Chapter 1: Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising (PDF)

Chapter 1: Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising Author(s): Katherine T. Frith Source: Counterpoints , 1997, Vol. 54, Undressing The Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising (1997), pp. 1-17 Published by: Peter Lang AG Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42975201 JSTOR is a not-for-profit...

Chapter 1: Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising Author(s): Katherine T. Frith Source: Counterpoints , 1997, Vol. 54, Undressing The Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising (1997), pp. 1-17 Published by: Peter Lang AG Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42975201 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Counterpoints This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Chapter 1 Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising Katherine T. Frith Historians and archaeologists will one day discover that the ads of our times are the richest and most faithful daily reflections that any society ever made of its entire range of activities. Marshal McLuhan INTRODUCTION Most people think that there is too much advertising, it makes us materialistic, that it perpetuates stereotypes, that it plays on our fears of not being socially acceptable, that it lies, exploits children, and generally corrupts society. While most of these criticisms are not altogether true, there is some truth to all of them. As a society we are embedded in a culture of consumption. Neil Postman (1985) notes that by the age of forty the average American will have seen well over one million commercials and have "close to another million to go before his first social security check" (p. 126). In order to comprehend the impact of all this advertising on society we must learn how to see through advertisements, for they are not just messages about goods and services but social and cultural texts about ourselves. Solomon (1988) has pointed out: As long as you are unable to decode the significance of ordinary things, and as long as you take the signs of your culture at face This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 2 value, you will continue to be mastered by them. But once you see behind the surface of a sign into its hidden cultural significance, you can free yourself from that sign and perhaps find a new way of looking at the world. You will control the signs of your culture rather than having them control you. (p. 8) In order to understand how to read advertisements critically we must begin to incorporate "popular culture as a serious object of politics and analysis" (Giroux, 1988, 164). While all culture is worthy of investigation, popular culture is often devalorized as "sub-literature or paraliterature" (McCracken, 1982, 30). However, in critically reading even something as seemingly mundane as an advertisement we can begin to see "the political, social and cultural forms of subordination that create inequities among different groups as they live out their lives" (Giroux, 1988, 165). This type of critical pedagogy enables teachers and students to view aspects of popular culture within broader social, cultural, and political considerations. In the case of advertising, which has historically been linked to marketing and sales, it allows us to discover the broader social and cultural implications of these seemingly simple messages. The benefits of critically examining the whole adve ing message, not merely the surface or sales message, is that it helps to sharpen one's critical sensibilities. As McCracken (1982) points out this can "counteract the noncritical response so often conditioned by the mass media" (p. 31). The methodological tools we will be using to deconstruct ads are interdisciplinary, drawing on a variety of theoretical positions, including literary theory, feminist critique, postmodernism, Marxism, semiotic analysis, and what Cornel West (1990) terms "the new cultural politics of difference" to name just a few. In fact, démystification of any aspect of mass culture "is most successful when several methodologies are jointly employed" (McCracken, 1982, 31). This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 3 UNDRESSING THE AD The conventional way that marketers define advertis to describe it as messages that "impart information about products which consumers use to make brand choices" (Domzal and Kernan, 1992). The limitation of this definition is that it falls short of giving us the whole picture. Advertising does much more than impart product information, it tells us what products signify and mean. It does this by marrying aspects of the product to aspects of the culture. Embedded in advertising's messages about goods and services are the cultural roles and cultural values that de- fine our everyday life (Stern, 1992). The products we consume express who we are, they are cultural signifier s. The type of watch we wear, the brand of athletic shoes, or the kind of car we drive tell others a lot about us. Advertising not only tells us about the products we consume it also tells us what those products signify in our culture: People 'read' advertising as a cultural text, and advertisers who understand this meaning-based model can create more powerful and intriguing campaigns. (Domzal and Kernan, 1992, 49) One way to begin to understand "how" an advertisement means (Stern, 1988) is to learn how to deconstruct them. Deconstruction, a critical theory of European origin (Saussure, 1966; Barthes, 1972; Lévi-Strauss, 1970; Foucault, 1970; Lacan, 1968), is the reigning school of literary theory. Its proponents find the real significance of texts not in their explicit meaning, nor even in their implied meaning but in their unintentional meanings, or as one author states, "in the slips, evasions and false analogies that betray the text's ideology" (McConnell, 1990, 100). In essence, deconstruction is a way of reading against the text, or as John Fiske (1989) and Stuart Hall (1974) would say, taking an "oppositional" reading. The aim of deconstruction is to expose the social and political power structures in