A Comparative Analysis of Hybrid Car Advertisements in the USA and China: Desire, Globalization, and Environment (original) (raw)

This paper compares hybrid car advertisements in the USA and China*the two largest car markets of the world*and analyzes the cultural, psychic, and historical factors that interrupt the translation of hybrids’ ‘‘eco-friendly’’ appeals to China. I evoke psycho- analysis to read the unconscious structures of desire embedded in the two distinct groups of advertising discourse. My analysis shows that while the American ads seek to erase the self from a fantasy of eco-harmony, the Chinese ones try to expand and multiply the self in the technical gaze of the West. Toward environmental pollution, the American ads respond with guilt and self-blame and the Chinese react with disgust and escapism. I argue that both types of discourse are structured around a psychic loss, which is inaugurated by each culture’s traumatic encounter with the technology of the motorcar.