It was a public space outside a subway station; the woman and the children are wearing heavy coats to keep warm. They seem neither rich nor poor- decent clothes, cell phones, but nothing flashy. Just an ordinary American family.
It’s true that they’re black people, and so part of a minority group in the population- about 12% of the public as a whole. Even so, they’re much more typical of ordinary Americans than the people pictured on the posters behind them, who seem, from their surroundings, to be rich and also, from their attitudes, to be insane- a very small minority indeed, on both counts.
But they’re not real people, just advertising models posing in expensive sets to promote a fantasy of privilege, glamour, and sex. To sell “Brainpower by Equinox”, whatever that is. Since there’s no evidence of any brainpower in these pictures, perhaps it’s a fashion company.
These posters just something dreamed up by advertising executives. People in other countries see images like this and imagine that they represents American life, or at least American dreams. But these ordinary Americans eating lunch have given their verdict in advance- they simply ignored the posters. That fantasy has nothing to do with them, or with their life, or with their dreams.
Every country, every culture, makes dream images of itself. These images are created by a small group of media people who saturate their societies with them to sell sunglasses, or soap, or swim suits. When people buy these things, it is assumed that they take these dream images seriously as images of themselves.
But they don’t. They buy the soap and sunglasses, they lust after the models in the ads, but they’re fully aware that this has nothing to do with who they are.
