Analysis of Fragrance Advertisements Advertisements in todays culture are displayed everywhere, from billboards to the free space on social media. Ads cater to a specific group or class of people who the company views as their consumer market. Fragrance advertisements tend to be very sexualized, as to sell a desirable life style that may come along with wearing the fragrance. Marketing strategies that are used by large companies to create the advertising campaigns are highly researched and involve understanding the ways that consumers will react to the ads. In order to study the ways of looking at ads, I will be exploring capitalism and the economy, hegemonic theories, and interpellation. I will also explore the gaze and how women are traditionally used in images/texts. I investigate double-entendre in product names and campaigns, cinematic/photographic stylistics in relation to the connotation of the images and use of text in five different fragranceadvertising campaigns. I will be using the video and print advertisements as references. To fully investigate the fragrance ads chosen we must first explore ways of understanding them. Beginning with a generalized idea of capitalism, since we live in a capitalist society we must understand how capitalism effects advertisements that we see. Capitalism is defined as, an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. This is important to state for it is because of private owners within the economy that advertisements have evolved into the way they are. To further specify capitalism it can be looked at from the point of view of Karl Marx. Marx s theory of Marxism analyzes the role of economics in the progress of history and the ways that capitalism works in terms of class relations. The book Practices of Looking by Marita Sturken states, Those who own the means of production are also in control of ideas and viewpoints produced and circulated in societies media venues. (Sturken pg. 69) Ideology is based out of our understanding of society and the economy surrounding us. Karl Marx thought of ideology as a kind of false consciousness
that was spread by dominant powers among the masses who are coerced by those in power to mindlessly buy into the belief systems that allow capitalism to thrive. (Sturken pg. 69) Louis Pierre Althusser, a French Marxist theorist defines ideology as Representing the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence. Ideology does not simply reflect the conditions of the world, but rather it allows for the ability to think about or experience what we come to know as reality. Althusser draws from Freudian psychoanalytic theory to emphasize that ideology is a set of ideas and beliefs, shaped through the unconscious, in relationship to social forces, such as the economy.( Sturken pg. 70) The ideology of the fragrance advertisements allows for specific ideas and beliefs to come into being. The advertisements chosen are highly sexualized fragrance campaigns. Be Tempted by DKNY, Euphoria by Calvin Klein, Hypnotic Poison by Dior, Tom Ford for Men, and Guilty by Gucci are print, as well as filmed productions for television or Internet commercials. Each advertisement can be explored through ways of looking in terms of the culture that they come out of. To begin the analysis of these advertisements, they will first be summarized. The advertisement Be Tempted by DKNY refers to the biblical story of The Fall of Adam and Eve. The advertisement encourages the consumer to be tempted by the fruit which the fragrance bottle is substituted or interchangeable in this case. The female model (Eve) in the video goes straight for the fruit and bites into it in an overly sexualized manner. By doing so she is openly giving into the taboo of temptation and is enjoying being sinful. After biting the apple the model looks directly at the viewer and then the scene cuts to a male figure s chest and back to the female model. At the end of the advertisement, the Adam character embraces the female model and as well gives into his temptations. Throughout the duration of the short video ad the models don t shy away at all from the fragrance/fruit. There is nothing that is stopping them from taking impart in the taboo of eating the fruit as in the original story. The advertisers of this ad rely on the assumption that the story of The Fall is widely recognized. Euphoria by Calvin Klein entices the viewer by taking place first in a
bedroom setting with the female model laying on a bed with the camera positioned in a bird s eye view. The video then cuts back and forth between the model on the bed and on a beach, dressed in a revealing red dress that flows romantically in the wind around her. She rolls around in the sand in a euphoric and sexualized manner and then is met by a man who grabs her and lifts her up with is back turned to the viewer. The Model then looks out directly to the viewer as she is in the arms of the man with the sun setting on the beach. The two are seen in a state of Euphoria. Hypnotic Poison by Dior shows a female model is in the center of the set surrounded by many men grabbing at her and on top of a man in the middle who is blind folded and shirtless. The female model gyrates and looks around in pleasure at all of the men who are watching her. The entire scene would typically be taboo but is normalized in the scene. The name of the fragrance, Hypnotic Poison adds to the advertisement by setting a specific tone. Hypnotic, meaning under or open to the influence of hypnotism, and lacking control of ones own actions. Poison alludes to the