Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative - ISSN 1780-678X
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Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative - ISSN 1780-678X |
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"Woman and Man in Advertising: Narrative Illustration of an 'Equality which Cannot Be Found'." |
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Author: Jean-Louis TILLEUIL Abstract (E): The socially constructed and organized unequality between men and women is one of the major injustices of our times. This article deals with the ways "gender" is reprensented in paraliterary genres, more especially in the advertisements of the late 1980s. Abstract (F): L'inégalité qui organise (hiérarchise) les rapports sociaux de sexe constitue une des plus graves injustices sociales de notre monde. Ce que mon article se donne comme objectif, c'est d'observer ce qu'il en est de nos représentations du féminin et du masculin, telles qu'elles se mettent en scène et se racontent dans des productions paralittéraires publicitaires de la fin des années '80. Keywords:
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My essay consists of a sociosemiotic analysis of two advertising documents or, to take up terms dear to me, of two mixed messages that combine fixed (photographic) image with written text, taken from the '88 campaign for the mineral water "Spa Reine" (1). An exemplary corpus
Those two advertising messages, which were distributed among others in Pourquoi pas? and Paris Match, have been briefly analysed in Claude Herne's book, La définition sociale de la femme à travers la publicité (2). It seemed relevant to me to go deeper into the study of these documents for several reasons.
The first reason is to be found in the 'overpresence' of the body (in the picture and in the catch phrase, that is to say in the text of the photograph supposed to "catch" our attention), the physical medium which is highly implicated in the network of social relationships that unite the woman and the man for better or for worse. A second reason can be found in the selective distribution of the sexes made by these two advertising photo stories (3), especially appropriate for comparative research about the way male and female characters are treated in the advertisements. Finally, the third argument that justifies my choice is based on the exemplary nature of the 1988 campaign in the advertising epic of "Spa Reine", particularly in the history of advertising in Belgium. Indeed, the '88-campaign is part of the plan for the renewal of the brand image of the mineral water "Spa Reine", started in late 1984 and which depends on the concept of 'perfect water': "Spa is a water of high quality, one of the purest in the world, one of the least mineralized, with the least salt. a perfect water." (4) The specialized critics, who awarded honours and prices to the 1984 campaign, did not hesitate to assert that the famous water seller's advertising initiative, materialized by the agency Lowe Troost, "changed the face of advertising in Belgium. By allowing some advertising executives to realize that ambition was 'profitable' and some advertisers to discover the sheer force of intelligence and subtlety instead of simply persuading the customer to buy things in a loud manner." (5) In comparison with the 1984 campaign, that of 1988 confirms the renewal strategy not without learning from the first attempt, for, even though the campaign of mid-80ies had been unanimously greeted by the critics, the fact remains that the audience stayed away from it : "(T)he communication for Spa conveyed (in 1984) positive values (.) which were not in accordance with its reference group of consumers, women suffering from health problems, identified in the conservative chunk of society." (6) "If the brand wished to convey positive emotions of serenity and well-being, the public opinion was based almost exclusively on the nudity displayed in the posters. Opinion was divided, if we are to believe the surveys at that time. Pros were as high as cons." (7) Consequently, for the 1988 campaign, the (probably too) direct address to the reader was reduced, at least in its text ("Put.", "Stay." have disappeared from the catch phrase); the humour which was produced by the confrontation between text and image (we remember the sentence "It also works with half a litre." which went together with the presentation of the child following that with the male and female adults in 1984.) has no longer a place in the 1988 campaign. Whatever these corrections may be, obvious similarities (text: the same signature, "The perfect water"; image: black and white, naked bodies, and so on.) persist between the 1984 and 1988 campaigns and both are a product of the same advertising practice which became sociocultural in the eighties: (advertising) shows what being Spa means." (8) "The product lets a life style be in the foreground. The brand gets a personality. Water and consumer have become as one." (9) Exemplary by its corrected (uimproved) reference to the 1984 campaign, the 1988 campaign is still exemplary if, instead of