Media semiotics Signs and myths -st» The semiotic point of view Semiotics originates mainly in the work of two people, Ferdinand de Saussure, and Charles Peirce. Their ideas are quite closely related, but exhibit some differences, so I am going to explain some of their major insights separately in this chapter, and then indicate the kind of synthesis between them which is referred to as simply 'semiotics' in this book. Saussure was an academic who taught linguistics at the University of Geneva in the early twentieth century. His Course in General Linguistics was published in French in 1915, three years after his death. Saussure's book is a reconstruction of a series of lectures that he gave on language, assembled from the notes taken by his students and jottings discovered by his colleagues, The book explains his groundbreaking view of language, and was a major contribution to the discipline of linguistics. But Saussure viewed linguistics as only one part (though a privileged part) of a much broader science which he predicted would one day exist, a science which he called semiology. Both semiology and semiotics get their names from the-Greek word semeion, which means sign, and they both refer to the study of how signs_communicate meanings. Semiotics is now the more common name forthis kind of study. Saussure showed that language is made up of signs (like words) which communica|ejne^imjs, and he expected that all kinds of other things which communicate meanings could potentially be studied in the same way as linguistic signs, using the same methods of analysis. Semiotics or semiology, then, is the study of signs in society, and while the study of linguistic signsTs~one branch of it,~it I Media semiotics Signs and myths encompasses every use of a system where something (the sign) carries a meaning for someone. Much of this book is concerned with the semiotic analysis of language, but much of it is also concerned with non-linguistic things (like photographs, for instance) which carry meanings for someone. The same semiotic approach can be used to discuss language-based media and image-based media, because in either case we find signs which carry meanings. Since language is the most fundamental and pervasive medium for human communication, semiotics takes the way that language works as the model for all other media of communication, all other sign systems. That is the way in which this book proceeds; explaining some of semiotics' insights into how language works, and expanding this semiotic method to other media in society. It is usual to assume that words and other kinds of sign are secondary to our perception and understanding of reality. It seems that reality is out there all around us, and language usefully names real things and the relationships between them. So, for example, the world contains lots of very young people, and language provides the word 'children' to identify them. But by contrast, Saussure proposed that our perception and understanding of reality is constructed by the words and other signs which we use. Prom Saussure's semiotic perspective, the sign 'children' enables us to think of these very young people as a group who are distinct from 'adults', and who share common features. But different social groups, at different places around the world, at different times in history, have used the distinction between 'children' and 'adults' in different ways. Being referred to as a 'child' might have to do with age, legal status, religious status, physical ability, or many other things. Culture and society decide what the sign 'child' means, rather than nature or biology.. What makes the sign 'child' meaningful to us is the distinction between 'child' and 'adult', according to the conventions which are normal in our culture. At the same time as language and sign systems shape our reality, they are also media in which to communicate about this reality. A system of signs which works in this way has to be thought of as a medium in a more extended sense than the way that a medium is conventionally thought of. A medium is convention- ally something which acts as a channel, passing something from ♦ one place to another. For example, sound is passed to our ears through the medium of air, and electricity travels to our homes <»■ though the medium of electrical cable. But if language and other sign systems are not simply channels, if they give form and raean-<*■ ing to thought and experience instead of just naming what was already there, then there is nothing which exists before signs and media communicate thought and experience. Rather than thinking of signs and media as channels which translate pre-existing thought and reality into communicable form, signs and media are the only means of access to thought or reality which we have. .» This is one reason why Saussure's work is so important, j Although Saussure never made this leap, his semiotic method, showing how