How do advertisers represent females differently
to sell beauty products, paying particular attention to ‘Dior Addict’ and ‘Coco Mademoiselle’ advertising
campaigns.
[a1] The value
of beauty and its importance is a classic and stereotypical strategy used by
advertising companies to sell products to females. [a2]
Furthermore, many advertisers promote the product they are
selling can enhance the consumers beauty, level of attraction to the opposite
sex and quality of life but only if the audience take the preferred reading.
Therefore, advertisements must be carefully constructed to convince the
consumer that the product’s false promises can become a reality in return of a
purchase. Jean Killburne [1] 18 seconds, ‘Ads sell more than products, they
sell values, and they sell images, they sell concepts of love and sexuality, of
success and probably most important of normalcy, to a great extent they tell us
who we are and who we should be.’ This portrays an unachievable goal for
females, it means that to achieve this ‘normalcy’ that they have created when
in reality we know that the women that we see in these adverts and the media
are not ‘normal’, they have been digitally edited to look as flawless as they
do, when in reality nobody looks like them, not even the model in the first
place due to editing. This new reality of how women should look is temporary,
as if you have this beauty product then you are normal, nut if you do not
conform to this then you are not normal. It is a vicious cycle that without the
product you will not be normal, then you buy the product and still do not look
like how the women do on the adverts, then a new product comes out to help you
again, which then has the same outcome and this cycle goes round and round
always finishing with the same results. This then results in the huge issue
today that is body image. Due to the females constantly being bombarded with
these unrealistic body images all of the time it means they become more and
more self conscious and therefore less confident as they know they do not
conform to this ‘normalcy.’ Due to the fact that they do not mirror the models
of today. When in reality the models in the media today do not even mirror
themselves, this is the truth as supermodel Cindy Crawford said, ‘I wish I
looked like Cindy Crawford.’ Jean
Killburne states ‘Models cannot get any thinner, this is where photo shop comes
in to play.’ --------[2] Obviously the social reaction to these images that we
are bombarded with all our lives are going to have an effect on a large
percentage of society. A shocking statistic that I found is that ‘42% of girls in
grades 1-3 want to be thinner. No 7-year-old should be self-conscious about his
or her body. 78% of
17-year-old girls are unhappy with their bodies. And no, that wasn’t a typo. 30%
of high-school girls and 16% of
high-school boys have an eating disorder. Teenage girls are reportedly “more
afraid of gaining weight than getting cancer, losing their parents, or nuclear
war.”’[3] The aims that I
will investigate are how both my chosen campaigns construct females as objects
of visual pleasure and how this conforms to Jean Killburne’s notion that
females are sold the message ‘the most important thing is how you look’. [4] To help analyse this in depth I will apply Laura Mulvey’s theory of the
‘Male Gaze’ and Blumler and Katz’s theory of ‘Uses and Gratifications’.[a3] Secondly, I will analyse how
mise en scene is carefully chosen to connote particular messages, which
ultimately increase sales.
Aim 1 Text
1The aims that I will investigate are how both my chosen
campaigns construct females as objects of visual pleasure and how this conforms
to Jean Killburne’s notion that females are sold the message ‘the most
important thing is how you look’. Female's from a very young age are fed the ideas of idealistic beauty. My first chosen text Dior Addict conforms to this notion as it provides us with many examples of how Daphne Groeneveld (the model featured) is seen throughout the advert as an idealistic form of beauty in which the audience if they take the preferred reading aspire to be like. There are many technical conventions used that help us to see Daphne as an object of desire. Fragmentation is used multiple times to capture certain sections of her body. From these screenshots we can see the areas of the her body that are being fragmented: her chest, bum, legs and also a silhouette of her sunning herself behind a piece of material, this has been done purposely as from a silhouette you cannot see key features like her face but it forces you to see her figure and the shape of her body as it outlines this. The camera angles also help to do this by taking mid shots in line with her and having her in the centre of all the shots meaning that she is the main focus within the shot, therefore drawing the audiences attention to her and what she is doing. We as the audience can see that she is very slim and has a body that a general majority of society aspire to look like due to the influence of the media and society.
Daphne is a very distinctive model also. With a flawless face and very white and perfectly straight teeth, it also contributes to the idea of the idealistic beauty as it very unlikely that anybody else will look like her. There is also no narrative throughout the advert, this has been done to allow us to focus on her as opposed tot he narrative, as if there was narrative it may take the attention off her slightly as you would have to follow the narrative, but as there is just a soundtrack and her so it allows the audience to only focus on her.
4.)
Provide evidence of this viewpoint by giving
in depth detailed analysis of a specific scene- including technical codes, mise
en scene and dialogue.
[5]
Aim 1 Text
2
1.)
Make a good quality point/statement. (Usually
informed by research or class content.)
3.)
Apply this statement to your texts and
explain if it subverts or conforms? Coco Mademoiselle my first chosen texts conforms to this statement due to the fragmentation shots that we see of Kiera Knightley within the first few shots that we see of her.
4.)
Provide evidence of this viewpoint by giving
in depth detailed analysis of a specific scene- including technical codes, mise
en scene and dialogue.
Aim 2 Text
1 Coco Mademoiselle
1.)
Make a good quality point/statement. (Usually
informed by research or class content.)
2.)
Evidence the statement is sensible and
generally accepted.
3.)
Apply this statement to your texts and
explain if it subverts or conforms?
4.)
Provide evidence of this viewpoint by giving
in depth detailed analysis of a specific scene- including technical codes, mise
en scene and dialogue.
Aim 2 Text
5.)
Make a good quality point/statement. (Usually
informed by research or class content.)
6.)
Evidence the statement is sensible and
generally accepted.
7.)
Apply this statement to your texts and
explain if it subverts or conforms?
8.)
Provide evidence of this viewpoint by giving
in depth detailed analysis of a specific scene- including technical codes, mise
en scene and dialogue.
Bibliography:
Dior Addict advert https://youtu.be/Rur255STSY4
Coco Mademoiselle https://youtu.be/aRV-2_Un-kk
[1] [2] [4]Jean Killburne- Killing us softly 4.
http://youtu.be/jWKXit_3rpQ
