How do advertisers represent females differently
to sell beauty products, paying particular attention to ‘Dior Addict’ and ‘Coco Mademoiselle’ advertising
campaigns.
‘While women have made significant strides in the past
decades, the culture at large continues to place a great emphasis on how women look’
(1).
The value of beauty and its importance is a
classic and stereotypical strategy used by advertising companies to sell
products to females. Furthermore, many advertisers promote the product they are
selling by exaggerating the fact that it 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 you feel as though you
have conform 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
actuality 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, but 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. ‘ Television operates in a public sphere, but actually enters our
domestic sphere, our homes. It creates an illusion of intimacy or a false
relationship between the addresser on the screen and addressee (ourselves) at
home.' [8] This then results in the huge
issue today that is body image and self-confidence. 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.’ This is 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’ after seeing the
final image of herself on the cover of a magazine which featured an image of her
very photo-shopped and visually edited. 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’. Secondly, I will analyse how mise en scene is carefully
chosen to connote particular messages, which ultimately increase sales.
Aim 1 Text
1 According to Jean Killburne’s notion, females are sold the message
that ‘the most important thing is how you look’. It could be argued that
perfume adverts objectify women to place
emphasis on the look by forcing woman who take the preferred reading to adopt
the ‘male gaze’. In her article ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (first
published in 1975), Laura Mulvey made the argument that audiences are forced to
view characters from a male perspective. This specifies that men do the
‘looking’ and women are there to be looked at. This puts into perspective the way in which
women are looked at, whether it is in the media or just everyday life, women
are constantly judged on their appearance and how they present themselves. ‘The
eyes are females but the gaze is male.’’ [6] As a result of women constantly
being looked at in this manor by men it then foreshadows onto other females
also as they then view other female’s the way that men do. Both of my chosen
texts conform to the idea that the most important thing is how you look.
Coco Mademoiselle: The Film, my first chosen text, conforms to this statement. The
content of the advert consists of Kiera Knightly on a motor bike riding through
the town and we see the attention that she gets from men as she rides through
the town where there are only 2 other women within the town other than her, and
they admire her in the same way that the men do. Kiera then goes to a photo
shoot where she begins to pose fully clothed then as she begins to undress
herself as the shoot goes on the camera man sends all of the others in the room
out. Finally when he goes to actually kiss her she stops him and before he
realizes runs out and gets back on the motorbike and rides away, leaving him
there. It conforms to my chosen notion due
to the fragmentation shots that we see of Kiera within the first few shots in
which she is introduced to us in the advert. The camera has been placed at this
angle to adopt the male gaze; this reason is so the audience gets a clear view
of her bum. The camera follows her and uses fragmentation on this certain area
of her to sexualize her; they make sure that this area of her is noticed as the
camera follows her at this angle so that she is viewed as an object of visual
pleasure and not holistically. This mid shot is also significant to
objectification as it does not show her face and strips her of her personality.
It portrays her as an object next to the bike. Juxtaposition is applied here
also as it creates further meaning by putting these two specific objects
together, as this therefore implies that you get the girl as easy as you can
get the bike. Throughout the photo shoot that she participates in we see
multiple close up shots of her lips and mouth. Throughout there is one of her
pouting and putting lipstick on, one of her smiling and also one of her biting
her lip. The soundtrack used within the advert is entitled ‘It’s a man’s
world.’ This helps to explain the idea of the fact that everything is viewed
through Laura Mulvey’s idea of the male gaze, by using this soundtrack it
portrays to the audiences that the reason we look at Kiera Knightley in this
sexualized way is due to the idea of the male gaze and how the advert have
portrayed her in this way so we see her as a desirable object, in order to
promote and sell their product.
Aim 1 Text
2
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’. Throughout this advert we see Daphne relaxing on the beach by
herself for a while then she gets changed behind a wind- breaker and throws the
clothes that she was wearing out from behind it. She then makes her way into
the town where she gets lots of male attention and is the only woman in the
town, when the advert draws to a close she is dancing around with multiple men
then we see her posing with an enlarged bottle of the perfume.
