Textual Poaching: Fear in False Advertising

Fear in False Advertising

Artist's Statement

I am a 20 year old, LDS, American male who attends BYU. There are a lot of different things that I, according to society, should be doing at this point in my life. Men my age are supposed to be enlisting in the military, to prove their dedication to their country and to their masculinity. Men my age are supposed to be getting married, so they can have a wife to take care of. Men my age are supposed to be having kids, the ultimate sign of your life being on track. And if you are a man my age, at least at BYU,  and you aren't doing these things they you should be on a mission, to prove your dedication to God and Church and to make everyone proud that you are doing what you should be doing.

Except, I'm not doing any of those things. I am 20 years old and I'm not in the military, I'm not married or even engaged, I'm obviously not having children anytime soon, and I have not and likely will not go on a mission. I am an anomaly, at least according to the ideal. Honestly, all of these things that I am supposed to be doing, that I am so clearly failing at doing, terrify me to no end. I can barely take care of myself, let alone a spouse and kids. And so, I've taken old advertisements of what men are typically supposed to do, and combined them with still from old horror movies. Army recruitment propaganda mixed with Michael Myers, the Preach My Gospel cover mixed with Leatherface, an ad for fatherhood mixed with Linda Blair, a man and a woman passionately kissing on the streets of New York mixed with Freddy Krueger. Mixing the typical with the horrific, to show that I am both missing these seemingly important milestones, and actually, to some extent, scared of these things to varying degrees.

This is similar to Eileen Maxson's Cinderella+++, which mixed classic Disney scenes with audio from more modern films. She gave a new meaning, a darker meaning, to these innocent classics to show just how different reality is from the expected. Following along with the idea of an incongruity between societal and medial depictions of what it means to be a man, and what I experience as a man, recent studies have shown that men are incredibly effected by the sexist way they are portrayed in advertisements. The Huffington Post wrote an article entitled"Be A Man" which discusses how advertisements, both modern and not, are promoting a hyper-masculinity that is causing men to feel generally discouraged with their own self image, and this in turn is leading to low self-esteem, poor body image and, in extreme cases, things like drug use and violence towards women.