we are surrounded by and shaped by sign systems, i leads to the realisation that consciousness and experience are ■ip. built out of language and the other sign systems circulating in j society that have existed before we take them up and use them. often pass unnoticed or without analysis. We need to identify the :' visual and linguistic signs in the ad, to see how the signs are J organised by paradigmatic and syntagmatic selection, and note 1 how the signs relate to each other through various coding sys- 32 Media semiotics Advertisements 33 terns. We need to decide which social myths_the ad, draws on, and whether these myths are reinforced or challenged. These are the main tasks which semiotic analysts of "advertisements have concentrated on in the past, and which this chapter will explain. But since we cannot be certain that all readers read ads in the same way, we also need to examine two limiting factors which will complicate our ability to be sure of our findings. The first limiting factor is the potential ambiguity of the meanings of signs, and the second is that real readers of ads might decode signs differently, with a range of different results. These two limiting factors pose challenges to the semiotic methods outlined above, and we shall need to assess their importance later in this chapter. At this point, it is necessary to show how semiotic analysis has proceeded until quite recently. The semiotic critique of ads The first step in analysing an advertisement is to note the various signs in the advertisement itself. We can assume that anything which seems to carry a meaning for us rn_the ad is a sign. So linguistic signs (words) and iconic signs (visual representations) are likely to be found in ads, as well as some other non-representational signs like graphics. At first sight, most of these signs simply seem to denote the things' or people which the images represent, or to denote the referents of the linguistic signs. But the signs in ads very rarely just denote something. The signs in ads also have connotations, meanings which come from our culture, some of which we can easily recognise consciously, and others which are unconsciously recognised and only become clear once we look for them. Let's take a hypothetical example which reproduces the features of a large number of ads. A picture of a beautiful female model in a perfume ad is not simply a sign denoting a particular person who has been photographed. The picture of the model is also a sign which has connotations like youth, slimness, health etc. Because the sign has these positive connotations, it can work as the signifier for the mythic signified 'feminine beauty'. This concept belongs to our society's stock of positive myths concerning the attributes of sexually desirable women. The ad has presented us with a sign (the pho- tographed model) which itself signifies a concept (feminine beauty). This concept of feminine beauty is what Barthes would describe as a mythic meaning. Yves Saint-Laurent's ad campaign for Opium perfume in 2000, for example, featured Sophie Dahl, described by Marie Claire magazine as 'realistically curvy'. The ads denoted Dahl reclining on her back with her knees raised and legs slightly apart, one hand on her left breast and her head thrown backward. She was completely naked except for heavy gold jewellery, and her pale skin, emerald green eye make-up, fuchsia lipstick and red hair contrasted with the deep blue fabric on which she lay. Clearly the sign 'Opium' has connotations of indulgent pleasure which derive from the codes for representing drugtaking and sexual abandonment, and the connotations of the ad's visual signs supported them. As Dee Amy-Chin (2001) has discussed, Sophie Dahl's pose and costume alluded to French nineteenth-century paintings representing harems, Turkish baths, and scenes in oriental palaces. The mythic meaning of the ad connected the perfume, feminine beauty, and exotic sensual pleasure. As in the case of Barthes' black soldier saluting the flag, it does not matter who the model is, who the photographer was, where the picture was taken, etc. The only significant attribute of the photographed model is that she exhibits the physical qualities which enable her to function as a signifier for the mythic meaning 'feminine beauty'. The photographic sign has been emptied of its meaning except inasmuch as it leads the reader of the ad towards comprehending the myth. In analysing the signs in ads, we pass from the sign's denotative meaning to its connotative meanings. These connotative meanings are the ingredients of myth, the overall message about the meaning of the product which the ad is constructing by its use of the photographed model. The ad works by showing us a sign whose mythic meaning is easily readable (the photographed model is a sign for feminine beauty) and placing this sign next to another sign whose meaning is potentially ambiguous (the