society that combine to produce the text. By analyzing both the foreground and background of the advertisement-as-text it is possible to reveal the secondary social or cultural messages in which the primary sales This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 4 message is embedded. Leymore (1975) explains this holistic view of advertisements in this way: Now if the product is the mental representation conjured up by the advertisement and supported by the story and the pictures, then the background, which includes users in their various settings, color, accessories, layout and so on is the signifier. In other words, the advertised product is the signified to which the background acts as a signifier; together they both form a sign. Thus, both are essential and as they are a unity there is no sense in asking which is more important or necessary than the other, (p. 37) This means that, in fact, the background of the advertisement is as important as the foreground because it creates the context without which there can be no meaning. Analyzing the cultural content of an advertisement involves interpreting both verbal and visual aspects of the advertising text to determine not only the primary sales message but also additional secondary social or cultural messages. Advertisements reflect society, in a sometimes slightly distorted way (Pollay, 1986), and by undressing or demystifying ads we can begin to see the role advertising plays in the creation of culture. ANALYZING LEVELS OF MEANING The most useful technique for critically deconstructing both the surface and the deeper social and cultural meaning of advertisements is a form of textual analysis (Dyer, 1982). This type of analysis is based on literary and artistic methods of critique. To begin, the textual analyst must devise a system of classification for understanding the meaning in a given text. Since print advertising is easiest to analyze in a book, we will start with some magazine advertisements. There are at least three ways in which any text, including an advertising text, can be approached (Scholes, 1985). First, one can read within the text "identifying the cultural codes that structure an author's work" (Giroux, 1988, 167). The second stage is retelling the story, which involves elaboration of the story in the text. The final stage is to "explode" the text, or what Stuart Hall (1974) calls This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 5 reading against the text. In this last stage, Scholes (1985) encourages readers to free themselves from the text by "finding a position outside the assumptions upon which the text is based" (p. 62). These three stages of reading an ad can be described as learning how to read the surface meaning, the advertiser's intended meaning, and finally, the ideological meaning. 1. The surface meaning consists of the overall impression that a reader might get from quickly studying the advertisement. Research has shown us that most magazine readers spend about 3.2 seconds on an ad. You can describe this surface level of meaning by simply listing all the objects and people in the ad. 2. The advertiser's intended meaning is the sales message that the advertiser is trying to get across. Some marketers might refer to this as the strategy behind the ad. It is the "preferred" (Hall, 1974) or expected meaning that a reader might get from the ad; the meaning that the advertiser intends for the reader to take with them. The sales message may be directly about goods and services, but it might also be about lifestyles. Advertisers often try to associate products with certain types of lifestyles, cigarette advertising is a good example of this. 3. The cultural or ideological meaning relies on the cultural knowledge and background of the reader. We all "make sense" of ads by relating them to our culture and to the shared belief systems held in common by most people. For example, most Americans deeply believe in the power of democracy, free speech, and rugged individualism. These beliefs are ideological in nature. They appear to be "common sense" beliefs because they are widely held in this culture at this moment in history; nonetheless, they sire not universal beliefs (Fiske, 1982). In addition to the more obvious cultural beliefs, there are also more subtle ideological values expressed in ads. Stereotyping, for example, is based on cultural beliefs. As This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 6 William O Barr (1994) has noted, before the civil rights movement of the 1960s, blacks were only featured in advertisements in subservient roles such as porters, cooks, and bellhops. Stereotyping can appear to be "common sense" until these representations are questioned by a large enough group of people. Most sales messages are built upon shared cultural or ideological beliefs, and advertising copywriters and art directors rely upon these shared belief systems when they create ads (Leiss et al., 1990). In order to really begin to see how advertising works to support and reinforce certain ideological beliefs it is important to deconstruct the deeper meanings of ads and learn how to take apart the cultural or ideological messages (Williamson, 1978). As we begin to analyze ads, you may find yourself disagreeing with some of our interpretations of these ads. This is because not everyone holds the same beliefs. However, in learning how others deconstruct advertising messages we can begin to realize that advertising only "makes sense" when it resonates with certain deeply held belief systems. To deconstruct an ad we must take it apart layer by layer, like peeling an onion. As we move from the surface message to deeper social messages we will see how this system of meaning works. As an example, let's take a look at this seemingly simple ad for Clorox Bleach depicted in Figure 1.1. Remember as you read this analysis that it is not the only possible interpretation of this ad. Different people read texts in different ways, however, the purpose of this reading is to show how advertisements construct meaning by referring to cultural myths and ideologies. The Surface Meaning. We might describe the