Glamour
Glamour, according to Practices of Looking, is a desired state of perfection. Glamour has a powerful presence in images and advertisements because it exemplifies the ideal. It plays on the consumer’s innate desire to acquire a sense of beauty, perfection and more abstractly, happiness. Images of glamour in our society portray beautiful people with beautiful possessions doing beautiful acts in beautiful settings. It is, in reality, an unattainable state however one’s inability to achieve a level of glamour does not seem to hinder him from still striving (through the act of buying the products advertised, etc.).
In the movie, How To Get Ahead in Advertising, the protagonist is a successful advertising executive. He does not see people as individuals, he views them as demographics; as predictable statistics and potential minds ripe for his manipulation. He embodies both sides to glamour throughout the course of the movie. At the beginning, he exemplifies glamour from the media standpoint. We see him living a glamorous lifestyle and we see his attempts at creating a false sense of glamour to sell to the public. However, he soon falls pray to the very principle he uses on a daily basis-he becomes obsessed with achieving a glamorous state for his campaign to sell boil cream. No idea is good enough, no idea is perfect enough, no idea is glamorous enough for him to deem ready to go to market.
