1. Gebser Notes on communication and consciousness:
   1. in Gebserʼs work the term “consciousness” does not refer to some inherent state or characteristic, and is not studied as neurochemistry or some sort of inner-workings of the brain, as in human physiology and psychiatry. Rather, consciousness is considered phenomenologically, as the intentionality of awareness, as is also seen in Husserlʼs thought
   2. consciousness structures (the archaic, magic, mythic, mental, and integral describe modalities of communication--expressive and perceptive pathways between human understanding and the world, and consciousness and communication become strongly interrelated; this contribution to communication theory is slowly being realized.
2. Advertisingʼs Integral Rhetoric
   1. For Heidegger (in Krell, 1977) and Merleau-Ponty (see Cezanneʼs doubt), the work of art is less an object, and more a way of revealing and constructing a world; it is a series of attempts at communication. Its formation is the expression of perception, and its reception is the perception of expression. It is possible, and even worthwhile, to consider advertising in the same manner. That is, advertising can be seen not only as a paid and sponsored message addressed to buyers and prospective buyers for the purpose of selling products, services, and ideas, but also as the expression of a social being, a part of the meaningful relationships that make up our lives, an attribution of sense to a world that often appears beyond any sense (Being and Time, sections 14-18). Indeed, it has been argued that advertising fulfills socio-cultural functions once met by art and religion (Dyer, 1982; Berger, 1972).
   2. The fine print is a technical, rational explanation of what the product is (chemically) and what it will do to you (biologically). The ads strive to signify the clear, the ideal, and the conceptual. There are more ways that ads appeal not simply to rationality, but to mentalrational consciousness (a few are bulleted in an effort to save space): Perspective demands a certain relationship between three things--a seeing subject, an object seen, and the space in-between them; the eye sees but is not shown in the picture. Ads in general speak from an anonymous vantage (Williamson).
3. PUBLIC RELATIONS: the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc, in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc.
4. The observation that many people recognize the potential power of advertising, and reflectively, often cynically, declare their immunity, has not stopped advertising from working. The work of ads is like the work of art. Just as art works to inaugurate relationships between humans and the world, so advertising functions to establish perceptions of self, relationships with others, and the world. The world instituted by ads is, of course, quite different from art in many respects, but the rhetorical and communicational nexus is quite similar. Jean Gebserʼs phenomenology of civilization, specifically his cross-cultural studies of artwork, provides insight into the complex workings of advertising rhetoric and illuminates in a new manner the ways that advertising works to persuade--even manipulate--eople into the arena of conspicuous consumption and explains how advertising can work to short-circuit logic.
5. ADVERTISING: the act or practice of calling public attention to one's product, service, need, etc., especially by paid announcements in newspapers and magazines, over radio or television, on billboards, etc.:
6. Consciousness & Communication:
   1. Gebser was a philosopher of culture and comparative civilization. He developed a history of consciousness that reveals several structures that can be seen cross civilizations—the archaic, magic, mythic, mental, and integral. Each of these structures is ever-present in human awareness, and thus the movement from one to another is neither progressive nor developmental, but one may dominate and establish an epistemic and ontological basis for a cultural. The other structures are lived as a potentiality of those people. The dominance of a structure, then, does not imply that one is better than another, but rather that a new foundation of awareness emerges, as when the ancient Greek philosophers placed reason above the hitherto dominant mythos and the philosophical and later scientific life-world was inaugurated.
7. Advertising and Mental-Rational Consciousness
   1. Reason remains the presupposed basis by which human governance functions, we will begin this survey of advertising rhetoric with the most recent mutation of consciousness—what Gebser called the mental-rational. According to Gebser (1991), the mental structuring of consciousness emerged as dominant in Western thought around 1250 A.D., although adumbrations can be found in the classical Greek theory of knowledge, the Hebrew doctrine of salvation and Roman legal and political theory (p. 74).
   2. The defining sign of the mutation occurred scarcely 500 years ago, during the Renaissance, with the invention of perspective and the dawning awareness of three-dimensional space. Perspective, as has been noted by many scholars, is itself an awareness of the world. The word perspective, deriving from the Latin term persepectiva means “seeing through” or “seeing clearly,” and the intentionality expressed in perspectival painting is a seeing through of space (Durer; Panofski, 1955; Gebser, 1991, 19; Merleau-Ponty, 1964; see figure 1).
   3. A television ad for the Pontiac Grand Am also uses the blueprint motif (here in 4-D computer graphics), and makes grandiose claims to technical expertise: The car features a “drive train built to Aerospace standards.”
   4. Perspectival painting expresses the emergence of an awareness of space that locates the seeing-eye, the object seen, and the distance between them (Panofski, 1955, in Gebser, 1991, 19). By expressing space in a way that locates subject, object and distance across a two-dimensional plane, perspectival painting illuminates a perception of space and subject-object relations (Gebser, 1991, 18). Like other forms of expression, however, perspective is an optional way of seeing the world, a way of making sense sensible, a relationship between body and world; it is not a copy, representation or reproduction of the world (Merleau-Ponty, 1964; Berger, 1972). That perspective is an optional interpretation, albeit one with high fidelity to visual communication, can be seen in the simple observation that all cultures, or even all people within a culture, do not represent space perspectively.
