analysing Ads.. (THREE) sexual fantasy

Ahem.. today we are going to look at this perfume for men. Tom Ford is famous for his bold moves in using sexually explicit images in his advertisements.

let’s take a look at this men’ fragrance Ad from Tom Ford for Men. (there is actually another Ad from this campaign.. however, that Ad is too explicit.. way over the limitations i set for my blog, therefore i decided not to post it here.. if you wanna see that other Ad, you may Google the images for "Tom Ford For Men perfume")

Clearly, female image is used and exploited to promote this product. The woman in this Ad is objectified and be gazed at, as a sexual toy, which pleases men for sexual pleasure.

This female model is portrayed as in an excited state, with the bottle of perfume placed “strategically” between her breasts. (remind you all of something?)

This Ad is suggesting sexual imagination- sexual fantasy. Moreover, if the bottle is signifying male’s sexual organ, this Ad is conveying a clear sexual message “use this brand and you will get an experience as this one- conquering women beneath you.” This woman in the Ad is not taken as a respected individual, but as a “sexual object”. So what are women to men?

Take a look at alcohol printed Ads; again, women are constantly seen as objects in fulfilling men’s sexual desires and fall victim to conquests that any man can have if he just consumes a certain drink.

Advertisers are trying to make media audiences believing that they are going to experience the fantasy as portrayed. From analyzing semiotics in alcoholic Ads, we can see that advertisers often use sexual symbol implicitly to convey sexual messages. capturing female model using sexually suggestive facial expressions and their body to advertise, leading false impressions of getting drunk equals to conquering women.

but then... media audiences don't really care about all that right.. haha coz people gets excited when we see sexually explicit images. haha

this is not a pipe.

This is a famous painting by Rene Magritte called "The Treachery of Images." Magritte's caption says, (in French) "This is not a pipe."

Interesting eh?

this illustrates Magritte's point, which is simply that an image or sign of a thing is not the thing itself. One could make the same point with any number of images, signs, and symbols. Magritte's point is a simple one, so simple that we usually don't think about it. But precisely because we don't think about it, because we forget that the signs and symbols all around us are just that, signs and symbols, and not things themselves, we can come to take for granted, take as "natural," aspects of life that are anything but. we have to become aware that the names and labels are just names and labels. They represent the signified but they are not the signified. when you see a tree, you say that is a "tree". "Tree" is the signifier to signify the plant that has branches with big trunk to support it, so that plant is a signified.

Some labels and its meaning changes due time. These days semiotics serves as a very useful set of tools for identifying many of the formal patterns that work to make meaning in many aspects of our culture, particularly the media. Media constantly bombarded us with media messages with many symbols and signs that in order to identify and make meaning from them, we have to know at least how semiotics works. A particular advertisement would have its own ways of presenting its product, so we cannot simply just "see" an advertisement, we have to "read" the advertisement: the graphic, the lay out, the colours, the supporting elements, etc.

Try to read every advertisement that comes your way, it will give you more fun whenever you flip through the glossy mags as you can interpret meanings from them rather than just looking at them.