name of the perfume, for instance). The mythic meaning 'feminine beauty' which came from the photographic sign (the model) is carried over onto the name of the perfume, the linguistic sign which appears in the ad. So the name of the perfume becomes a linguistic sign that seems 34 Media semiotics Advertisements 35 to connote feminine beauty as well. The product has been endowed with a mythic meaning. This short example gives a sense of how the semiotic analysis of ads works at a basic level. We identify the signs in the ad, try to decide what social myths the connotations of the ad's signs invoke, and see how these mythic meanings are transferred to the product being advertised. The next step is to consider how the mythic meaning constructed in the ad relates to our understanding of the real world outside the ad. In other words, we need to ask what the ideological function of the ad might be. Our perfume ad invited us to recognise the connotations of the signs in the ad, and to transfer these connotations to the product being advertised. The perfume became a sign of feminine beauty, so that buying the product for ourselves (or as a present for someone else) seems to offer the wearer of the perfume a share in its meaning of feminine beauty for herself. As Williamson argued: 'The technique of advertising is to correlate feelings, moods or attributes to tangible objects, linking possible unattainable things with those that are attainable, and thus reassuring us that the former are within reach' (Williamson 1978: 31). Buying and using the product (an attainable thing) gives access to feminine beauty (a social meaning). To possess the product is to 'buy into* the myth, and to possess some of its social value for ourselves. Ideology in ads Our perfume ad, by placing the photographed woman next to the product, actively constructs a relationship between the woman and.the.product. It does this bjj)lacmg_aaTcohfc;sign.'(the"pho-tographed woman) and a linguistic sign (the name of the perfume) next to each other. It is this relationship between one sign and another which is important for the meaning of the ad, since the relationship involves the sharing of the mythic meaning 'feminine beauty' by both the product and the photographed model. The ad is constructed to make this sharing of the same mythic meaning appear automatic and .unsurprismg. whergasin fact it only exists by virtue of the ad's structure. So one point that a semiotic critic of ads would make is that the ad conceals the way that it works. Perfume ads do not literally announce that_a perfume will make you seemjDeauf^ul (this claim would be ille-f gal in 7nany"so^fies"anywayj. Instead this message is commu- nicated by the structure of signs in the ad, by the way that we f are asked to decode the ad's mythic meaning. ' It is worth considering whatjwould happen_ to the meaning of * the ad if, afferent ^ We ; could list the different attributes of different photographic models, t like youthful/mature, underweight/overweight, above average j height/below average height, etc. The positive connotations of f women used as signs in perfume ads derive from the positive con- j notations in our culture of the first sign in each of these pairs of f opposites when they are applied to women in ads. The my_thic ; meaning of 'feminine beauty' is much more likely to be perceived ^ by thereader.of.the.ad.if ^ i prejudices in favour of images of young, slim and tallJ women as V sigmfiers of beauty. The iconic sign of the model can "signify j beauty because "she is not elderly, overweight or below average \ height. j The ad presupposes that we can read the connotations of pho- f tographed women as if they were signs in a kind of restricted lan- guage, a code. Just as language works by establishing a system ; of differences, so that cat is not dog, red is not blue, youthful is j not elderly, ads call on systems of differences which already exist iin our culture, and which encode social values. One of the reasons I chose to discuss a hypothetical perfume ad featuring an iconic sign denoting a beautiful woman was that the example is ■ controversial. Feminists have been critiquing ads and many f other media texts for over three decades, showing that iconic j signs denoting women in the media very often perpetuate oppres- f sive ideological myths about real women. By calling on the pos- itive social value of youth, slimness and tallness, for instance," our > perfume ad could be described as supporting a dominant ideo- logical myth of what feminine beauty is. It is easy to see that our t ideological view" ot feminine beauty is not 'natural' but. cultural if we look at representations of women in the past or in other r cultures. ...In earlier historical periods, and in other parts of the world, the ideological myth of feminine beauty is not always signified by youth, slimness, tallness etc. Ideologies are specific to particular historical periods and to particular cultures. 