turning to the recent past of 1988, we question its future - which momentarily stopped in 1997. Indeed, the agency LHHS which was then responsible for the advertising budget of "Spa Reine", again practises the black and white aesthetics, the tight framing of the characters, the installation of so-called "essential" values (simplicity, well-being...). That means a "return to the basics" of the renewal which looks appropriate (10), considering the product. My corpus being exemplary, I have to come back to the subject of this study: who, that is to say, which character(s) of the advertising fiction (Female? Male? Both female and male?) would benefit from the brand image renewal? In order to answer the question, I must stand back, and contextualize the question by a reference no longer to the history of advertising, but to the history and sociology of power relations between the sexes. In other words, I need something socio-historical to lean on, something that even if it does not allow me to rouse the world, helps me to optimize the respective balance between profits and losses as far as our two fiction characters are concerned. Man / Woman in reality. The "Nature/Culture" paradigm reexaminedSince the end of the XVIIIth Century, the biological discourse has replaced the unisex model that confined the woman to a role of imperfect stand-in for the man, with a bisex model that distinguishes the female and male bodies on the basis of immeasurable differences. The new "horizontal" layout leads to a redistribution of the male-female relationships. But does our "cultural", social look at the body confirm that "natural" readjustment? According to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, it is always a "vertical" perspective which organizes the field of the male-female relationships. Constrained by a physical habitus that naturalizes the symbolical masculine violence, the woman is given the depreciated condition of dominated in comparison with the male dominant. And the constitution of the male domination into a paradigm of all domination preserves it from any change (11). For other theoreticians, e.g. the essayist Elisabeth Badinter, the man is no longer superior to the woman and our society tries to put into practice the mixing of roles and functions (12). How are these different (vertical? horizontal?) social models actualized in our advertising fictions? Man/Woman: from reality to fictionOf course, we know the distance that separates fiction from reality. But the insufficiency of distance allows interferences. Therefore I must remind the reader that Bourdieu and Badinter (among others) already established that connection. In other respects, the choice of the advertising communication offers a significant advantage: the " perlocutionary" effects are so obvious that the reduction of the distance between fiction and reality decides on the quality of the communicational performance. In order to reach a solution from my evaluation of the social models, I study the stereotypical resistance put up by the photographic image and the catch phrases of both advertising documents, it being understood that I define the stereotype, following Bourdieu, as one of the "practices that organize the relationships between the sexes" produced by the habitus. Just like the habitus, the stereotype naturalizes. More precisely, it rationalizes. through the body a judgement we pass on others: the stereotype refers to visible features (sex, age) that serve as a basis to categorize. So, about the stereotype of the feminine intuition, Belotti gives an analysis that will be taken over by Yserbyt and Schadron in their article "Stéréotypes et jugement social"(13). "The - so much praised - female intuition is universally considered as a 'natural' product in a being biologically destined for maternity and raising children, and so 'naturally' endowed with divinatory powers that enable women to do what is best for their children." (14) As a relational concept that determines opinions relating to a strange group, the stereotype is perfectly suited for the confrontation of the feminine and masculine destinies of our two advertising narratives. Let us add that the choice of the field of advertising especially invites to make use of the stereotype: after family and school, advertising has emerged as a privileged "place" for the acquisition of stereotypes. Nevertheless, let us observe that opinions diverge when the matter is to identify the stereotypes which go together with, for instance, the feminine performance and, beyond this, the model these stereotypes are to be linked to. Thus, for advertiser Séguéla: "Mistress of the commercials, (women) are most often represented as queens of the linear rather than Hollywood vamps. (.) But things are changing (.) and, more and more, the clichés of the housewife are dealt with using humour and irony. Women in advertising will finally look like women." (15) On the other hand, for sociologist Claude Herne: "In the advertising image, in order to make the woman feel inferior, signs multiply and underline the weakness, the lack of self-confidence, fragility, hesitation, dissimulation, submission, childishness and infantilization, too." (16) Which stereotypes and which models are at work in our two advertising narratives? The list of similarities in dealing with female and male charactersIn an analysis of the documents, I note:
