THE GRAMMAR OF THE AD

Transcription

1 THE GRAMMAR OF THE AD CASE STUDY: THE COMMODIFICATION OF HUMAN RELATIONS AND EXPERIENCE TELENOR MOBILE TV ADVERTISEMENT, EVERYWHERE, PAKISTAN, AUTUMN 00 In unravelling the meanings of images, Roland Barthes and others have tried to find systems which could be applied to help decode any photographic message. In his essay The Photographic Message, Barthes described photographs as containing both a denoted and a connoted message (Barthes a). By the denoted message Barthes meant the literal reality which the photograph portrayed. If we look at an advertisement for Telenor Mobile TV, the denoted message is the image of a young man watching television on a mobile phone travelling in a truck with other men in a rugged and barren landscape. The second message, the connoted message, is one which Barthes described as making use of social and cultural references. The connoted message is an inferred message. It is symbolic. It is a message with a code in this advertisement, for example, the young man featured watching mobile TV is Ali Zafar, a well-known Pakistani pop star who signifies an affluent, urban, Americanised Pakistani youth with a slightly wild, rebel-without-a-cause, edge that has already been established through his music videos. The inferred message here is of a glamorous lifestyle with excitement and adventure without isolation from twenty-first-century communication. When we look at documentary photography, the denoted image appears dominant. We believe the photograph to be fact, although, as Tagg has pointed out, it is impossible to have a simple denoted message all messages are constructed (Tagg : ). With the image for use in advertising however, we hold no illusions about the denoted image being dominant. We know from the start that it is highly structured and do not perceive it as primarily documenting real life. In this sense we are unconsciously aware when reading the image that the connoted message is the crucial one. In the world of advertising, the photographic image is often employed to visualise dreams, aspirations and narratives within which we can insert ourselves, and create inferred meanings. These kinds of images can be found in almost any part of the world. As is increasingly the case with fashion and lifestyle advertising, the photograph for Telenor s Mobile TV depicts a fleeting moment in a narrative. Here, Ali Zafar watches TV as he rides on a truck with a group of local men in a remote area of Pakistan. The constructed narrative in the image is so clearly about Ali Zafar, and these meanings are inferred not just through the content of the image but by the way the photograph is organised and framed. The centrality of his body in the photographic frame draws our attention to him and he is further distinguished from the rest of the people by his turbanless head, styled hair and the whiteness of his skin. His head is also double the size of the only other figure ROLAND BARTHES (a) The Photographic Image in S. Heath (ed.) Image, Music, Text, London: Fontana.

2 . Telenor Mobile Phone TV advertisement, Pakistan Everywhere (00)

3 whose face we can see clearly. We are left in no doubt that it is Zafar s journey and exploration that is being depicted. The rest of the travellers are not represented as individual characters but rather act as a colourful backdrop and aspect of his adventure. Of the six men travelling with Zafar, only one of them is clearly visible further back in the truck, the rest of their faces or bodies are fragments they are part of his experience of travel in what is a remote area for him. The image of the local men is not used to represent them but rather to convey the excitement and masculine adventurism of Zafar s lifestyle. The representation of Ali Zafar as in but not of the place depicted is established within the construction of the photograph. Apart from the difference in where individuals are situated in the photograph, Zafar is also represented as the ajnabbee, the stranger in the environment, since he is the only one to hold a mobile phone, an object which connotes sophistication by its contrast with the chipped paint on the truck in which he sits and the handmade string and bead bags which are positioned just below the sleek silver phone. The juxtaposition highlights the stark contrast between the more down-to-earth local, rugged existence, taken to be the world to which the other men belong and the industrial, electronic, technological device of the phone here, signifying the global object with which Zafar is clearly associated. In exploring the grammar and language of images, Barthes and others were influenced by semiological methods first used in linguistics to decode visual signs: A sign is quite simply a thing whether object, word or thing which has a particular meaning to a person or group of people. It is neither the thing nor the meaning alone, but the two together. The sign consists of the signifier, the material object, and the signified, which is its meaning. These are only divided for analytical purposes; in practice a sign is always thing-plus-meaning. (Williamson :) For Roland Barthes the signs which were produced in the image are further mystified by a second level of signification in advertising messages. In the advertisement the sign at the first level of signification acts as the signifier at a second level of signification to produce advertising messages that are essentially myths. It was at the second level of signification that Barthes saw the production of ideology as paramount. In the Telenor ad, for example, while Zafar connotes a glamorous, adventurist, westernised free spirit at the first level of signification, at its second level, these qualities are attributed to Telenor. Since it is only Zafar who interacts with the brand in the image, it encourages us to transfer the existing meanings that we have of Zafar to the product and services represented here. The elision of the two meanings and the commodification of Zafar and his artistic work is increased by his close association with Telenor, which hold music downloads and ringtones of his music on their website and which sponsor concerts of his recent albums in order promote the brand.

