Allegories of the contemporary: articulations and effects between cultural and consumption identities

Abstract

This paper investigates the ways through which different articulations between cultural and consumption identities have been produced in advertising. It analyzes two advertising videos of Natura Cosmeticos S.A. and two of Coca Cola Company. For analysis purposes, the videos have been regarded as non-school cultural pedagogies because, although they do not have a curriculum in the form of school planning and organization of what should be taught, they produce different ways of being and belonging. The analysis evidences that different allegories have been spread by the videos: the naturalization of cultural identities and their use as resources; the increasingly closer relationship between consumption and citizenship; the feeling of belonging and solidarity by means of consumption, which does not know geographical borders. Capturing and describing such elements and their meanings seem to be extremely important to teacher education. This involves learning to deal with consumption appeals and impositions, and offering resistance (i.e. it generates possibilities of choice) amidst what seems to be an overwhelming power in contemporaneity.