Slides from Week 2 of EDUC 5199G, UOIT, Canada.

1. 7/8/15
1
Advertising and Fashion
C. Guertin
UOIT | EDUC5199G
07 July 2015
Empowerment through agency
Bloom’s Taxonomy

2. 7/8/15
2
Wong and Henriksen want us to think of fashion as
a verb: as an act of personal expression and
creative production
Virginia Funes wants us, as teachers, to
create critical viewers who can recognize
themselves as an intended audience that
advertisers attempt to manipulate
Ads are extremely complex
machines for delivering
ideological messages,
forms of social control,
mythologies, normative
behaviour, and
hegemonic discourse

3. 7/8/15
3
Meaning of an image is produced in three ways:
1. Viewers interpret or are affected by the image
2. By the context in which an image is seen
3. By the intended aims or outcome of the producer
of the image
Viewers make meaning
• Images’ meanings are contextual and situated.
• They are created in part when, where, and by whom they are
consumed, and not only when, where, and by whom they are
produced.
• For example, when M*A*S*H* aired in the 1970s, even though
the plot was set in Korea of the 50’s, it resonated as a veiled
critique of the Vietnam War and America’s involvement.
Race, gender and other political contexts
are embedded in visual images
Teen Filmmaker Recreates Famous Race Experiment From '40s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjy9q8VekmE
Media
images in
our culture
can make
ugly things
seem hip or
sexy

4. 7/8/15
4
What
do ads
sell?
Funes advocates for ads to function as a pedagogical
discourse. How so?
Advertising is a top-down authoritarian discourse.
Paulo Freire describes it as “the radical opposite of
dialogue and authentic communication among
people” (Funes 164).
Advertising has four antidialogue traits:
1. Conquest
2. Division
3. Manipulation
4. Cultural invasion
Examples?
Advertising as a pedagogical discourse
incorporates three types of practices:
semiotic, ideological and economic.

5. 7/8/15
5
Advertising fosters want. Education seeks to
foster logic. Who wins?
What do we analyze in an ad?
What is there to analyze in an Ad?
• Design (balance, asymmetry)
• Relationship between image and text
• White space
• Photographic angles (significance, high angle/look down
on, low angle/look up to, or equal to subjects)
• Genre
• Lighting, shadows (mood)
• Colors (which and significance of)

6. 7/8/15
6
Example:
An Ad with a Man, Woman and Text
• Facial expressions, hair color and style, fashion,
props, gender, age, race, signs of occupation,
relationship between figures
• What is the ‘action’? What is the narrative or moment
within a broader narrative?
• How are camera angles used? What do they tell us
about power relations?
• Signs, symbols, basic themes, context
• How is language used? (arguments, associations,
analogies, typeface)
• Product or service
• Values and beliefs (patriotism, motherly love,
success, power, taste)
Advertising presents images of fantasy
(idealized lifestyles, sex appeal, happiness,
power, elegance) and of what ‘should be’
Analyzing the Fidji Ad
by Christie Barakat
• Semiotic Analysis: how do sign, symbols and codes
generate meaning?
• Psychoanalytic Theory: appeals to unconscious
elements (psyche, anxiety, sexuality, id/ego/superego)
• Sociological Analysis: class, gender, race, status and
role (how does product reflect about social concerns)
• Historical Analysis: part of campaign? Relates to
historical events? (political?) Colonialism?
• Myth/Ritual Analysis: does ad relate to ancient myths?
• Critical Theory/Feminist: How is the woman
represented? How does the gaze function? What are the
implications of encoded power dynamics?

7. 7/8/15
7
Semiotic Interpretation
(Ferdinand de Saussure)
• Saussure’s signs are made of signifiers
(sounds or images) and signifieds (concepts
or ideas)
• Expressions, body language, clothes, voices--
nearly everything we do—function as
signifiers of something (moods, feelings,
beliefs, religion etc)
• Relationship between signifiers and signified
is arbitrary (based on convention and must be
learned, not natural or universal)
Semiotic Interpretation: C.S. Pierce
• Signs that signify by resemblance, or icons
(photographic conventions, rhetoric)
• Signs that signify by cause and effect, or
indexes (smoke rising)
• Signs that signify by conventions, or
symbols (flag, star of David)
Psychoanalytic Analysis
• Snakes are phallic symbols in Freudian psychology
(snake is wound around woman’s neck), an iconic
representation
• Snakes and women are part of the Adam & Eve story,
mythological significance (snake tempted Eve and
she convinced Adam to eat from the Tree of
Knowledge)
• Anxiety related to snakes
• Perfume can be seen as venom with magical
qualities (makes women irresistible to men)
Psychoanalytic Analysis
• The snake forms an “S”, the thin black cording on
bottle forms an “E,” and the woman’s fingers form an
“X”; thus the word sex is hidden in the ad (this theory
would hold that subliminally we would be affected by
this and feel more inclined toward sexual activity)
• The orchid is a sexual symbol, flowers being the
sexual apparatus of plants; we use flowers to make
exciting scents
• Freud’s structural hypothesis of the psyche (being in
the tropics and away from civilization, which works to
curtail the id impulses).

