Our culture has been defined through the portrayal of messages being promoted in the media on a daily basis. There has been significant controversy surrounding the idea of which items should and should not be circulated throughout the media circuit. An idea that has come up from the negative side of the circulation of media has been regarded as subliminal messaging, which is the practice of placing hidden messages in certain advertisements and other media outlets to promote certain ideas to the general population.
Subliminal messaging has been known to exist within various advertisements to appeal to the senses of the consumer and encourage them to buy more products. The three areas in which companies seem to focus their efforts on are sexual appearance, promotion of ideas, and ideas that society deems as acceptable. For example, in the image below, this Pepsi can seems harmless and is an image that would simply promote their product. However, if you look closely, the images in the can are designed in manner that spell out the word sex. The correlation between Pepsi and sex is a marketing tactic to attract the consumer to want to buy their product at a higher rate.
Society has been built upon the idea of being accepted by fellow peers. There are certain aspects, if not followed, will lead to critical judgment and possible isolation. The media circulates things that may or may not be accepted by every member of society, however they seem to be accepted by the general population. People are conditioned to be attract to sexual ideas and ideas that are materialistic. While some of these messages are out in the open, a good amount of messages are placed in television shows of all genres. There seems to be a movement toward shaping the perception of the mind through the youth of our society. As seen below, there are sexual ideas placed within youth cartoon programs such as SpongeBob. This leads to the question of whether the media is pushing the boundaries well past the moral limit.
So what is my stance on subliminal messaging? I believe that is quite immoral and unjustifiable to subject the general population to this type of promotion. It allows for these corporations to take the position of God and take away our opportunity of free will to choose which ideas to believe in and which ideas to disregard. Also, there is the promotion of wrong ideas. For example, our society is moving away from a world of morality and closer toward a world where sexual images are deemed as appropriate. If subliminal messaging continues with its focus on sexualized images, will there be a decrease of moral behavior and a true following of Christianity?
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