   5. The problem-solution formula is a much-used technique in advertising. Advertisers advertise products which claim to solve a problem, and in many cases create the problem that must be solved. This creation of a problem forms a silence from which the solution can speak. Zest soap announces that “soap leaves a film you can feel on your skin;” Zest brand soap can alleviate that problem. Likewise, a Jergens soap ad proclaims that “itchy dry skin is out.” And, Loreal skin creme notes you can “replenish whatʼs lost by day and wake to revitalized skin by morning.” One might argue that all dandruff shampoo ads and feminine hygiene products are examples of creating a problem which can be solved by the use of a product. The duality of the mental-rational structure, discussed above, is here giving way to a polarity--a play of oppositions where one does not choose between but recognizes both.
8. Polarity, Gebser notes, is required in any kind of psychic life; polarity emerges with the human awareness of temporality and the rhythmical movement of nature--day and night; with the latter emerges psyche. From the ambivalent root (mu) a depth of silence is announced from which “speaking” or “word” emerges. Translator of Gebserʼs work, Mickunas (citation), has noted that there is a silent background in our language even today when we speak, a silent richness of speaking which we never announce: This silence recalls the mythic dimension of consciousness.
9. Second, note that perspective meant “seeing clearly,” and the blue sky, in the example above, is the “clear” sky. Indeed, mental-rational consciousness strives for clarity, even at the expense of conceiving of things in an ideal state--a blue sky. The “real,” for mental consciousness, is actually the ideal, the abstract and the conceptual. Consider the ads for Claritin, an allergy relief medicine (see Figure 5). Claritin, as the name implies, makes the connection between clarity of thought, clarity of breath and Claritin medicine. “Calritin,” the ads states, “provides clear benefits,” “clear relief.” “Clarity,” Gebser notes, is where there is no further search.” Indeed, the ad would have us believe precisely that. There are several pictures used in the Claritin ads. One features a sun in the form of a Claritin pill (symbolizing the dawn) rising up above a green field (symbolizing pollen) into a blue sky with fluffy clouds (symbolizing both clarity of sky and potential rain/allergic reaction).
   1. The picture alludes to the dawn, the coming of daylight, and the awakening of mental consciousness. Another picture features a womanʼs face with clear, pronounced forehead--also a symbol of the awakening of mental-rational thought. Adding to the appeal to mental-conceptual consciousness is the inclusion of a large amount of printed text, much of it in highly technical language and in very small print
10. Nature is “out there,” it is objective stuff to be used and defined by man because nature is without mind and is therefore dumb--a play of objects and forces]. We get in ads, as Mulvey showed for cinema, a male gaze and male subject position. Mental-rational ads make, often irrational, appeals to “rights:” Gebser notes that “ʻrightʼ does not simply mean ʻto the rightʼ or ʻthe right sideʼ but also ʻcorrectʼ and ʻdirect,ʼ in the sense of leading toward a goal… The right side represents the masculine as well as the wakeful principle--is the emphasis on the paternal aspect inherent in every legislation and act of judgment” (p. 79).
    1. The appeals to the codes of masculinity, to directional and rational thought, and to linearity and measurement, are all signs of mental-rational consciousness that are found in many ads, consider, for example, ads that sell safety products (e.g., child car seats) so that we do the “right” thing
    2. Mental-rational consciousness is perspectival, spatial, and conceptual; it favors duality, rationality, causality and masculinity. Signs of mental-conceptual consciousness include ego positioning, measurement, individuality, spatialization and appeals to science. We, as readers, are interpellated by a structuring of consciousness that we already understand (even if tacitly), and thus the ads that deploy these signs make sense, even when their claims are extraordinary or even downright comical.
11. Mythical-Imagistic Consciousness
    1. Criticism of contemporary advertising pivots on the observation that modern ads rely more and more on imagery and less and less on rational appeals (see Postman 1985; Ewen 1988; Jhally 1987; Berger 1972). The import of this critique is that mental-rational thought, so clearly manifest in literate, print-based communication, is threatened by the irrationality of imagery. This argument is tied to notions, dating back at least to McLuhan, stating that culture at large is shifting from logical, print-based communication to the predominately visual and imagistic communication of electronic media.
    2. Postman (1985), for example, suggests that spoken and written statements encourage scrutiny and rational contemplation, and that they engage the subject in rational argumentation and logical debate. He suggests further that imagery simply appeals to consciousness. Rhetorically speaking, Postman continues, images are faster than arguments; judgment becomes based on look (is it appealing or not?) and not on logic (does it make sense?), on aesthetics (does it catch my eye?) and not on rational argumentation (given this, then what?). The categories of true and false, fact and fiction, cease to function. Postman suggests that imagery engages the subject in depth, imagery, style, attitude and affective association. That is, images engage the subject in phenomena for which logical criteria do not apply.
    3. The conclusion reached by these and other critics (who argue from within the mental-rational structure of consciousness described above) is that our cultural sense of meaning and discourse, our ideas of history, democracy and citizenship, and our notions of beauty and truth are threatened (Moyers, citation in Collins, 1989, 2). According to these critics, the contemporary citizen is less a critic and more a consumer, less a political participant and more an audience waiting to be amused (Postman, 1985).