Semiotics of Advertising

In her article “A Gentleman and a Consumer,” Diane Barthel looks at the way advertising in the last part of the 20th century tackled the task of selling beauty products to men—by taking what would traditionally be unmanly consumer items (perfumes, etc.) and associating those products with conventionally masculine traits. Barthel observes that “different cultural attitudes toward both the social person and the physical body shape the gender roles of men and women” (172). Advertisements directed at either group can provide a kind of snapshot of gender roles in a society at a given moment. In a time when attitudes about gender are in flux, advertisements may also be revealing of new identities in the process of being  formulated.
Building on the work of semiotician Jean Baudrillard, Barthel observes that because advertisements directed at women sometimes use male imagery (and vice versa) we might more accurately speak of “two modes” of advertising that “do not result from the differentiated nature of the sexes, but from the logic of the system. The relationship of Masculine and Feminine to real men and women is relatively arbitrary” (172).

Barthel continues:
The feminine model encourages a woman to please herself, to encourage a certain complacency and even narcissistic solicitude. But by pleasing herself, it is understood that she will also please others and that she will be chosen [because of her beauty]. . . Whereas the feminine model is based on passivity, complacency, and narcissism [on making herself into a beautiful object that will be chosen], the masculine model is based on exactingness and choice. . . . The key words are masculine terms: power, performance, precision. [In car ads], the car is not simply other; it is also an extension of the owner. . . . Its power is his power. (172-73).
As a group of traits, or, as what we might call the signified content of advertising, power, performance, and precision appear as selling points for a wide variety of products (shampoo, bath soap, etc.) directed at male consumers. The trick of the ad is to associate a particular signifier (e.g. deodorant) with a particular signified (power). Not only can “powerful odor protection” mask our natural human scent, but the power and prestige associated with the product becomes ours as well.

With vehicle ads in particular, we might note that “toughness” is another valued masculine quality. This ad is from 2001, taken from Men’s Journal.

Like the owner, this truck is “built tough,” able to take a beating and keep on going. The photograph of the truck shows it in action, emphasizing not only toughness but power.

Take a closer look at the copy—what’s with the completely gratuitous France-bashing?

There are real men who drive Ford trucks, and then there are wimps who shave their legs. The wimps are in France.

Compare this ad to another 2-page vehicle ad, this one for a Dodge, which appeared the same year in the magazine Shape.

“Slip into something more comfortable” this ad suggests, and, to make that comfort clear, we have the juxtaposition of the red-tinged photo of the women wearing bunny slippers with the photograph of the red Dodge Stratus. The passivity of this feminine mode ad is indicated by both the stillness of the car (not photographed in motion as in the truck ad) and the comfortable stillness of the model in her bunny slippers.  Women in feminine mode ads are often depicted seated (or reclining);  masculine mode ads often emphasize action.

And speaking of action, check out the advertising copy for Old Spice’s Red Zone “Swagger” body wash:

The Red Zone is a bleak, maze-like environment where lasers fire in random directions and the sky is always filled with lightning. Odor never dares enter the Red Zone. The Old Spice man, on the other hand, flourishes in the Red Zone, throwing touchdowns, doing recon and saving females from danger, all while smelling great.

Power and performance indeed!

If perfume can give a man swagger, we shouldn’t be surprised at what his sandwich can do for him. This Subway ad emphasizes the tough guy boldness of its new sandwich, associating it with such traditional signifiers of masculinity as motorcycles, tattoos, and desert landscapes. One version of this commercial that I saw ends with the voiceover comment, “It’ll burn the wimp right out of you.”

Remember when Subway ads featured the bespectacled gentle-looking Jared who lost all that weight eating subway sandwiches? I guess Subway is going back to Old School traditional masculinity over new models of masculinity represented by figures such as Jared.

So, here comes the assignment part of the post. Over the next couple of weeks, start looking around for advertisements. Find two advertisements to post and discuss. The ads could be posted as videos, or you could provide links to an on-line advertisement, or you might upload a photo (as I’ve done above). Analyze those ads in terms of Barthel’s observations, discussing the way the ads employ masculine or feminine modes, the way they deploy signifiers of masculinity or femininity to associate those qualities with the products being sold.

For the two ads, you might choose one ad directed to men and another to women. Or, you might choose two ads directed to the same sex but that use two different modes (e.g., one ad directed to men using the feminine mode, the other ad, also directed at men but using the masculine mode). Or, you might even try for two ads that use the opposite mode for the gender of the audience (a feminine mode ad for a male consumer, a masculine mode ad for a female consumer).

Your final blog post should be between 250-500 words. The due date is floating. Publish your post at any time once you’ve finished, but I would like to have all posts published by September 24. The Diane Barthel article is not one of our reading assignments, but I can provide you with a copy of it if you’d like to see the whole piece rather than just the excerpts above.

See the How to Publish Your Post page (the link is on the bar above the header) for instructions on using the WordPress interface. If you have any trouble figuring out how to post, just email me or stop by during office hours, and I’ll give you a quick overview.

Diane Barthel. “A Gentleman and a Consumer.” Signs of Life in the USA. Ed. Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford, 2003. 171-180.

Roland Barthes and Politics of Electoral Photography

Below is a post written during the Fall 2008 version of English 455. We’ll be reading a few selections by theorist Roland Barthes for our second class meeting. In general, the type of semiotic analysis that Barthes applies to popular culture (everything from political photographs to soap detergent advertisements) will provide a model for some of our work in Literary Theory and Culture Studies. Likewise, the post just prior to this one, The Semiotics of Moxie, applies Barthes’ method to an analysis of the advertising associated with one of Maine’s favorite beverages.

From 2008:

As I have been revisiting Roland Barthes’ classic work of cultural criticism, Mythologies, it strikes me that in this time of a national presidential election, the essay “Photography and Electoral Appeal” is particularly relevant. Although Barthes is writing specifically about the French electoral process, his more general observations about the way political campaigns use photographs seem completely applicable to the current American context. As Barthes observes, the use of photographs in campaigns “presupposes that photography has a power to convert,” and despite the importance of video, the single arresting still image remains the trump card in the political deck (or the wild card, as a photograph of a candidate can also have the power to convert potential voters in the other direction) (91).

Photography, Barthes writes, reveals “something deep and irrational co-extensive with politics” (91). Photography constitutes “an anti-intellectual weapon and tends to spirit away ‘politics’ (that is to say a body of problems and solutions) to the advantage of a ‘manner of being,’ a socio-moral status” (91). To put this in the parlance of American politics, the presidential election is about “character” (a “manner of being”), or at least that’s the way it’s presented in the media. Although during elections citizens often say they wish they knew more about a candidate’s stance on the issues, the emphasis in campaign coverage (and in campaigns) tends toward the issue of character (“judgment,” “toughness”) over the nuts and bolts of policy—thus, the inane “which candidate would you rather have a beer with” debates. Photographs serve the function of reinforcing that socio-moral status, and we often see campaigns wrangling to define the meaning of a particular image (do photographs of Barack Obama speaking to crowds in Germany convey “the gravitas of a world leader” or merely reveal the “superficiality of his celebrity status”?).

Barthes goes on to note that the “conventions of photography . . . are themselves replete with signs” (92). That is, in addition to the actual content of a particular photograph (candidate stands with chest decorated with military medals, signifying patriotism, courage, valor), the conventions of portraiture itself convey meaning. Here I want to share a long quotation from Barthes on how and what particular photographic conventions signify:

A full-face photograph underlines the realistic outlook of the candidate. . . . Everything there expresses penetration, gravity, frankness: the future deputy is looking squarely at the enemy, the obstacle, the ‘problem.’ A three-quarter face photograph, which is more common, suggests the tyranny of an ideal: the gaze is lost nobly in the future, it does not confront, it soars, and fertilizes some other domain, which is chastely left undefined. Almost all three-quarter face photos are ascensional, the face is lifted towards a supernatural light which draws it up and elevates it to the realm of higher humanity; the candidate reaches the Olympus of elevated feelings, where all political contradictions are solved. (92-93).

