Adbusters and Woman
stereotypical, straightforward, sexist // unconventional, complex, political and feminist
- Mise-en-scene of naked woman - sexualised, scandalous - completely naked, covered by bubbles // intimate, non sexualised, contrast between poverty and luxury, lack of water and excess of water
- contrast between european/white woman
To what extent does cultural context influence how magazines create meaning?
Cultural context refers to the context that exists at the time a media product is made. In this essay I shall argue that both magazines i have studied completely reflect the cultural context of the time in which they were made, through their won specific uses of media language. In order to argue this I shall be comparing Woman, a woman's lifestyle magazine first published in the 1930s that was selling millions of copies in the 1960s, and is wholly sexist, stereotypical and straightforward, and Adbusters, an unconventional magazine that addressed niche political issues and completely lacks any form of anchorage or any paid for advertising.
One excellent and striking way that Woman magazine reflects the social and cultural context of 1964 is through it's paid for advertising. Roughly 1/3rd of a magazine's revenue comes from advertising, and since Woman magazine reaches such a vast audience, advertisers will pay a premium. The Breeze soap advert presents a heavily sexualised representation of a young, hegemonically attractive woman. This is reinforced through the MES of the model's slim figure and lack of clothing. Her nudity is emphasised through her performance, with her legs playfully propped up, and her breasts partially covered by her arms. The suggestive placement of the MES of soap constructs a highly sexualised symbolic code, constructing an ideology that to be feminine, one must be clean and also hegemonically sexually attractive. This is further anchored through the use of lexis "because you are a woman", which further enhances the ideological perspective that not only is the target audience clearly women, but they must also listen to and accept a particularly demanding mode of address. The advert takes an explicit and sexualised mode of address in order to manipulate its' easily influenced and less educated target audience. This ideological representation is clearly present to uphold patriarchal hegemony and therefore can be seen as both highly damaging and sexist. This reinforces the attitudes towards women during the 1960s.
However, Adbusters takes a completely different approach to the representation of women. In the Zuchetti double page spread, a striking similar image of a nude woman in the bath is used. However, remarkably, the nude woman in Adbusters is not even slightly sexualised. This is a surprisingly atypical representation of a woman.
Highly polysemic representation of women, which can be interpreted in many different ways
MES of bland, dull desaturated colours
MES of wrinky hands suggests abundance of water
MES of tattos may have associations with poverty and a criminal lifestyle
highly Polysemic and highly atypical
voyeristic
Feminism is for everyone- challenging representation of a non sexualised woman, and not focussed on being feminist makes it feminist
Deliberate statement and an attempt to challenge the sexualised representation of women
Another way in which the cultural context influences meaning in Adbusters is through it's complete lack of anchorage.
2016 was a confusing time
WHY is it sexist / sexualised - always ask why
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