Abstract

Nowadays, identity is continually changing. In order to assume a valid social identity, an individual needs the others’ recognition. In this case, modernity involves targeting the others. The individual is able to build and/or rebuild his identity depending on the opportunities life offers to him and which he chooses deliberately. He does not know for sure whether he has made the right decision but he has to discover on his own, the ‘true’ identity that suits him. From a postmodernist point of view, identity becomes less stable and more fragile. Postmodernist identity builds itself by assuming some roles and images. According to trends and its changes, postmodernist identity comes to be shaped by the advertisements and the consumerism images and determines an increased social resignation towards contemporary patterns. In postmodernist identity, the individual can change his life anytime, he can form and transform himself as he desires, continually recreating his identity. Whatever the nature of identity might be, the contemporary society is highly influenced by certain images that come from mass media and offer ‘suggestions’ intended to shape personal identity by building new faces, attitudes and styles. Nowadays society is highly influenced by advertisement which suggests such patterns of identity that fully contribute to the shaping of identity. Many symbols of media culture prove that identity is a construct (a pattern which is systematically built) which can be permanently re/formed and even changed, being just a matter of option and individual action. These are only some of the aspects which are to be investigated in the following paper.