In the midst of detailing how romantic love is both constructed and exploited by advertising, sociologist Eva Illouz, in her 1997 book Consuming the Romantic Utopia, analyzes the trope of “the deserted beach”: While the beach is primarily a construct of the tourist industry, in advertising it is detached from the crowded and highly commercialized vacation resorts. In fact, in advertisements beaches are invariably deserted. The couples in such ads are absorbed in an intense gaze of nature as well as in each other, and the feelings their image evokes have a corresponding, ineffable weight and profundity.
The deserted beach
The deserted beach
The deserted beach
In the midst of detailing how romantic love is both constructed and exploited by advertising, sociologist Eva Illouz, in her 1997 book Consuming the Romantic Utopia, analyzes the trope of “the deserted beach”: While the beach is primarily a construct of the tourist industry, in advertising it is detached from the crowded and highly commercialized vacation resorts. In fact, in advertisements beaches are invariably deserted. The couples in such ads are absorbed in an intense gaze of nature as well as in each other, and the feelings their image evokes have a corresponding, ineffable weight and profundity.