surface level of meaning in this ad by listing all the objects and people in the ad. For example, the picture contains seven boys who are sitting together on what may be a king-size bed with their feet up and their shoes off. There are five white boys, one black, and one Asian. One boy near the center has a big grin on his face, he also is the only one who has slightly discolored socks. All the other boys have This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 7 "whiter than white" clean socks. There is also a bottle of Clorox Bleach in the lower left-hand corner of the ad and a headline runs below the boys' feet that reads: "Guess who forgot the Clorox." The subhead says: "If you want your family to wear their whitest whites... Don't forget the Clorox Bleach." The Advertiser's Intended Meaning (the sales message). In this case, the advertiser is trying to point out that if "you" (the ad ran in Woman's Day, so we can assume that the "you" being referred to is a female reader) want your kids to look clean and well cared for, you should wash their white clothes with Clorox Bleach. The Cultural or Ideological Meaning. The underlying as sumption in this ad is that laundry is woman's work. Th is why this ad ran in Woman's Day and not in Gentlemen Quarterly. Even though the majority of women in the United States now work full time, they are still regarded by advertisers as the people who do the laundry in most American households. In addition, the ad's headline is playing on a woman's feelings of guilt at being a less-thanperfect housewife and mother. The implication in this ad is that all the other mothers somehow managed to get their boys' socks bright and clean, but you, the female reader, know that your kid often goes out, maybe even goes to overnight parties, with discolored socks (perhaps, the picture of boys on a bed in this ad is supposed to represent a group of boys at a sleepover party). The ad is saying, shame on you, mom. We might also note the fact that white is the privileged color in this ad. The boys are sitting on a white king-size bed, leaning on snowy white pillows, one boy is eating white popcorn. Most of the boys are white and most of the socks are white. White is endowed in this culture with good connotations. It means cleanliness and health, while dark colors connote death and evil. This is actually a cultural belief rather than a universally held truth. For example, in China white connotes death! While white is definitely the dominant color in this ad, the boy with discolored socks This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 8 Figure 1.1 This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 9 doesn't seem too concerned. In fact, the group of boys seem to be happy together and unaware of racial or color differences. But the copy is aimed at the mom. It is the mothers, the older generation, who are more deeply embedded in the cultural belief system, it is they who might see darker colors (including darker colored socks) as a negative. ANALYZING SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS A second method of analyzing the ideology or cultural beliefs in ads is to look at the relationships being depicted between the people featured in the advertising. In his book, Culture and the Ad: Exploring Otherness in the World of Advertising, William O Barr (1994) explains that all advertisements contain ideology. He defines ideology as "ideas that buttress and support a particular distribution of power in society" (p. 2) and notes that ideology is, by nature, always political. Because we are so deeply embedded in our own set of cultural beliefs, it is often difficult for us to see the ideas that buttress and support the social system we live within. Wernick (1991) says that ideology is elided or hidden. In order to undress the ideological messages in advertising, we must ask questions about the roles people play in our society. Who is in charge? Who holds the power? Who is weak? Who is dominant and who is subordinate (OBarr, 1994)? These types of questions allow us to begin to see the deeper social structures that are circulated and recirculated in advertising. Feminist scholars, for example, are able to expose hidden masculinist assumptions in advertising by using a method of sex-role reversal (Stern, 1992). This is done by asking yourself, can you exchange the man for the woman in the ad? Would the story still make sense, or would it seem ridiculous? You can begin to analyze the social relationships or power relationships in an ad by describing the story that is being depicted. Describe the characters in the ad, the props, the color scheme (Dyer, 1982). Explain what the props or symbols signify and how they might support certain hierarchical relationships. This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 10 You can determine the social relationships in the ad by asking questions about power and control. Who appears to have the power or control in the story? How is power expressed? Does one person have power over another? We can ascertain the power positions by determining who appears to be stronger, or bigger, or more in control of the situation. For example, if it is an advertisement for a car, who is driving and who is the passenger? If it is an advertisement for a breakfast cereali, who is cooking and serving and who is being served (OBarr, 1994)? We can also ascertain historically based power relationships by asking ourselves, are certain historically favored positions being expressed? Does the ad suggest that people who are slimmer, whiter, stronger, or richer have power over others? The second way to analyze how power is being depicted in the ad is to describe the relationships between the characters by exchanging the key players in the ad. For example, you might begin by reversing the roles of the people in the ads. Substitute the woman with a man, a young person with an older person, or a white person with a black. Now retell the story with the roles reversed. Would the message be the same? How would the message change? What does this say about the roles or stereotypes that advertising perpetuates? This type of analysis reveals