All these features have the effect of refining, naturalizing (giving a natural air to) the confrontation of the characters and horizontalizing (balancing), in that way, their possible differences, the most important of which seems to be the sexual difference, followed by all the others, cultural this time, which appear when reading carefully. The list of differences in dealing with female and male charactersIf I first study the reading space:
I can conclude that the man of "Spa" becomes obvious in his semiotic (iconic) difference, indifferent to our reality (our space) as a viewer and isolated, self-sufficient in that universe which is peculiar to him, made of two dimensions, the height and the width. If I now focus my attention no longer on the reading space but on the reading of the space represented, we find new stereotypes:
The male character imposes self-control and control of the world represented by the glass; he makes himself the subject (virtual, actualized, realized and self-glorified) who puts the realities at a distance, those of the viewer and of the glass (17). Still about the reading of the space represented:
From that reading I conclude that the character gives the impression of great stability, of great balance . Feminine stereotypes established by the photographic imageI note that the stereotypes presented in the photograph of the woman are not only contrary to those found in the masculine photograph, but also underestimate the female character: - the camera angle: provides signs to the addressee (orientation of the body + look)
Consequently, my interpretation consists of this: the female character, unlike the male character, tries to reduce the distances; the woman of the advertising photograph, being all contact, all phatic, displays a relational dependence. Other stereotypes continue the confrontation which penalizes the female character:
So, the female character appears in a position of dominated in her address to the addressee. Already objectivized a first time, the woman of ¡§Spa Reine¡¨ is that once again through her eroticization . In fact, rather than to a face-to-face meeting, the female character invites us into an intimate clinch which, by iconic proxy, turns the viewer-voyeur into a lover. Put back in the advertising logic and its perlocutionary effects, those observations lead us to read that production like the imaginary possession of a female body, tempting prelude for the other, more pragmatic possession of the product ¡§Spa Reine¡¨. Finally, taking strictly iconic parameters into account, several additional feminine stereotypes are revealed:
According to that reading it is an unstable, hesitating way in which the female character accepts her body which reduces the distance. And still more, let us note that this closing gesture revives the stereotype of the modest (and, through that, dissembling) woman. Since the woman¡¦s arms are closed on her breast, it is modesty that both advertisements really present as typically feminine and as a result from learning. Thus the arms are folded, which next calls for a new opening and so revives the feminine hesitation. Indeed, the modesty, protecting the female nudity and closing the character on herself, is shown by a (out of sight) masking effect which, since it sets up a narrative reserve, keeps up the erotic narration of the scene. But it is still possible to continue the reading of the feminine hesitation by spotting the stereotype of the feminine narcissism : it is for her own body (and no longer for the addressee) that the woman reserves her tenderness (right hand on left forearm, left hand caressing her neck). And yet, as Sarah Kofman reminds us, ¡§fËwfÍhat might make the woman more enigmatic (¡K), what might appeal in her, is that she might have kept what the man has lost, that original narcissism of which he keeps an eternal nostalgia: so we can say that man envies that narcissistic woman and searches for her as if she were the lost paradise of childhood.¡¨ (18) From her incorrigible narcissism, the woman would give off additional attraction, which reinitiates the veiling/unveiling game, found in the advertising document, but also dooms the man to misfortune: ¡§(F)or if such a woman likes being loved, she loves herself only, is sufficient unto herself and leaves the man who has fallen in love with her unsatisfied.¡¨ (19) This last quotation reminds us that a stereotype can conceal another one: behind the narcissistic woman, there is the threatening femme fatale . Masculine stereotypes established by the textual eye-catcherWe already know that the contents of the catch phrases are similar in both advertising documents and that their expression adds the weight of evidence to them. Therefore, I'll now take more interest in the visualization of the text, in its integration (its superimposition) as a visual element of a visual whole, the photograph.