36 Media semiotics Advertisements 37 The ideology of ads The mythic meanings which ads generate are usually focused onto products. Ads endow products with a certain social significance so that they can function in our real social world as index-ical signs connoting the buyer's good taste, trendiness, or some other ideologically valued quality. So.-ads: give.meanings to products, to buyers of products and to readers of ads, and to the social world in which we and the products exist. One central aspect of this process is the way in which ads address us as consumers of products. Critics of advertising have argued that real distinctions between people in our society are based on people's different relationships to the process of producing wealth. From this point of view, which derives from Marx's economic analysis of capitalist societies, it is economic distinctions between individuals and between classes of people that are the real basis on which society is organised. Some people are owners, and others are workers or people who service the work process. However, it has been argued that ads replace these real economic distinctions between people with a completely different way of regarding our relative status and value in society. In ads, and in the ideology which ads .reproduce, we are distinguished from others by means of the kinds of products which we consume. Social status, membersMp_of_jpjrticujar.„so,ci.al groups,_and our sense orpur, sgwffllSSviduality, are all signified' by the prod»gfe.which we choose to consume. Which beer you'drink, which brand of jeans or perfume you wear, become indexical_signs of your social identity. In any particular category of products, like perfumes, maFgaHnes, jeans or washing powders, there are only minimal differences between the various products available. The first function of an advertisement is 'to create a differentiation between one particular product and others in the same category' (Williamson 1978: 24). But ads not only differentiate one product from another, but also give different products different social meanings. Once products have different social meanings by virtue of the different mythic concepts they seem part of, products become signs with a certain social - value. Th^agnify something about their consumers, the people who buy and use them. ""~'~ ~ For critics influenced by this Marxist analysis, the real struc-■ ture of society is based on relationships to the process of produc- tion. But far from making the real structure of society apparent, .' ads contribute to the myth that our identity is determined not by production but by consumption. Ads therefore mask the real ! structure of society, which is based on differences between those \ who own the means of production and those who sell their ! labour and earn wages in return. In a consumer society, these [ real economic differences between people and classes are overlaid [ with an alternative structure of mythic meanings oriented j around buying and owning products (consumption). So accord- [ ing to this critical view ads have an ideological function, since ] they encourage us.to.view our,consumption..,ppM f activity which .grants us membership, of ..fifejityle.. groups. _Bu.t I what ads ares reajlyjdolng is_ serving the interests of jhose who own "and control^ the industries _dr_TOnsjn^ Ideology consists of the meanings made necessary by the economic conditions of the society in. which we live: a real way of looking at the world around us, which seems to be necessary and common sense. But this ideological way of perceiving the world is there to support and perpetuate our current social organisation: a con-I sumer society. The individual subject's need to belong and to I experience the world meaningfully is shaped, channelled and \ temporarily satisfied by ideology. In the sense thatjt provides meaning in our lives, ideology..is necessary arid "useful, But the t question is what kind of meanings ideology perpetuates, whether I these meanings mask and naturalise an inequitable social ► system. Advertising has been critiqued as one of the social insti- tutions which perform this function of naturalising dominant } ideologies in our culture, for example that it naturalises ideolo- gies based on consumption, or ideologies which oppress women. t Problems in the ideological analysis of ads There are some theoretical problems with the ideological critique f of ads outlined above. This critical discourse claims to 'see through' the ideological myths perpetuated in advertising. The critique of ideology claims to set itself apart from what it analyses, and to investigate the way that advertising (or any other 38 Media semiotics Advertisements 39 social institution) perpetuates an ideology. This notion of setting oneself apart in order to criticise advertising is parallel to the way that scientists set themselves apart from something