the deeper social structures that often go unnoticed in advertising. As Barbara Stern (1992) explains: The method's rationale is that exposure of cultural mores depends on a researcher's ability to engage in self-conscious introspection, for only by viewing what appears 'normal' from an outsider's perspective - that of the 'other' - can common assumptions about natural behavior be exposed as merely partial worldviews. (p. 12) O Barr (1994) points out that asking these types of questions enables us to discover important facts about social relationships in our society. He points out that while equality is not precluded as a possible message in the discourse of advertising, advertisements are "seldom egalitar- This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 11 ian" (p. 4). The most frequently depicted qualities of social relationships in advertising are: hierarchy, dominance, and subordination (OBarr, 1994). Now let us look at how power is expressed in this seemingly straightforward ad for Toshiba computers shown in Figure 1.2. The Story. This ad depicts the commonly accepted story of evolution, showing an ape evolving into a Neanderthal who evolves into a "modern man" (in this case wearing a suit and carrying a Toshiba computer). Now let us, for a moment, reverse the roles in this story. Let us depict evolution as beginning with a female ape and culminating with a fully evolved human woman. Does this picture feel right? Or have we become so used to seeing evolution culminate with a man, that using a woman would seem odd? What about replacing the white man wearing a suit and carrying a computer with a black man or a black woman? Could the culmination of the evolutionary process really be a black man? As Cornel West (1990) points out, démystification is the most desirable form of cultural practice. He asserts that démystification is the intellectual challenge of modern day cultural workers, students, and scholars interested in ex- posing the ideological undercurrents of society. Myths are preexisting, value-laden sets of ideas derived from a culture and transmitted through various forms of communication. Démystification is to seek the connotative meaning embedded in such myths and to historicize them or expose them. Does this ad reinforce the myth that the white man is the ultimate culmination of evolution? The Relationships. The second way to look at the cultural messages in this ad is to look for the power relationships. O Barr (1994) says that ads are seldom egalitarian and that the social relationships most frequently depicted in advertising are: hierarchy, dominance, and subordination. Are there any social relationships in this Toshiba ad? Certainly, the man appears to have dominance over the "lower" life forms, the apes and the Neanderthal. In her book, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 12 Figure 1.2 This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 13 Critical Theory, Carol Adams (1991) asserts that in patriarchal cultures a hierarchy exists in which men are at the top and women and animals are similarly positioned as inferior. In this ad, the man wearing the suit is positioned as superior to the animals. What gives this man his dominance or superiority? The symbols used here are his clothing and his computer. The assumption in this visual is that man is superior to ani- mals because he has developed socially (clothes) and technologically (tools). While technology has undoubtedly solved many human problems, it is not without shortcomings. Some critics (Shiva, 1989; Sheldrake, 1991; Collard and Contrucci, 1989) argue that it is technological development that threatens the ecological balance on the planet and that is most destructive to the future evolution of the human race. Nonetheless, the symbol of technology, the computer, is depicted as representing the culmination of human evolution and it signifies man's dominance over animals. Clearly, in this ad for Toshiba computers we can discern messages related to hierarchy, subordination and dominance. In terms of social relationships, the old adage, "the clothes make the man" might apply here. Social class, as we know it in the United States, is often described in terms of clothing - there are the "white"-collar (again that privileged word) workers who wear suits and the blue-collar workers who might be considered working or lower class. Just as more elaborate ways of dress connote social dominance in this ad, they also signify social class in our culture. The man in the suit represents the dominant white upper class. CONCLUSIONS Advertising manipulates symbols to create meaning a our society, the values expressed in advertising mirr dominant ideological themes. In this chapter we have traced a few of the methods that can be used to examine how these themes are expressed in advertising. The argument here is not so much that advertising creates inequi- This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 14 ties in society but that by circulating and recirculating certain myths advertising shapes our attitudes and beliefs, and that by learning how to critically deconstruct advertisements we can begin to move away from the role of spectator to become participants in the making and remaking of ourselves and of a more democratic society (West, 1990). This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 15 REFERENCES Adams, Carol J. (1991). The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. New York: Continuum. Barthes, Roland (1972). Mythologie. New York: Hill and Wang. Collard, Andree, and Joyce Contrucci (1989). The Rape of the Wild: Man's Violence against Animals and the Earth. 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"The New Cultural Politics of Difference," in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 17 Cultures, eds. Russell Ferguson et al., Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Williamson, Judith (1978). Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. London: Marion Boyers. This content downloaded from 209.129.85.159 on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:45:03 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms