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Understanding Advertising: Decoding an Ad's AppealAny ad you see has been through an extremely elaborate production process. Initially conceived by one person or a team or people, it has been assembled by a variety of experts—artists, graphic designers, typographers; copy writers and editors, printers, all of whom contribute to the team's efforts. Ads are expensive to produce, and expensive to run, so there is nothing "accidental" in an ad—it is never "just a picture." There is too much money at stake for that attitude. The first point in looking at ads is to look very closely—pay attention to all the details. Scholars call this technique close analysis. We will apply these techniques in this assignment. The ad below is from 1923. Click on various sections of the ad to see more detail and get a sense of how a historian might consider this image.
Here are some observations and possible conclusions, drawn from a close analysis of the image. The image combines a placid view with a strongly, even weirdly erotic tension. What are the little green things flying out of the tree, above the statue? What's going on with that statue anyway? The woman is looking at it and not looking at it at the same time. The ad is selling sex, but it's not being very frank about it. It's also selling a notion of aristocracy and racial purity. But it's using a word--"creole" which is loaded with racial meanings--for many Americans, "creole" means half black and half white, which implies a taboo sexual relationship. The use of "medical evidence" softens the sexual implications, but the woman's ambiguous position in the ad is puzzling. Where is she? In the garden? Looking at a painting? Are we (the viewers) also in the garden? Are we her, or are we looking at her? It seems like the ad uses a variety of oddly inconsistent details to present a message that's loaded with sexuality, but not in a very straightforward way. it may be using the idea of forbidden interracial relationships to spice up the product and associate it with desire.
Red the conclusions that follow from the link above. These conclusions may not be right, or there may be other ways to see this image. You may see something else in the ad. There is no single "right" conclusion, only plausible arguments, supported with examples. It's not at all unusual for ads to have ambiguous meanings--to be unclear, or vague, or confusing. An ambiguous image, with a subtle, unsettling, mixed message, will hold your attention, and engage your mind, more readily than a straightforward image. Your job, in this exercise, is to produce a clear argument about the ad and what it telsl us about society.
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