in order to understand it objectively. Indeed, the theorist who proposed the model of ideological critique discussed here, Louis Althusser, saw his analytical method as scientific and objective (Althusser 1971). But the scientific objectivity of the critique of ideology is easy to dispute, especially if you are not a Marxist as Althusser was. There seems to be no definite reason for a Marxist analysis of ideology to be any more scientific and objective than another theoretical approach to society. Indeed, the discourse of science can be seen to be just another ideological view. The notion of a scientific viewpoint, standing outside of experience and endowed with a special ability to see into the truth of things, gives automatic priority to this point of view over all others. Science is a discourse, a way of using language which has its own codes and a particular social meaning. The discourse of science presupposes, for instance, that what we see on the surface is less true than what we see beneath the surface. Science passes from the observation of surface effects to proposing an underlying theory which'accounts for these surface effects. Semiotic analysis borrows the assumptions of the scientific discourse when it moves from the signifier to the signified; from what we perceive in the material world (signifier) to the concept which it communicates (signified). Similarly, semiotics moves from the signs on the surface to the mythic meaning which the connotations of signs signify. And again, semiotics moves from the mythic meaning of a particular set of signs in a text to the ideological way of seeing the world that the myth naturalises. In each case, looking at what is on the surface leads the semiotician to what is beneath the surface. We move from observation to knowledge, from a particular instance to a general theory. Building on the same assumptions as scientific discourse, semiotics and the theory of ideology claim to reveal what is really true by going beyond^behind or underneath what appears to be true. "Scientific discourse has a high degree of status in contemporary culture, but we can critique its coded use of signs in the same way that we can critique the coded use of signs in our perfume ad. We saw that the mythic meaning 'feminine beauty' j rested on the positive connotations of youthfulness, under- * weightness, etc., in opposition to the connotations of eideriiness j or overweightness, etc. Scientific truth is a mythic meaning \ based on the positive connotations of objectivity and depth, in I opposition to the connotations of subjectivity and surface, for f instance. Scientific truth is a mythic meaning which comes from the use of signs with positively valued connotations, in the same \ way that the mythic meaning 'feminine beauty' works. Once we see that scientific truth is a cultural construct, a mythic mean-\ ing, its special status has to be acknowledged as cultural and not natural, not necessary but contingent on the way that our cul-[ ture perceives itself and its reality. Scientific truth must be equally as mythic as feminine beauty. If scientific discourse is not necessarily superior to the discourses which it analyses, the scientific claims made by semiotic f analysis and the theory of ideology must be treated with caution. 1 The discourse of semiotic analysis, as I stated briefly at the begin- | ning of this chapter, requires us to adopt some 'unnatural' pro- ! cedures. We have to separate an ad being studied from its t context in order to study how its signs work. We have to pay j more attention to the detail of how meaning is constructed in an ad than an ordinary reader probably would. We tend to come up with an underlying meaning of an ad, relating the ad to mythic J meanings and ideological values, which is justified only by the rigour of our analysis, rather than by any other proof which 7 would ensure that our reading is correct. These features of semi- ! otic analysis do not mean that it is useless, or that its results are wrong. But semioticians have to take account of the limitations i which the semiotic method brings with it. Semiotics is a very ) powerful discourse of analysis, but it always has to struggle | against other discourses and argue its case. We shall be consid- 'l ering these issues further in later sections of this chapter, and in the other chapters of this book. It is now time to examine two ► ads in detail, and see what a semiotic analysis might reveal. Volkswagen Golf Estate First we need to identify the signs in this ad. There are iconic signs here, denoting three men, and the rear half of a car. There 40 Media semiotics are linguistic signs, the copy written underneath the picture. There is also a graphic sign, the logo of VW cars. Taking the three men first, we can see that their poses and facial expressions are themselves signs which belong to familiar cultural codes. Their poses and expressions are signs