Consequently, the male character, "learned" as the exemplary linearity of the slogan (that reminds us of the traditional layout of the book) demonstrates, shows himself able to mediatize his relationship with the world, not only in a physical way (the command by the gesture and the look), but also through language. If I now set the iconic narrative going (by a reading from left to right) through the scenario in three phases proposed by the catch phrase (Water. Body. Perfection), I find an increase of the symbolic power of the man. Already being given as a norm in my first comments relating to the point of view, the man presented in the "Spa Reine" campaign seems to claim, on top of that, the ability to dispute the norms whenever he wants, which is also a way of creating new ones: indeed, it is the man (subject) with a PERFECT BODY (and mind) who drinks the "Spa Reine" WATER (object). Able to "command" the world, the masculine authority that makes laws, reminds us, this time through the image, of one of the foundations of Bourdieu's analysis of symbolic masculine domination, that is to say this domination clearly rests on the power of legitimating. Of deciding on laws, codes, norms. What additional information can we derive from a "tabular" reading of the lead-in for the advertisement showing the woman? Feminine stereotypes established by the textual lead-inOnce again, I will focus my attention on the visualization of the lead-in. The slogan does no longer metaphorize a mediation using language, which intellectualized the masculine character. The mediation phenomenon has not vanished, but the object has changed. The middle part of a composition in three elements, a woman's body has been substituted for the linguistic media. In fact, the text serves the image: object in turn of the iconic representation, the text is layed out in such a way that it gives the impression of playing the role of a mirror for the amorous display presented by the photograph. Indeed, the segmentation of the slogan in two parts reduces a distance, which is that of the total length of the slogan. On the other hand, the fact that these two segments are harmoniously superimposed doubles the meeting of the bodies we were invited to by the photographed woman. This is a meeting still simulated by the first two isolated words of the slogan, which "sees" a feminine (WATER) "touching" the masculine (BODY), that is to say a feminine destiny that the third word (PERFECTION) salutes. Regarding the feminine ability to play with norms, we do not see anything confirming that. On the contrary, the female character rather seems to be the plaything of norms. The feminine proposition of (narrative) linearization of the slogan quite respects the order in the words of the slogan: it is WATER (subject) that creates (purifies?) the woman with a PERFECT BODY. Consequently, if the product "Spa Reine" (subject) actually "makes use" of the female character (object), it is the woman who invites us, by promising an intimate exchange, to consume Spa water. which in turn creates the perfect woman, etc. In brief, the woman in the picture works as a, required and obliging, way towards the product. She thus remains confined to a role as a foil /daydream, whereas the man in the picture confronts the product in a face-to-face situation that makes both of them real.
Conclusions (a): "Horizontal" or "vertical" social model?It is possible to harmonize the sets of feminine and masculine stereotypes by resorting to Peirce's semantic tripartition. More precisely, I suggest to set up a kind of focusing where the index harmonizes the set of the feminine stereotypes (an intensely close quest, sensuality, physical mediation.) and the symbol, the set of masculine stereotypes (putting things at a distance, intellectualization, language mediation.) But the semantic line linking the index with the symbol does not produce terms of equivalent value: the symbolic Reason prevails over indexed senses, the verbal mediation over the physical mediation, the masculine over the feminine. In his studies on time, that is to say our cultural history which is also that of our formal and informal education, Daniel Bougnoux considers the index-icon-symbol trio in terms of "cultural progress" (p.53), from the first to the second, then to the third one (20): "Access to the symbolic represses the index: it prunes the senses (sensations) in favour of sense (the meaning). Man extricates himself from nature in order to dominate it, or correct it. Just as the symbolic is iconoclastic: learning a language means renouncing the appeal of image in order to submit to the rigour and the arbitrary of the code." (p.53) and "The more educated you are, the better you can do without indexes and images in communication; the more (.) communication is digitized. Learning culture is that way to detachment" (p.55). That ontologico-historical circumlocution induced by the couple index-symbol does not only contribute to intensifying the coherence of our two sets of masculine and feminine stereotypes. It also organizes them into a hierarchy, so that I remember Bourdieu's theory and consequently I propose actualizing, within the framework of a fiction production (two advertising, "campaigning" photographs), the vertical model which socializes the woman-man relation into a dominated-dominating relation in a differential way. And the result of this is: with the real comeback of masculine domination, the possibility of an additional and egalitarian destiny of the feminine and masculine, and beyond this, a standardization of the sexual and social perspectives (the horizontality of the sexual differential model is standardized with the horizontality of the social differential model) collapses. Conclusion: b) An exemplarity (of the actualization of Bourdieu's model) that combines immanence and transcendenceImmanent exemplarity, because after all the arguments I could put forward (arguments that distinguish feminine and masculine "images"), we can only be fascinated by the amazing tendency of our two advertisements to put Bourdieu's formula into practice, a formula that compresses the feminine and masculine conditions: "The differential socialization leads men to like power games, women to love the men who play them." (21) But there is a second reason that forms the basis for the exemplarity of the advertisements for "Spa Reine" with regard to the application of the hierarchical social model: in our advertising photographs, as in Bourdieu's analysis of the masculine domination, the body holds a privileged place. This can clearly and easily be seen:
