James sees an advertisement in a fashion magazine that pictures two beautifully dressed white women in a crashed car with blood on their faces and arms and legs dangling limp. if he uses jean kilbourne’s film killing us softly to interpret this advertisement, what might he conclude?
a. race is more important than gender as an interpretive lens.
b. women are misrepresented in advertising, but men are accurately portrayed. c. sexism and misogyny are prevalent in advertising and media.
d. women are associated with vehicles; men are associated with nature.

C. Sexism and misogyny are prevalent in advertising and media. 

Jean Kilbournes film Killing Us Softly is centered around the representation of women in advertisement and how, different from popular belief, there haven't been many improvements in this sector throughout the years. In this ad for example, there is a romantization of the pain of women, a glamorization of women as dead objects, passive and lifeless, observe, "two beautifully dressed white women in a crashed car with blood on their faces and arms and legs dangling limp".
But why is this a problem? It's just an ad after all, or is it?Prevalent exposure over the years to this type of content, teaches society through immersion and repetition the silent belief that women are objects to be handled as such, or in other words, the recurrence of this type of material ends up affecting our social imaginary which consequently limits womens'  capacity to act within our social reality. Many philosophers, like Slavoj Zizek for example, state that we aren't directly born into reality, in order for us to act like normal people and interact with other people and exist in social reality, we must first be properly installed within the symbolic order. What does this mean though? This means that much of our reality isn't actually objective, it's of a phantasmatic objectivity, that is, it's mostly made up of social conventions but these social conventions have objective affects on our reality, like money, countries, borders, etc. These are all in a way, made up but we still treat them as concrete. In this way, we can understand how these ads support sexism and misogyny within our society, for example, before you can even know what sexism or misogyny is, you've already  been exposed to thousands of sexist ads throughout your childhood that have given you the implicit understanding of how women should be treated in our society. This is known as symbolic violence, a presupposition often necessary to commit a violent act, it's kind of like an excuse. Think about it: society implicitly through its' ads permits this type of behavior towards women much like the Nazi propaganda "permitted" the Jewish genocide, or in other words, it was necessary for these violent acts to first be permitted within the social imaginary so they could be acted upon in "effective" reality.

What does that mean