Identification is key

So now you're wondering, "what in the WORLD does Burke have to do with SEX?

I'm sure you have all thought of that exact same question... Although Burke lived in a time of censorship (I'm sure he never dreamed of the hot, racy ads that we see on TV everyday), he put his finger precisely on the answer to my previous question: Why does SEX sell?

The answer is identification. We all want to be "consubstantial" with each other. As humans, we have an innate desire to identify with other human beings, although we can never fully do this. Every commercial that you see, every film that you buy, every magazine you read, you do this because you want to relate, to identify with these things. Beauty has been standardized; sex has become the largest, hottest, most prized commodity.

But why is sex so appealing? Why do babes in bikinis sell alcohol? Why is playboy the most sold magazine in the world, to both men and women? You know why- because each and every one of us, whether we will admit it or not, wants to identify with these images. We all want to look like these people, be like these people, and have what these people have.

In the next few blogs, I'm going to show this to you first hand. There are countless sex ads/commercials/media floating around, and we will be able to delve into these intimidating questions in a more reasonable and systematic way.
there's more to come...

The World is a Stage

Biography
Kenneth Burke was born on May 5, 1897. He was a major American literary theorist and philosopher. Burke's primary interests were in rhetoric and aesthetics. He was heavily influenced by the ideas of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Frederich Nietzsche.

Burke identified a revolutionary study of rhetoric- he believed that interactions in our contemporary world are, in some ways, "more complicated" than can be understood by viewing persuasion solely as the explicit, intentional acts which a rhetor directs to an audience.

Identification
The term identification became an important catalyst for Burke's philosophy. Burke explains identification as a process that is fundamental to being human and to communicating. He contends that the need to identify arises out of division; humans are born and exist as biologically separate beings and therefore seek to identify, through communication, in order to overcome separateness.

We are aware of this biological separation, and we recognize additional types of separation based on social class or position. We experience the ambiguity of being separate yet being identified with others at the same time: we are "both joined and separate, at once a distinct substance and consubstantial with another." (Ambiguity plays a HUGE role in Burke's philosophy.)
Consubstantiality This is a term that Burke used to describe how we, as human beings, share a substance with each other. This substance can never be identical, but it can be share. We can find common ground in any situation bcuse we desire to be consubstantial with each other: Burke found a way to describe that human desire for a relationship, for a common ground, and for similarity.