Background: The forms of violence and misogyny are very prolific in popular culture. In pornographic genres, it is common to find women the subjects of assault, violence and death, often in sexualized contexts such as in snuff films. One might assume that such representations would be confined to hard core pornography, but in fact one finds numerous representations of death in mainstream advertising. As the ads below might suggest—both in their numbers and themes—everyone should be worried about advertising.
Focus on the Ads: This set of ads might be the most disturbing ads. Consider the basic idea at work here—advertisers and corporations are saying that DEATH CAN BE USED TO SELL PRODUCTS. This alone should make us stop being consumers! In addition to the many corpse ads (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 26, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37), we see ads depicting shark attacks (11), burning (5, 25), being hit by a train (9), hanging (10, 15), being ground up (14), being a drunk driver (17), being shot (23, 24, 27), falling out of a window (38), and being brutalized (28, 29, 30).
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