I also looked at the written book which is based on this documentary as this would be easier to recite quotes from;
John Berger 'Ways of Seeing' (Book)
Chapter 1
Page 7
"Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognises before it can speak...
...but there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world without words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it."
We see before we read words.
Chapter 7
Page 129
"In the cities in which we live, all of us see hundreds of publicity images every day of our lives. No other kind of image confronts us so frequently. In no other form of society in history has there been such a concentration of images, such a density of visual messages. "
"One may remember these messages but briefly one takes them in, and for a moment they stimulate the imagination by way of either memory or expectation. The publicity image belongs to the moment.We see it as we turn a page, as we turn a corner, as a vehicle passes us. Or we see it on a television screen whilst waiting for the commercial break to end."
we see publicity everywhere every day. Much like McDonalds do and the Nazi's did. The image belongs to a movement as we see it as we are moving around. Even if we don't take it in properly, we do subconsciously.
Page 130
"We are so accustomed to being addressed by these images that we scarcely notice their total impact. "
"...publicity as a system only makes a single proposal. It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more. This more, it proposes, will make us in some way richer - even though we will be poorer by having spent our money. "
Advertising proposes that we can better our lives and make ourselves richer even thoguh we have to spend our money and literally become poorer.
Page 132
"Publicity is about social realtions, not objects. Its promise is not of pleasure, but of happiness : happiness as judged from the outside by others. The happiness of being envied is glamour. "
Page 140
"Publicity needs to turn to it's own advantage the traditional education of the average spectator-buyer. What he has learnt at school of history, mythology, poetry can be used in the manufacturing of glamour. Cigars can be sold in the name of a King, underwear in connection with the sphinx, a new car by reference to the status of a country house....these vague historical or poetic or moral references are always present. "
Page 142
"The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with this present way of life. Not with the way of life of society, but with his own within it. It suggests that if he buys what it is offering, his life will become better. It offers him an improved alternative to what he is."
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