action of deliberately putting someone in a state of hypnosis. The wearer of the fragrance, the woman, is in complete control of the men around her and has agency while the men do not. Tom Ford for Men by Tom Ford, shown in fig.1 is a printed advertisement. The print ads are as close to a pornographic image as it gets. The female figure is without identity due to the cropping of the image. The sole purpose of the advertisement is to stand as an erotic image of the female figure in order to draw attention of the consumer. Tom Ford s ad sexualizes the woman s body and uses it to sell a men s product. The only coverage that the woman s body has is her own hands, and the fragrance bottle, which is shaped very phallic. Guilty by Gucci depicts a romantic setting in Venice where a man and two women are seen in a lavish room surrounded by silk and gold. The two women get ready and are seen dancing with each other. The man lies on the bed and watched the two women. The scene then cuts to one of the women bathing in an ivory tub with the man; they kiss while the other woman touches them from
outside of the tub. The scene cuts again to the three laying naked on the bed together, laughing, looking and touching. They get dressed together and are seen at the end of the film walking down an elegant hallway together. Antonio Gramsci s term Hegemony is important to understanding how these advertisements act within our society. Hegemony emphasizes that one class does not employ power over another, but rather, power is negotiated among all classes of people. Hegemony is a state or condition of a culture arrived at through negotiations over meanings, laws and social relationships. The fact that I am able to argue that the ads are highly sexualized is because of hegemony. In Encoding, Decoding by Stuart Hall, there are three ways of reading an image described. Dominant-hegemonic reading is defined as the viewer s ability to identify with the hegemonic position and receive the dominant message of an image or text in an unquestioning manner. When referring to the advertisements, a dominant-hegemonic reading can be that the ads are selling a fragrance. Negotiated reading is defined as when the viewer can negotiate an interpretation from the image and its dominant meanings. Interpretation is a mental process of acceptance and rejection of the meanings and associations that adhere to a given image through the force of dominant ideologies (Both conscious and unconscious). Negotiated reading of the ads can be that the ads are selling fragrance, but it can be interpreted they are also selling the notion of desirability, and sex. Lastly, Oppositional reading is described as finally the viewer can take an oppositional position, either by completely disagreeing with the ideological position embodied in an image or rejecting it altogether.(sturken pg.72) Oppositional reading in the ads can be that the viewer disagrees with how the company has chosen to market their product in an overly sexualized manner and will then refuse to buy the product. Negotiation allows us to see how cultural interpretation is a struggle in which consumers are active meaning-makers and not merely passive recipients in the process of decoding images. When referring to the Be Tempted campaign by DKNY the company is aware of consumers being active meaning-
makers. They have strategically planned the entirety of the product and marketing plan. The name of the fragrance being Be Tempted tries to entice the consumer into giving into their temptations not necessarily just through buying a new fragrance but also to give into other taboo scenarios. By having the models in the ad gladly fall into their temptations of the fragrance and also of each other, the ad is going against societal norms and projecting a very risqué way of life. Michel de Certeau s theory of textual poaching explains that, reading and viewing can be seen as highly active and individual processes, even as readers and viewers do them within the confines of the dominant meanings of culture. Viewers of popular culture can inhabit a text by negotiating meanings through it and creating new cultural products in response to it, making it their own. When looking to the Gucci Guilty advertising campaign, textual poaching can play a huge role in how the viewer interprets the ad s meaning. Similarly to how the Be Tempted campaign was crafted to incorporate all aspects of marketing, so has Gucci s Guilty fragrance. The ad takes place in Venice a traditionally romantic city in Italy and involves two women and a man. When all pieces of the ad are looked at as one, Gucci is pointing to guilty pleasures. The ad showcases a threesome without any negative connotation. A viewer can look at the ad and replace the models with themselves. They can imagine themselves as being in the world portrayed which allows for giving into guilty pleasures. There is no taboo surrounding the characters in the film and the viewer can make their own meaning of the advertisement. The viewer can also be interpolated- or hailed by images in the realm of advertising. Interpellation can be described as a process of interruption through which an individual viewer comes to recognize him or herself as among the class or group of subjects for whom the image s messages seems to be intended. Interpellation must situate a viewer in a field of meaning production that involves recognition of ones self as a member of that world of meaning. (Sturkenpg.103) The fragrance ads interpolate the viewers by calling to their desires of the worlds being portrayed.
