32

Le Bonheur conforme by François Brune is a violent indictment against the excesses of advertising. Its purpose is to explain how advertising depersonalizes individuals by reducing them to market values, and how it imposes an illusory model of happiness by inciting them to overconsumption. This book is analyzed from three complementary perspectives. On the one hand, we show that it is representative of the anti-advertising movement of the second half of the twentieth century, with its ideological presuppositions and its radical positions. On the other hand, we examine how it invites us to a deeper reflection on the status of the advertising system, as well as on the complexity of its functions between information discourse and influence discourse. Moreover, we ask the question of the topicality of Brune’s theses by confronting them with recent developments in advertising communication.