which connote puzzlement. The standing figure is still, looking intently at the car, with the positions of his arms and hands signifying that he is deep in thought. The two crouching men are also looking intently inside the car, with expressions which connote curiosity and mystification. For these men, there is something puzzling about this car. To decode this ad more fully, we need to examine the linguistic signs which are placed beneath the picture. The function of the linguistic signs is to 'anchor' the various meanings of the image down, to selectively control the ways in which it can be decoded by a reader of the ad (Barthes 1977b: 39). The copy text begins with the syntagm of linguistic signs 'We've doctored the Golf. Drawing on the presence of the graphic sign on the right, the VW Cars logo, and the syntagm 'The new Golf Estate', we can assume that the car denoted in the picture, and the signified of 'Golf in the first linguistic syntagm, is a new VW car. What does the signifier 'doctored' signify? To 9 "ŕ ■ŕ 1 Magazine advertisement for VW Golf Estate Advertisements 41 doctor something is to conduct a medical procedure, often to remove an organ, or figuratively to doctor is to alter something by removing a part of it. So two related meanings of the syntagm 'We've doctored the Golf are that Volkswagen have called some doctors in to conduct a procedure on their car, or that VW have altered their car by removing something from it. This meaning of the syntagm is constructed by referring to the value of the sign 'doctored' in the code of language. Moving back to the picture, we might assume that the three men are doctors, who have just altered the car. This decoding of the picture might seem to be supported by the next linguistic syntagm in the caption, 'The new estate is 41 per cent bigger on the inside than the hatchback version'. After being treated by the doctors, the car has been altered. But how could it become bigger if something has been removed from it? The meaning of the sign 'doctored' seems to contradict the meaning of the second syntagm in the ad. There is a puzzle here, which can only be solved by referring to another media text. This ad can be described as 'intertextual', since it borrows from and refers to another text. The three men are iconic signs denoting actors who played fictional characters in the British television series Doctor Who. Each man appeared as the character Doctor Who, a traveller in time and space, in separate series of the programme in the 1970s and 1980s. So the sign 'doctor* signifies Doctor Who, and the car has been 'Doctor Who-ed' rather than just 'doctored' in the usual sense. To decode the meaning of 'Doctor Who-ed' it is necessary to know something about the television series. It involved travelling in space and time in a vehicle called the TARDIS, which appeared on the ' outside to be a blue police telephone box (something small) but on the inside was a very large spacecraft (something big). To 'Doctor Who' the VW Golf is to make it bigger on the inside than it appears on the outside. Once we perceive the intertextual reference in the ad to Doctor Who, much more meaning becomes available to us. The car is blue, like the TARDIS. The car is for travelling in physical space, like the TARDIS, The Doctor Whos in the picture were incarnations of Doctor Who at different times, but they are together in the picture at the same time. The car seems to have acted like the TARDIS, which travelled in time, by bringing the Doctors 42 Media semiotics together from their different times to the time the picture was taken. The Doctor Who character solves mysteries and problems. The three Doctors are now puzzling over the apparent mystery of the VW Golf Estate's bigger internal space. These further meanings of the ad are only communicated once we decode the intertextual reference to Doctor Who in the ad, and use this cultural knowledge to solve the puzzle set by the ad. Many of the signs in the ad function as clues to help us select the appropriate cultural knowledge, and to eliminate knowledge which is not appropriate. For instance, it does not matter whether we know the names of the actors who appear in the ad, the plots or other characters in Doctor Who, or even whether the men in the ad are real or waxwork dummies. The ad empties out the meanings of Doctor Who, leaving only some of them behind. The mythic meaning of the ad, that the new VW Golf Estate is very roomy, is constructed from a few connotations of the iconic signs denoting the men looking at the car, and a few connotations of the linguistic signs 'doctored' and 'bigger on the inside'. The unexpected way that the ad communicates this message was one of the reasons that the ad was given an IPC Magazines Ads of Excellence award (Campaign supplement 16 December 1994), as the award judge, Tim Mellors, commented. The ad borrows signs and meanings from another media text, a process