It is important when discussing ways of looking at the fragrance ads to think about spectatorship and the gaze. Spectatorship is the practice of looking; the spectator is the individual who looks, or the viewer. It is important to consider the roles of the unconscious and desire in viewing practices. The spectators of the ads have their own individual desires in life and it is up to the advertisement to attract to those desires. The spectator s ego is built up through an illusory sense of owning the body on the film screen. This explains why the advertisements don t shy away from showing erotic scenes. The companies want the spectators to connect with the characters in the ads. Jacques Lacan states that, the viewer undergoes a temporary loss of ego as he or she identifies with the powerful position of apprehending bodies on the screen, much as the infant apprehended the mirror image. (Sturken pg.121) Lacan references the mirror state in which a young child recognizes its own image, which is crucial to the establishment of the ego. Jacques Lacan wrote about the human subject as being constituted in part through the gaze, as well as from the theories of semiotics. A person who looks achieves a sense of himself or herself as an individual human subject, not only in his or her own eyes and in the eyes of others but also in a world of natural and cultural places, things, and technologies that together make up the field of gaze. (Sturken pg.103). The Euphoria advertisement uses this theory to its advantage by creating the setting on a tropical beach. The advertisers want the viewers to imagine themselves in that situation, and visualize the sand and touch of the male figure s embrace with the woman. When looking at the Hypnotic Poison ad, the same way of thinking is applied however the advertisers want to flip the taboo desires of the erotic scenario being played out before the spectator into being a norm. By showing it in a television commercial it tells the consumer that the scenario is not only possible, but also that it s not abnormal to happen. The category of the norm is always set up in opposition to that which is deemed abnormal or aberrant in some way, and therefor it is other. Eroticism is implied not only in the availability of the women s bodies to the viewer, but also in the implication that they are objects of eroticism to each other. Classical beauty
ideas of pure human form are often described by flawless skin and smooth textures, referencing neoclassical paintings, which depict voluptuous women with no traces of body hair or imperfections. All of the models in the ads hold up to these standards of beauty, they are flawless and shown as very desirable. The gaze on the eroticized female figure thus allows for the spectator to want to be or be with the figure. It is interesting that the book Practices of Looking states, The act of looking is commonly regarded as awarding more power to the person who is looking than to the person who is the object being looked at. (Sturken pg.111) The viewer not only gets to look at everything in the film, but also is able to inject themselves into the scenes being displayed for them. Psychoanalytic theory states that in order to function in our lives, we actively repress various desires, fears, memories, and fantasies. Hence, beneath our conscious, daily social interaction there exists a dynamic, active realm of forces of desire that is inaccessible to our rational and logical selves. Psychoanalytic Film Theory, based from Lacan, and Freudian theories explained that, the spectator is understood to be shaped, in a relationship of the gaze within a network that includes the film text and its institutional context, as well as the spectator themselves. The unconscious gives rise to representations, linking personal feelings to the world, and is considered to be an important component of that network. (Sturken pg.120) In a typical depiction of a female nude, a woman is posed so that her body is on display for the viewer s easy appreciation. There is a long history in art that the female nude is the project and possession of the male artist. There are countless paintings displaying female nudes, or odalisques that were made for their male owners to enjoy. John Berger notes in Ways of Seeing, that the tradition of the nude is almost exclusively about images of women who are presented for male viewers. Males often are portrayed as mere props, whose purpose in the image is to accentuate the female nude. Women are posed as objects of an active or male gaze. All of the women in the advertisements are
centered and the camera focuses on them as they play their erotic parts. They are to be seen and appreciated easily. Mirrors were used by great painters to create multiple planes within a painting that could be seen by the stationary spectator. This tactic is used in many scenes in the Guilty advertisement. The women in the film not only look into a lavish mirror, allowing the viewer to gaze at them in the round, but they also can act as mirrors of each other. The women are portrayed as objects of looking which can be seen also as taking their identities away. Both women are thin, tall, and beautiful and therefore can substitute for each other as a mirror would. When one of the models has her back towards the viewer and the other is facing outward, the viewer is able to gaze at a female figure from both angles simultaneously. Voyeurism is defined as pleasure one takes in looking while not being seen. It carries with it negative connotation of a powerful and sadistic position within the gaze. Women can identify with the male position of mastery or exercise