The difference between Big Brother and Walmart advertisements

Because each of our daily experiences "could be considered an element of popular culture" (Sellnow, p. 3), everything could be analyzed. Although, it does not mean everything is worthy of being analyzed. In other words, according to the Sellnow's definition of mediated popular culture, "everyday objects, actions, and events we experience through a media channel that may influence us to believe and behave in certain ways" (p. 2) could warrant criticism. But are those things really interest us in popular culture studies? Of course not!

We study popular culture for many reasons. One of those is to understand people that surround us and the world we live in: popular culture has the power to “brainwash” their audience by showing them examples of values, beliefs, behaviors, and so forth (Sellnow, p. 7-8). Because of these statements, we are interested in studying meaningful texts.

Let me explain. There is a subtle difference between analyzing a very well-known reality-TV show and a basic Walmart advertisement even if both warrant criticism. Indeed, if Michael H. Eaves and Michael Savoie wrote the article Big Brother, it is – partly – because of the omnipresence of this media and of the power that have reality-TV shows to make people identify themselves to the characters, who are real people. It also has a huge impact on values, beliefs, and behaviors of unawareness audiences.

Quite the reverse, a Walmart advertisement – which for sure the first aim is to convince people to shop at Walmart – is more mundane because of it obvious reduced time face to the TV show (30 seconds against many seasons for Big Brother) but also because of this lower impact on people. Of course, with the exception of cult advertisements that are now part of the United States popular culture because publicists did their job pretty well. I can mention here as an example all the derived advertisements result from the initial – and very simple – concept "Got Milk?"

If we follow the logic of narrative criticism, the example of a particular recent Walmart advertisement about ice creams is interesting. We first see a woman eating a freeze pop, which colored the woman's lips with blue. Suddenly, a man arrives and asks her if she wants to share popsicles, but she answered no because she tries to eat healthy. The funny thing is we still see her blue lips so we know and the guy understands that she is lying. Here, the first event is the woman eating, the second the man asking. They follow a chronological organization, are related and talk about the same subject.