Marchand’s “ The Parable of the Democracy of Goods”

While flipping through a magazine, most of the time advertisements go unnoticed. Surprisingly, if you really look at them there is a lot more than just selling a product involved. An image an idea, and then lastly a product are trying to be sold. In Marchand’s “ The Parable of the Democracy of Goods”, he writes, “Thus, according to the parable, no discrepancies in wealth could prevent the humblest citizens, provided they chose their purchases wisely, from retiring to a setting in which they could contemplate their essential equality, through possession of an identical product, with the nation’s millionaires” (130). What he is describing is this idea of equality between classes being represented through a product. This way of advertising is represented in this Perrier a...