voyeuristic tendencies in looking at men or women. Men can be looked on with pleasure and desire by men and women. Although pleasure in looking may be strongly tied to ones sexuality, we may take pleasure in looking in ways that do not strictly conform to the codes of our respective sexual identities. A sexualized female in a women s fragrance ad such as Euphoria will not deter the female consumer because she is not sexually attracted to women, but rather it may be an illusionary method of visualizing herself as the women of desire in the ad. Laura Mulvey describes Scopophilia as pleasure in looking and exhibitionism- taking sexual pleasure in being looked at in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. There are circumstances in which looking, itself, is a source of pleasure, just as in the reverse, there is pleasure in being looked at. Scopophilia exists as an erotic foundation for pleasure in looking at another person as an object. Hypnotic Poison depicts scopophilia within the film. The female figure is displayed in the center of the composition surrounded my men looking at her on top of a blindfolded, shirtless man. She gets pleasure
in looking and touching the man underneath her, but also in being watched by the men surrounding her. The men in the circle around her also experience the scenario in a scopophiliac manner. They get pleasure in watching the woman, and also in knowing that the woman sees them watching. Conventions within mainstream film portray a hermetically sealed world that unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their voyeuristic fantasy. Traditionally the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as an erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen. In all of the advertisements, the women are displayed with this dual function. The women act as an erotic object for the men (which are displayed as props) within the scene, and also as erotic objects for the spectators of the ad, with no physical connection to the models. It is also necessary to understand the role of the men in the advertisements. According to the principles of ruling ideology and the psychical structures that back it up, the male figure cannot bare the burden of sexual objectification. Man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionists like. Hence the split between spectacle and narrative supports the man s role as the active one of forwarding the story, making things happen. Mulvey describes woman as object combined gaze of spectator and all the male protagonists in the film. She is isolated, glamorous, on display, sexualized. But as the narrative progresses, she falls in love with the main male protagonist and becomes his property, losing her outward glamorous characteristics, her generalized sexuality, her showgirl connotations; her eroticism is subjected to the male star alone. By means of identification with him, through participation in his power, the spectator can indirectly possess her too. Connotative procedures are very important to understand to complete the analysis of the advertisements. Connotative procedures rely on the cultural and historical context of the image and the viewers. The creator of the ad can use pose, objects, photogenia, aestheticism, and syntax to give a precise setting for
the film. In Gucci s Guilty ad, pose is addressed through the models dancing, and then lying in bed. The way the figures bodies are positioned and move create a feeling of relaxation and romance. The objects within the ad include a lavish bathtub, satin sheets, and fine items around the room to allude to wealth and sophistication. Photogenia is used through dim bedroom lighting and the camera angle being used flatteringly on the characters. The aestheticism of the film creates a materialistic, cliché romantic setting in Venice. The advertisement also uses syntax to its advantage, cutting between the two females dancing and the male watching intently. The other ads use syntax to appropriately place the name of the fragrance within the ad. Advertisements are skillfully designed to attract to the consumer through using theories of capitalism and the economy, hegemonic theories, and interpellation. Every advertisement uses the gaze and has a specific use of how women are traditionally used in images/texts. Highly sexualized advertisements aim to blur the norms and taboos of the cultures they are part of and entice consumers into letting into their desires.
Image List/ Video List Hyperlinked Advertisments: Gucci Guilty Hypnotic Poison by Dior Be Tempted by DKNY Euphoria by Calvin Klein Fig.1
Works Cited: Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. Second ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print. Barthes, Roland. Rhetoric of the Image. N.p.: n.p., 1977. Print. Barthes, Roland, and Stephen Heath. "The Photographic Message." Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978. N. pag. Print. Shaw, Adrienne. "Encoding and Decoding Affordances: Stuart Hall and Interactive Media Technologies." Media, Culture & Society 39.4 (2017): 592-602. Web. Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Visual and Other Pleasures (1989): 14-26. Web. Euphoria by Calvin Klein. Perf. Tyson Ballou and Natalia Vadianova. N.p., n.d. Web. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=becqq-gnx00>. Hypnotic Poison by Dior. Perf. Hana Soukupova. N.p., 28 Apr. 2009. Web. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fouwaywrxza>. Be Tempted by DKNY. N.p., n.d. Web. <https://vimeo.com/174794222>. Gucci Guilty. Perf. Jared Leto. N.p., 31 Aug. 2016. Web. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbpr-td-p6e>.