How do you critique an advertisement?

Status Critique Meaning?

• can you help me understand what "status critique" means in this quote?(I understand the critique part but what does the status part mean? "The status critique does not actually say luxury is meaningless. To the contrary, the critics' usual argument is that such goods are only about meaning, they are "objects as rich in meaning as they are low in utility." The status critique sees only two possible sources of value: function and meaning; and it reduces meaning to a single idea: "I'm better than you." It denies the existence or importance of aesthetic pleasure and the many meanings and associations that can flow that pleasure." (Virginia Postrel 462) I thought that the "status critique" viewed the meaning of luxury as "I am better than you" and thus as a form of status or class and was wondering if it had to do with this? I originally thought it just meant a general use phrase for describing critics in general but that makes less sense to me now. thanks for reading.

• Answer:

  Well the status critique is meaningless rubbish. Luxury is luxury. You can live under a bridge along the highway, or you can live in a 45 room mansion with 18 servants. To live in that luxury does not make you any better than one of the servants, or that person under the bridge. It just means you have enough money to be able to afford those things. And a house, if it as one room or ninety, is not "low in utility" either. Aesthetic pleasure can be derived by the chap living under the bridge, just as much as by anyone else. It appears to me that Postrel is making a proposition out of thin air to support a non-existent case.