A Study On Effectiveness And Features Of Postmodernist Advertisements—A Narratological Approach

Narratology is the systematic study of narrative and narrative structures. Since narratology entered postclassical period, its research contents have expanded to visual texts. Television advertising is one of the most important visual texts, so the study of television advertisements based on narratological theories becomes one of the significant fields in postclassical narratological researches.In general, advertisements play an important role in publicizing products and spreading ideas. In order to achieve these goals, advertisers should maximize the influence of advertisements on the audience. But these needs cannot be met in ordinary advertisements, which lack artistic or aesthetic innovation or creativity. Advertisements, therefore, should be more innovative, attractive and persuasive to realize the goal of being effective. Thus, advertisement producers try best to integrate narrative skills with postmodernist characteristics in a new creation trend of advertisements.Through the narratological analysis of postmodernist advertisements, this thesis aims to give inspirations to advertisement producers so that they could incorporate the narrative elements with postmodernist features into advertisements. Although the study of narratology has gone throngh a long history, the contents of study mostly focus on literary texts and films. Moreover, the previous analyses conducted on advertisements merely highlight the narrators and narrative strategies of common advertisements. To address these shortcomings, we have chosen eighteen postmodernist advertisements and intend to conduct a narratological study of them to find out elements that could be used in compensating for the demerits of traditional commercials.This thesis, by making a narratological analysis of postmodernist advertisements, aims to find out the advertising effectiveness of this type of advertisements and their features as well. The theoretical framework, narratological theory, is divided in this thesis into the story level and the discourse level. On the story level, the author analyzes the postmodernist advertisements in plot and character, and on the discourse level, the author analyzes the postmodernist features of advertisements in narrator, focalization, time, and space.Postmodernist advertisements with distinctive features can make it much easier for viewers to remember them. And being exquisite and innovative, postmodernist advertisements lend charms to themselves, and enable themselves to stimulate audiences psychologically and mentally. Thus, postmodernist advertisements can leave an incredible impression on audiences and exert deep influence on their thoughts and values. Hence, this thesis contends that, in order to attract the audience, gain their psychological identity, and then to promote products and values, advertisement producers could incorporate postmodernist characteristics to the advertisements they hope to make. In addition, based on the narratological analysis, we have summarized six typical features of these postmodernist advertisements:self-referentiality, loss of narrative closure, the end of cultural hierarchy, parody and pastiche, the belief that all story have been told before, and plenty of irony and humor.