But we have also noticed that the social difference between woman and man is built arbitrarily and is naturalized through the body. Let us remember, too, while speaking about the naturalization of the masculine social order, that it works in a highly convincing way because the bodies are naked, that is to say in a nearly original state of "nature", of authenticity that can make one think - for a moment - of the objectivity of a unique and natural sexual difference. And yet, I could show that this nudity deludes us: because it is "dressed" in culture, the biological difference is not experienced in the same way by our two advertising fictional characters. Exemplary by immanence, the actualization of Bourdieu's model is also exemplary in a transcendent way, in the sense that it seems to be treated by an external and restricting motivation: by a stereotypical resistance that went through the centuries, and as an end to my essay, I intend to list up some of its landmarks in the XXth Century. The first of them is to be found within the campaign for "Spa Reine" in 1984 that I presented as initiation for that of 1988. Indeed, in the light of the previous comments, the feminine layout, with its textual lead-in ("Stay the way you are") and the gestural attitude of the chin resting in the palm of her hand, suddenly throw light on the woman's distressing destiny: she must not expect anything from the passing of time. But if the change is refused to the woman, it is allowed for the man who is invited to travel, which, as we know, (trans)forms ("Give your body a holiday."). According to Mireille Dottin-Orsini, that refusal of any change is to be linked with the all too famous stereotypes of the femme fatale and of the eternal feminine: "Rooted in the eternal, being in this actually fatale, she has the function to embody the immutable; Bible and mythology have been looted to show it. Eternal enemy, Eternal victim, Eternal guilty, Eternal doll. Asserting the woman's eternity certainly increases her standing but it is also a way of saying: that she remains there (my italics), that she does not move." (22) I can go still backwards in the XXth Century in order to check the hypothesis of a stereotypical persistence with transcendent effects that can be perceived in the " Spa Reine " campaign in 1988 by a new trip in time, that is to say from 1984 to 1977. That year, in Actes de la Recherche en sciences sociales (23), Erving Goffman drew conclusions about the presentation of female and male bodies that remain up to date when reading the two advertising photographs "WATER.BODY.PERFECTION.": "Most of the advertisements presenting men and women refer more or less openly to the traditional division and hierarchy between the sexes." (p.38); "As it is (.) herself that the woman touches, apparently it is to make the spectator feel that her body is a delicate and precious thing." (p.40) and "(T)he lying position is the one where you can defend yourself the least and consequently the one that makes you more dependent on the benevolence of the environment. (And it is obvious that apparently, lying (.) on a bed also constitutes a conventional way of expressing sexual availability). The important thing for us is that seemingly, children and women are shown in a lying position more often than men" (p.42) (24). To complete the demonstration of a temporal weight that makes the weight hanging over the two "Spa Reine" advertisements in 1988 heavy, I can still refer to two advertising posters for cigarettes: the first, dating from 1920, advertises "Belga" cigarettes for women and presents a female character; the second, distributed in 1930, advertises "Primerose" cigarettes for men and represents a male character. Indeed it is remarkable that these two posters of the interwar years already build their opposition: sensual and passive femininity / virile and active masculinity, and this from a contrast of formal indexes that is similar to the one observed in order to distinguish the two advertising photographs for "Spa Reine" mineral water:
After reading the different arguments put forward to demonstrate the (both immanent and transcendent) exemplary actuality of Bourdieu's model in the two "Spa Reine" advertisements in 1988, at first I can only agree with the opinion about advertising (by a closed question) expressed by reporter Claude Degoutte (25): "Who said that advertising creates something new, original, never seen?" (26) But very quickly my agreement turns into opposition when the same Degoutte completes his thought by asserting that "(advertising) only reports the current climate, behaves like an eternal deception by taking over - by devious means - a whole set of codes that will allow the viewer to get involved in the show proposed to him" (ibid.). Indeed, this analysis is convenient for a superficial reading of the advertising messages that, of course, superficially show a renewal and a concern to adapt to the custom evolution and, through that, to some improvement in the female condition. But if superficially, the change is a must, in depth, the tendency is the return of the "same", at least for the representation of the feminine and the masculine. Which leads us to some restraint considering Séguéla's optimism or naïvety (even dishonesty?) when he asserts that "everything changes" and that "women in advertising will finally look like women." (27) To the analysis by Séguéla, I prefer the one by Bihr and Pfefferkorn who first inspired me for the title of my essay and to whom, for the sake of coherence, I leave the last word: "(B)ehind the flashy appearance of modernity in the 'consumer society', it is the most archaic discourse, making the woman feel minor and submitting her to the man, that is still conveyed by the current dominating representations." (28) Footnotes
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Jean-Louis TILLEUIL |
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