From a very young age female’s are fed many ideas about idealistic
beauty. My second 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. Much like my previous chosen text Coco Mademoiselle there
are multiple fragmentation shots used in order for us to view the model through
the male gaze and look at the certain body parts that allow women to be viewed
sexually. From these screenshots we can see the areas of her body that are
being fragmented are: her chest, bum, legs and figure. The camera angles also
help to do this by taking mid shots in line with her and having her in the
center of all the shots meaning that she is the main focus within the shot,
this 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 aspires 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. One of the main ways in which I believe
that Daphne has been placed within this advert purely as an object of desire
and visual pleasure is due to the fact that she is the only woman in the whole
advert, accompanied my multiple men throughout the different points of the advert.
As a result of this it draws our attention to her throughout the advert as she
stands out, due to her appearance but also against all of the males
throughout.
Aim 2 Text 1 For my second aim I will analyse
how mise en scene is carefully chosen to connote particular messages, which
ultimately increase sales in both of my chosen texts. My first text Coco
Mademoiselle uses mise en scene with technical conventions throughout to encode
different messages to the audience. When Kiera Knightly is at the photo shoot
she is on a bed, and there is a small screen that has been made to look like in
the photo that she is in a bedroom apposed to at a photo shoot. She also has
the bed sheets wrapped around her when she has no clothes on, and the bed
sheets are white. This may have been done to symbolise a wedding dress as they
are tightly wrapped around her and as she moves they drape behind and follow
her as a train on a wedding dress would. At 1:17 we see Kiera walk towards the
camera and as she does so 2 rails of white dresses get lifted up out the way of
her as she walks through. This is symbolic as on the clothes rails some of them
look as though they could be wedding dresses and the fact that they are being
moved out of the way as she walks through shows to us that she is dominant, she
does not need or want to get married so she is independent. At 3:03 we see a
panning shot of the bedroom scene being used for the pictures then the camera
quickly pans to the window which she has used as an exit, an escape route. This
is connoting the same thing as it quickly leaves the bedroom and shows the
escape route, encoding the same as the movement of the wedding dresses it is
showing us that being with a man is not the only option it is also showing us
that women can be free and by themselves. The advert was shot in Paris’ Place
de la Concorde, one of the major public squares in Paris. Paris is seen to be
the city of romance so by having this in the background of the advert it
influences us as the audience and gives us ideas as to what may happen with
Kiera in the advert due to her surroundings. We see different parts of this
famous landmark the whole time that she in on the motorbike on the way to the
photo shoot. We can see as the audience that the colour palette used is very
bland, all of the buildings are the same colour as her bodysuit, helmet and
matching Ducati bike. [7]
Aim 2 Text 2 Within my
other chosen text Dior Addict I will also be discussing how mise en scene is
carefully chosen to connote particular messages, which ultimately increase
sales within my texts. At 1:42, we see the silhouette of Daphne from behind a
thin windbreaker. This has purposely been used within the mise en scene as it
allows us to see 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. At 1:00 we see Daphne go behind a changing screen and we see
multiple items of clothing fly from over the top of it and out of the sides,
this encoded to us that she is getting changed. We then see jump shots from her
silhouette figure dancing behind the material and her trying on different hats and
sunglasses from behind the screen and jumping out from the sides and top to
show the audience what she has changed into. These jump shots also include
fragmentation shots as we see her put only her legs out from behind the screen
and then her showing off her body at the side of the screen. From 1:20-1:30 we
get multiple mid shots as the camera follows her walking and doing random turns
every so often, these are to show off her body therefore the audience can see
the whole of her body. With nobody else in the shot other than her and
different men at different areas of the town that she is walking through,
showing her a lot of appreciation and attention as she walks past in which she
then reacts to. When we get to 1:34 we see Daphne walk into the Senequier,
which is a French restaurant and coffee shop in Saint Tropez France. However
all of the décor, signs and even the drink that she is drinking are all red,
this connotes a feeling of passion and love and due to the all of the men that
are around her within this establishment it helps us to encode the fact that
they have chosen this specific place to film for this reason, as this is the
reaction that she is getting from the men.
Bibliography:
[6]Laura Mulvey. ‘Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema’ (first published in 1975) http://imlportfolio.usc.edu/ctcs505/mulveyVisualPleasureNarrativeCinema.pdf
[7] Information on the filming of the advert.
http://www.luxurydaily.com/coco-chanel-mademoiselle-ad-campaign-begins-filming-in-paris/
[8] Talking Television, Graeme Burton. An
introduction to the study of television. Page 24, Mode of Address.
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