4 The advertisement from Telenor Pakistan for mobile TV appeared as posters and in magazines in 00 and 00. Mobile phone technology in Pakistan is increasing rapidly, both in urban areas as well as small towns and rural areas. In a country where the difference between the haves and the have-nots is pronounced, the mobile acts as a symbol of wealth and status and these cultural meanings are emphasised and enhanced through the advertisement. The concept of celebrities and the wealthy as reservoirs of character has also become embedded in Pakistani contemporary culture in both urban and rural environments barda personality hai (He has a big personality) has become a common expression used to describe people with presence acquired through wealth and power rather than through what they have done. This reinterprets the power of class position as simply a representation of character. In the Telenor advertisement Ali Zafar acts to reinforce this cultural attitude he is represented as having personality through his glamorous consumerist lifestyle and his ability and desire to connect to international communications anywhere. In understanding the transfer of meaning between signs in an image, Judith Williamson and, later, Robert Goldman have suggested that the formal structure of an ad is significant (Williamson : ; Goldman : ). In one of the most widely adopted conventions of commodity advertising, an illustrative image of the product is montaged on to what could be described as the main mood image (both are often photographic). We are encouraged to transfer meaning from the mood image to the product, through their juxtaposition. This convention is used innovatively in the Telenor ad through the lines of communication that are visualised in the ad through digitally inserted undulating blue lines that sweep across the landscape in a blur that suggests speed and immediacy. The vibrant blue of the lines across the bleached landscape focuses our attention on them. They act like the sharp focused photographic insert that Goldman and Williamson highlight. The blue lines swirl around Zafar. The phone is also the only object that lies in the path of the blue communication lines. The lines undulate in a pattern that echoes the petals of the internationally recognisable Telenor flower and reference its blue colour. These lines don t just denote the communication network but act to connote protection and connectivity in an alien world. For those with the knowledge of Zafar s brief kidnapping at the beginning of 00, the Telenor flower acts quite literally to protect and comfort Zafar as he travels and continues his glamorous, westernised, adventurous lifestyle literally anywhere. A satellite communication system cannot be either glamorous or adventurist. It is inanimate, cannot even be seen and we know has no visible characteristics. Yet Zafar s engagement with and pleasure in the use of mobile technology is represented in the image as more satisfying than the human contact around him. He watches the television in isolation on a truck crowded with people. He does not share the moment of pleasure with the others on the truck or communicate with them through any sign or gesture. Zafar finds his contentment and prevents any feeling of isolation, not through communication with the

5 fellow human beings around him but through his relationship with mobile technology. The pleasure and comfort of human interaction is here commodified as taking place between a person and a thing. Judith Williamson asserted the importance of recognising our active involvement in the production of these meanings. The advertisement structures juxtapositions which we interpret; we are therefore involved and implicated in the production of ideology. She describes the viewer s role in producing meaning as advertising work (Williamson : ). When we recognise the influence of social and cultural knowledge it is clear that we do not all interpret these images in the same way. The production of meaning must therefore be seen as fluid and often ambiguous.