The Serax (oxazepam) advertisement of the late 1960's was published in a medical journal as a way to promote their product to physicians. During a time of great socio-political change for women, the print campaign focuses on the anxiety and irritability of housewives. however, the ad has to pathologize women in order to create a necessity for the medication. This advertisement is worthy of analysis because of the continuation of women being pathologized as medically abnormal in depression medication advertisements, and the persuasion techniques used through photo and text in order to over come the rhetorical problem of Serax becoming medically significant.
The major findings of this article are as follows:
1. The advertisement uses pathology in order to make a market for the medication. In order to achieve this Serax must create the idea that there is a medical problem that only their medication can fix.
2. The advertisement’s use of a grid design system allows the focus of the photograph to be solely upon the woman. This tactic allows the audience to infer that the prime focus of the advertisement is the woman, instead of depression as a medical disorder.
3.The use of “you” through out the advertisement creates a feeling of personal responsibility. With the repetitive use of “you”, the language suggests that Serax places the importance of this woman’s health upon its readers. Due to it appealing directly to physicians this is a key part in the persuasion tactics.
4. The use of pathologicalization of women continues to create a negative medical stigma of women, which is prevalent today. Instead of recognizing the image of a woman’s mind and body as healthy, advertisements continue to play into the concept of women being medically abnormal.
By using the photograph and text of the ad to continue the pathologicalization of women, the ad provides physicians with persuasive reasons to prescribe the medication. However, until the realization is made in society that women are not medically abnormal, they will continue to be a target for depression medications.
Discussion Questions:
1. Do you feel that Serax add focuses more on the pathologicalization of women rather than health?
2. How would this advertisement continue to influence physicians into continually viewing women as “ill”?
3. Do you feel that society could learn to take control of their own health if they realized they were being called into patient hood?
4, What aspect of health do you feel was overlooked during the 1960's in relation to this ad?
This advertisement influences physicians into viewing women as continuously ill because the copy in the ad suggests that women exist in a state of anxiety, tension and agitation. According to this ad, women need medication to be "set free" from the pressures of their daily work and the biological make up of their body. While this is definitely a disturbing feature of the ad, what I find most unsettling about the copy is that it hands the responsibility to set the woman free to a man. The model is pictured as a prisoner to her housework. There could be several solutions to breaking out of that mental prison, such as changing the environment for housewives and letting their husbands share some of their responsibilities or empowering women to be educated and working outside of the home. But instead of giving the right back to women to set themselves free, this ad hands it to the physician, which in this time period was certainly a man.
ReplyDeleteIn response to question 3, who's to say that members of our society aren't, at least on some level, aware of their patienthood? Could an entire population really have missed the goal of the plethora of medical advertisements seen every day? It could be that, in our quick-fix society, this patienthood as seen as a positive thing: rather than having to search for a drug or pill or treatment, ads are tailored specifically to us, cutting down our workload dramatically and allowing us to feel or look or be 'better' easily. This in and of itself is a problem. We have allowed ourselves to become willing targets of greedy pharmaceutical companies, constantly prompting them for more pills in order to get our fix. I feel that, in order for society to gain control over health, it would need to understand, not that we have all been called to patienthood, but what this modernized patienthood has done to us and how 'Big Pharma' takes advantage of that.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with Kelly that this article is pathologizing women by utilizing the key words of "can't set her free" implying that she is unable to cope, unstable and through the image of her face as stressed through the biting of her finger nails. But I also believe that the article is using pathos and drawing on the audience's emotions as a selling tactic. The advertisement's use of black and white creates an almost sobering depressive mood which I believe ads to sadness that the audience could feel. And by creating a person bars through household appliance, could it not be a comparison of the women as a caged bird? This thought of a caged bird can also be seen in the woman's face and body gestures. This emotional distraught created by this women and powerful image of bars could be an emotional tug on the audience thus wanting to help her adding to the selling power of this artifact.
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