Advertising+Textuality

Dipika's Part:

Advertising Textuality: >> aspirations; >> some narrative, etc.). >>> In order to accomplish this, the first male leader, or 'quarterback', needed the support of his 'team' to be successful in carrying out the crucial play, which of course he was able to do. By successfully blocking the path of the other team's quarterback, the first team won the 'game'. As a reward, the heroic quarterback 'scored' sexually, as the expression goes.
 * the construction of advertisements and commercials on the basis of the specific signification systems built intentionally into products
 * Some of the most common stretegies:
 * the use of jingles which typically bring out some aspect of the product in a memorable way;
 * the use of certain music genres to emphasize lifestyle: e.g. the use of jazz or classical music to convey a sense of superiority and high-class
 * the creation of fictitious characters so as to assign a visual portraiture to the product: e.g. Speedy, Ronald McDonald, Tony the Tiger, Mr Clean, etc.
 * using famous personages - actors, sports figures, etc. - to endorse the product;
 * creating ads and commercials to represent the product's signification system in some specific way (e.g. through some visual depiction, through
 * An example of the last point: creating ads and commercials to represent the product's signification system in some specific way is a Miller beer commercial shown on Sunday afternoon football games on American television
 * commercial shown (//positioned//) during football game telecasts, and given that the actions took place in the context of a football game, a straightforward interpretation can easily be formulated
 * commercial constituted a specific representation of the beer's signification system:
 * the action of the two cliques simulated an action play between two football teams. 'Winning' the game in this case is 'getting to' the female first.
 * the commercial is showing the beer's signification system by showing that beer = male bonding, interest in sports, and interest in females --> easily recognized in the commercial's narrative
 * Some commercial's signification system not so easily recognized:
 * Versus cologne by Versace, which was found in lifestyle magazines in the mid-1990s. The actual surface text showed four rugged handsome young men who presumably wore Versus to smell as good as they looked. At this denotative level, the ad seemed to be merely saying: 'To look as cool as these men, all you have to do is splash on Versus'. But the subtext told another story, since it was imbued with many subtle innuendoes and allusions that transformed it into a highly suggestive ad.
 * Icons in the ad include:
 * The name of the cologne starts with the letter 'V.
 * The bottle displayed a V-shaped intaglio in its shape.
 * The men in the ad wore a shirt or jacket whose open collar made a V-shape outline.
 * The men were dressed in black.
 * Two of the men wore leather items.
 * The bottle was centred at the bottom.
 * A V-shape cut across the page
 * These icons may suggest that the ad is aimed at young affluent males who could afford to buy an expensive bottle of cologne. The men are, presumably, prototypes of what young urban professional males aspire to look like during leisure hours - hours devoted to mate selection and sexual fulfilment generally. During the day, the men probably wear business suits; during recreational hours they wear 'V-neck' apparel and dash on Versus. So, one possible interpretation of the ad's subtext is that Versus can be used by men propitiously for their 'sexseeking' leisure activities. It is cologne designed to help them cross over, symbolically, from the work world to the leisure world - worlds that are in constant opposition.
 * One can interpret this ad as a symbol of heterosexuality, or homosexuality - both are possible
 * the layout of the ad creates an entangled web of ambiguous sexual connotations.
 * the ambiguity of such ads = anchorage: the ability of certain ads to evoke various equally probable subtexts, each of which is 'anchored' in a specific signification system.
 * the design of the bottle with a V intaglio is a crucial part of the signification system(s) created for the above product.
 * Hine (1995) has shown, such things as bottles are to be viewed as art objects.