8. 7/8/15
8
Sociological Analysis of Fidji Ad
• Based on the woman in the ad, we can conclude
the target audience is both men and women, but
especially men who are looking for an exotic
experience and a submissive (if slightly
dangerous) woman to escape with in fantasy
• Escaping involves nature and romantic love;
Polynesian woman is allegedly more passionate,
less inhibited than white women
• Buying Fidji means being an elite, in terms of
lifestyle or taste culture (wearing a refined perfume
may define one’s socio-economic class)
• Fidji attracts a sexual partner and consolidates the
belief that the wearer is sophisticated and
desirable, confers status through luxury item
Marxist Analysis of Fidji Ad
• This ad reflects graphically the exploitation of people in
the Third World by people in the First World, and by
bourgeois capitalist societies that encourage capitalist
corporations like Guy Laroche, maker of Fidji perfume
• According to Marxism, capitalism has survived by
exporting its problems, thus the ad if for capitalist
imperialism, not perfume
• The ad is an example of bourgeois consumer culture
excesses, including sexuality, which can be used against
us to make wasteful purchases in the name of glamour
Marxist Analysis of Fidji Ad
• Industry has political mission to distract us from
civic culture to focus on private expenditures
• We revel in our personal luxuries and take refuge
in gated communities, built on the backs of less
powerful people, while society spirals into chaos
• We attempt to assuage our alienation by creating
consumer cultures, which creates greater profits
for those who own the channels of production and
distribution
• Marxist approach, however, is doctrinaire, and has
imploded as Soviet societies are now feverishly
consuming, lacks resonance even if correct
The Myth Model and the Fidji Ad
• The Myth (Eve or
Medusa?)
• An historical event related
to the myth
• A text or work from elite
culture based on the myth
• A text or work for popular
culture based on the myth
• Some aspects of
everyday life based on
the myth

9. 7/8/15
9
Feminist Interpretation
of the Fidji Ad
• We live in a phallocentric society dominated by males
• Males are blind to their power and the role of the
phallus in society, assuming that power structures are
natural and logical
• The Fidji ad is a perfect representation: a woman with
a snake (phallic symbol) draped around her neck.
The woman is accessible to the male gaze (a look by
men that reduces women to sexual objects).
• She is holding the perfume that will make her
irresistible thus participating in her own subjugation.
• A return to paradise, for women, is powerlessness
and male domination.
The Male Gaze: How Women Are Presented in Beer Ads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zZxWQ97RFA
In order to overcome ‘resistance’ in the viewer,
advertising takes on many voices and modes of
address thereby interpellating us as ideological
subjects What
audience
is the
advertiser
targeting?
Funny? Nike ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX-QhoihLeI&feature=player_embedded

10. 7/8/15
10
Understanding
is related to
knowing and
knowing is
related to power
Who is in charge here? What is the story?
Why is this an acceptable way to
sell a product?
Laura Mulvey, a film
theorist, revealed the
secret power behind
our cultural images
when in the 1970s
she defined the
controlling gaze in
Western culture as
‘male’ and ‘white’
• The gaze is not literal
• It is a way of
discussing the abstract
relations of power
maintained by
practices of looking
• Just as there are
different types of power,
there are
different types of gazes

11. 7/8/15
11
Who is looking? Who is in charge here?
Jeremy Bentham and the Panopticon (1791)
" It was to be an architecture of control
" Central tower
" Individual cells
" Directional blinds
" It was the greatest Prison
never built
" Pan + optic = all seeing
" With the advent of the Age
of Reason came the desire
to impose order rather
than torture or execution

12. 7/8/15
12
" Not a literal prison, but the power of self-surveillance manifest in
contemporary society
" Enacted in schools, hospitals, and the army
" A mechanism of social control—discipline over the body
" The inspecting Gaze is internalized as self-imposed discipline
Foucault’s
Panopticon
Docile Subject
A captive Saddam Hussein controlled and contained by the medical gaze
In visual culture studies, French theorist Michel Foucault’s ideas
about how panoptic mechanisms continue to be enacted through the
gaze in contemporary culture are very influential.
" The Tower: Seeing is power
" prisoners are seen, but cannot see
" forced to behave
" cannot see others
" guards are seen by supervisors
• If you can’t hide from
the Gaze, how can
you overcome it?
• Its all-seeing eye
produces docility and
conformity
Appellation is the name for the different modes
of address that ads use to attract and seduce us