Interestingly, Barthes does not discuss photographs that emphasize the profile. Perhaps they do not exist in political photography? A profile might suggest that something is being hidden?

Barthes provides us with a starting point for examining the rhetoric of photographs used in the current presidential campaign. Just guessing, I would say that most of the Barack Obama photographs that are used officially in the campaign will follow the three-quarter model, and I would guess as well that “straight talk” John McCain would favor the full-face photograph (and, if memory serves, such full-face photographs have dominated the Bush presidency).

American politics, however, does have it’s own rhetoric, and I’m not quite sure what Barthes would make of this photograph of Sarah Palin.

The image of politician as successful hunter has a long history in American politics. For example, note this drawing of Theodore Roosevelt, from the frontispiece of his 1885 book Hunting Trips of a Ranchman. Roosevelt had just finished 3 terms in the New York State Legislature and was preparing to run for mayor of New York City (a race he lost, although he would eventually become Governor of New York, and eventually Vice President and then President of the US).

Roosevelt’s book about his western adventures was all part of his reinvention of his image, using the imagery of the frontiersman to add some pioneer spirit to his actual background–member of a wealthy New York family. Other drawings in the book depict the various animals he shot during his hunting trips in the Dakotas.

In Roosevelt’s book, this drawing was titled “Head of Bull Elk,” and had a caption that read, “Shot Sept. 12, 1884.”

The photographs of Palin demonstrating her hunting skills (which were disseminated by the Alaska Office of the Governor) belong to this well-established branch of American political imagery, one that has perhaps developed its own set of conventions and symbolic meanings.

As the first blog assignment for the class in Fall 2008, I had the students in the class choose and analyze a photograph of one of the candidates for President or Vice President. Click here on the Politics link to see a selection of responses to that assignment.

Semiotics of Moxie

Inspired by Roland Barthes’s landmark study of popular and mass culture, Mythologies (first published in French in 1957, translated into English in 1972), I decided to look more closely at the “myth” of Moxie, to investigate the “message” of Moxie soft drink’s seemingly simple graphic design, and perhaps to find out a little more about the “mystery” (as the advertising copy above calls it) of the “Moxie Boy.” Moxie’s trademark image has remained remarkably consistent, with the exception of a few changes in hairstyle, over the soft drink’s history. To use Barthes’s terms, if we regard the Moxie Boy as a “signifier,” as something roughly equivalent to a unit of speech, what does this boy have to say for himself, about himself, and, more importantly, about why he is an appealing icon for the consumer of Moxie–for that consumer is the intended recipient of the Moxie Boy’s message.

In the essay “Myth Today,” Barthes asserts that “myth is a type of speech,” and by “myth” here he means a concept that is something in addition to our more commonly understood definition of mythology (as in “ancient myth,” “classical myth,” the “myth of Sisyphus,” etc.) (109). For Barthes, myth is the means by which contemporary mass society “naturalizes” ideology, conveys messages that are not necessarily inherent in the “obvious” or common sense meaning of an image, phrase, or even an event. One of the insights from Mythologies that has been particularly influential is Barthes’s argument that anything (not just words) can be made into language, that is, can be used to communicate ideas and concepts: “We shall therefore take language, discourse, speech, etc., to mean any significant unit or synthesis, whether verbal or visual: a photograph will be a kind of speech for us in the same way as a newspaper article; even objects will become speech, if they mean something” (111-12). Thus, among the many essays collected in Mythologies, Barthes advances his “ideological critique bearing on the language of so-called mass-culture” through clever analyses of wrestling, soap-powders and detergent, toys, steak and chips, striptease, Greta Garbo, and the use of photography in elections (9).

