming, bikes).
I agree that on the whole, society conditions us with this idea that the pursuit of happiness is an individual right, and that we can become powerless living in limbo between what we are and what we want to be. I find it funny that as American's we seek out individuality and covet a sense of "different", but when it really comes down to it - people who dance to this different beat are outcasts and ridiculed unless they are able to receive some sort of "approval" and then it's okay to like them and really they are then not longer different because they have been mass accepted.
I feel that fear is a major motivator in life. I think that publicity is effective because it plays more on people's fear of acceptance rather than envy. It is fear that creates stereotypes and allows us to understand others in their most striped down model - void of individuality. I think these ways of understanding are enculturated because of fear. If you look at different countries and historys they do not portray innocence, nostalgia or materials indicating luxury the same way as America. There are different roles of women and men and myth, there are different ways of publicity. As for painting and the direct connections, I feel that art is a way of understanding and people are always going to exercise this way of seeing the world.