13. 7/8/15
13
AT&T, ‘You Will’ commercials
• A series of AT & T ads ran in
1993 that proclaimed to the viewer
“YOU WILL”
• This is not an invitation or a
question, but an order: “You will do
this whether you like it or not”
• It shows us in its very form of
address that it is an ideological
statement that seeks to enlist us
as subjects for its futuristic
technological product line.
• It makes their will your will.
• The ad beckons us each to
assume the subject position of the
user of the technology.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZb0avfQme8
Interpellation
• Interpellation is the process
whereby ideology calls out to me
and “hails” me as a social
subject through language and
images, telling me my place in
the social and political system.
• Ideology says to me in effect:
HEY YOU! And I say WHO ME?
Are you addressing me?
And ideology says, YES, I mean
YOU!
• Barbara Kruger parodies this
mode of address
• Interpellation reveals how
ideologies enlist or recruit us
into a particular belief system.
Barbara Kruger, How Dare You Not Be Me?
(1996)
Barbara Kruger’s work as an artist has long ago been
co-opted by the advertising world, but continues to make
viewers think about issues of our consumerist society.
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/kruger/clip1.html
Louis Althusser and
Interpellation
• We use the term “subject” in
cultural studies instead of the
term individual to articulate that
we are social actors who are
“spoken for” by ideologies.
• We are “subjects” of ideology in
the sense that we are subject to
them -- in same way that one is
subject to the law of the State or
sovereign.
Paradoxes of consumer culture
• Consumer culture pleases and reassures us while tapping
into anxieties and insecurities
• Ads cultivate anxiety and a sense of identity crisis by
offering visions of a better life and better self
• Ads present the paradox of an individuality that is to be
achieved through consumption of the by-products of mass
consumption
• Create “pseudo-individuality”, a trumped up sense of who
and what we are based on what brands we buy
• (branding is a process whereby a product is endowed with
particular attributes that are indicative of a kind of lifestyle
and produce an image of its potential consumer ~ this
usually has little or nothing to do with the product)

14. 7/8/15
14
Identity is the pure product that
we consume
Are you a
Mac or a
PC?
• Louis Althusser stated that
we are ‘hailed’ or summoned
by ideologies, which recruit us
as their ‘authors’ and their
essential subject. There is,
therefore, a militaristic aspect
to interpellation.
• One of the most blatant
examples is the United States
Army and Navy recruiting
posters.
• The iconic figure of Uncle
Sam addresses the viewer
directly
(James Montgomery Flagg, I Want
You, United States Army Poster, 1916)
IMMEDIATE CONTEXT
Anything that has an immediate role in forming the message.
Like written texts, visual texts (images) have:
An author(s)
An audience
A subject
A genre
A purpose

15. 7/8/15
15
EACH IMAGE HAS A CAREFULLY
SELECTED MEDIUM (TECHNOLOGY)
AND A GENRE.
BROADER CONTEXT
Includes larger questions about the cultural, economic, social and
historical circumstances in which image is produced and read.
WHO IS THE AUTHOR?
FOR MANY IMAGES, WE CAN IDENTIFY
A PURPOSE AND POINT OF VIEW
RATHER THAN AN INDIVIDUAL AUTHOR

16. 7/8/15
16
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE?
(PURPOSE SHIFTS DEPENDING ON THE CONTEXT)
WHAT IS THE MEDIUM?
Genre ~
What type of text is it?
Does the design serve
the conventions of that
form?

17. 7/8/15
17
Ideology ~
What political
issues are
conveyed or
addressed by
the image or
text?
Context – What is the intended purpose of the work?
Omissions ~
What is missing? What hasn’t been said?
WHAT IS THE SUBJECT?
WHO IS THE AUDIENCE?
HOW IS IT COMPOSED OR ARRANGED?
WHAT IS THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT?
WHAT ARE THE CULTURAL AND SOCIAL
CONTEXTS?
WHAT IS THE ECONOMIC CONTEXT?
WHAT IS YOUR PERSONAL RESPONSE?
HOW DOES THE TEXT WORK?

18. 7/8/15
18

19. 7/8/15
19
Breakout rooms
Analyze one of these ads.
Advertisers use four basic techniques to
manipulate and motivate you
• Appeal to basic human need for ‘Fun’
– usually through branding
• Appeal to basic human need for ‘Power’
– through perceptions of beauty and the male gaze
• Appeal to basic human need for ‘Love’
– through product ‘lust’ or ‘envy’
• Rewrite ‘Values Associations’
– New lifestyle through appealing to ‘Freedom’ (most
frequently through nonconformity),
‘Frugalness’ (investments, retirement), etc.

20. 7/8/15
20
Analyze a superbowl commercial
for your blog.
Volkswagen
This ad appeals to the
basic human need for
fun, spontaneity, play.
The marketing technique
this ad is using is
branding. Cool
behaviour because of
cool car?
Tag
This ad appeals to the basic
human need for power.
Tag makes the user feel
attractive and important
as evidenced by the
number of girls who want
to get close to the guy in
the ad.
The marketing technique of
perceptions of beauty as
measure of power.
Pepsi
The ad illustrates the basic
human need for fun.
A middle aged businessman
is having fun playing with
his drink by blowing
bubbles with it.
The marketing technique
used is values
association, specifically
nonconformity,
youthfulness.

21. 7/8/15
21
Freedom 55
Basic human need fulfilled by this ad?
This ad uses the marketing technique of values association – frugalness as
the road to luxury and freedom from work.