As an example of the difference between what we might call the “common sense” meaning and the ideological meaning, Barthes writes of a trip to the barber’s, where he thumbs through a copy of Paris-Match: “On the cover a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But, whether naively or not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without any colour discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called oppressors” (116). The seemingly innocent photograph serves a larger ideological purpose, as visual evidence in support of a particular political point of view.

Among the more interesting oddities related to the soft drink Moxie is that its name represents one of the few examples of a proper name changing over to become a noun in the English language. Thus, Moxie is not only a trade name, but it is a also a word that means: “1: Energy, Pep 2: Courage, Determination 3: Know-How, Expertise” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary). As a noun rather than a proper name, it is a perfectly legal (and potentially high-scoring) word to use in Scrabble. Thus, although the Moxie Boy is a visual image, he already is associated with a verbal meaning, as he is supposed to be the very embodiment of the qualities Moxie purports to offer. And, if we look more closely into the history of Moxie, we can see quite clearly that one of the selling points of the soft drink is the promise, explicit in its early days, more implicit as time went on, that Moxie has the ability to impart those very qualities to the consumer who purchases it.

Moxie Nerve Food, as it was originally called, was a “tonic,” a medicinal concoction intended as a cure for those who were lacking in such qualities as pep and energy. In the late nineteenth century, when Moxie Nerve Food first went on the market, Americans were worried about a disease (primarily affecting men) called “neurasthenia,” a “nervous disease” no longer recognized as a medical ailment, the symptoms of which might be simply stated as “not being manly enough.” When Moxie dropped the “Nerve Food” from its title and its (rather spurious) claim to medicinal power, it nonetheless kept the concept of “manliness” as part of its marketing (and, thus, the Moxie Boy and not the Moxie Girl).

And the approach worked quite well. Until the 1920s, Moxie was the most popular soft drink in America, although it has receded to being a New England favorite, and the grocery stores here in Maine are well stocked with it.

Of course, it was invented by a Mainer, Dr. Augustin Thompson, who sold it initially as a cure for “loss of manhood, paralysis and softening of the brain.” And here we might pause and look more closely at Moxie Nerve Food’s first marketing campaign, and unpack exactly what “loss of manhood” meant to late nineteenth century consumers. Well, it’s not difficult to guess, but “loss of manhood” was a polite (or coded) way of saying “erectile dysfunction.” In short, Moxie was (or claimed to be) the Viagra of the late-nineteenth century.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a pointing finger is just a pointing finger, but it seems to me, anyway, that the imagery of Moxie still contains a hint of its original meaning, presented implicitly through visual imagery rather than explicitly through verbal text. Even the dictionary definition of the word Moxie is suggestive of a gendered meaning. Although we might now regard words such as “energy, pep, courage, determination, know-how, expertise” as gender neutral, coming out of the nineteenth century, those qualities would be primarily associated with masculinity. Moxie is a virtual synonym for “virile” (which is defined as “energetic,” “vigorous”), a word specifically associated with male qualities: “having the nature, properties, or qualities of an adult male; specif: capable of functioning as a male in copulation.” The mythology of Moxie, which we have uncovered here, refers back to its earliest days as a “nerve food,” and although that original meaning of Moxie (as cure for “loss of manhood”) has not been an explicit selling point for over a hundred years, a hint of that original meaning remains in the image of the Moxie Boy and his vigorous finger pointing. Perhaps that’s why the “Moxie Boy” logo, which has gone through many variations over the years (and is currently a Moxie Man rather than Boy), almost always features Moxie Man’s pointing finger (or other prominently featured phallic objects).

I think I can safely leave it to you, dear reader, to “decode” the phallic imagery here.

For more about Moxie and its history (and more samples of Moxie ads), see http://www.moxie.info/.

Posted by Dr. Johnson.