known as intertextuality. But it only borrows some meanings and not others, and the semiotic richness of the ad depends on the cultural currency of Doctor Who among readers of the ad. Without some knowledge of Doctor Who, the ad might seem rather mysterious. To 'doctor' the Golf might decode as to mutilate or castrate it, for instance. Perhaps the men looking at the car are working out how to steal it. Perhaps 'We've doctored the Golf refers to the way that the photographer has cut off the front half of the car from the picture. The potential ambiguity of the visual signs and linguistic syntagms in the ad are reduced once the signs 'bigger on the inside' show us how to decode the ad. This linguistic syntagm anchors the meanings of the image and of other linguistic signs. For someone unfamiliar with Doctor Who, the denoted linguistic message that the Golf estate is bigger than the hatchback version would still be meaningful, but the meanings of the picture Advertisements 43 would not be anchored down by the reference to Doctor Who. * The back and forth movement of meaning between text and image, the 'relay' (Barthes 1977b: 41) of meaning between the * two, would also be much less clear. It is evidently important to ask who the reader of this ad is assumed to be, since the reader's * cultural experience of other media texts (specifically Doctor Who) is the basis of the ad's intertextual effectiveness. The VW Golf Estate ad's contexts and readers \ The ad was placed in these magazines: Golf Monthly, Motor Boat t fir Yachting, Practical Boat Owner, Horse & Hound, Country Life, i Amateur Photographer, The Field, and Camping & Caravanning. The * readers of these magazines probably carry equipment around j when they are pursuing their leisure interests, or they are people t who would like to indulge in the relatively expensive leisure I interests featured in the magazines. An estate car would satisfy f a real need for some readers, or, for aspiring readers, to own the ! car could function as a sign that they belong to the group who f might need an estate car like this. So there are several functions I of this ad, including announcing a new VW model, associating f the VW Golf Estate with relatively expensive leisure pursuits, and j encouraging readers to find out about the car (the ad includes a f telephone contact number). The reader of the ad is 'positioned' I by the ad as someone who needs or desires a VW Golf Estate. f But all of these functions of the ad in positioning its reader do j not explain why the ad is structured as a puzzle that can be solved f by someone familiar with Doctor Who. This is what Nigel Broth- j erton, marketing director of Volkswagen (UK) is quoted as saying: j Estate cars are often seen as dull and boring. This is not helped ^ by advertising which normally portrays them as the load carry- ing derivative of the range. We wanted the Golf Estate to be aspi-rational and not just a load lugger from Volkswagen. The target ^ market was 'thirty-somethings' with young families whose lifestyle required an estate. These people were currently driving * hatchbacks as the image of estate cars was not for them. By advertising the Golf Estate in a new and unusual way we hoped to convince them that the car was not like its dull and worthy rivals. (Campaign supplement, 16 December 1994) Media semiotics So the Dr Who puzzle, because it is 'unusual', was chosen partly to establish a correlation between unusualness and the VW Golf Estate. The mythic meaning 'unusualness' is shared by the ad, by the car, and by the potential buyers of the car. The ad stands out from other less interesting competitors, and according to the message of the ad, the car and its potential purchasers stand out too. Furthermore, Doctor Who was a television series which was very popular in Britain in the 1970s and early 1980s when the Doctors in the ad appeared in the programme. People in their thirties in the early 1990s were very likely to know of the programme and to remember it with nostalgic affection. Decoding the ad's puzzle was probably a pleasurable experience for thirty-something readers, because they possess the appropriate cultural memory and this memory has pleasurable connotations for them. It should now be clear that the intertextual reference to Doctor Who in the ad is not just amusing, not just unusual, and not just a puzzle. It is an unusual and amusing puzzle because this is a way of targeting a particular group of people. Aspiring thirty-somethings with families who are interested in certain leisure pursuits were Ideal readers' of this ad. The ad is not simply asking these readers to buy a VW Golf Estate. It is endowing the car and these ideal readers with positive mythic meanings] that can be attained only by decoding the ad appropriately. It is "possible to decode the ad partially! mro^^ Butjhe ad reduces the chances. of these_oj^qmes by virtue of thejiar.-ticular cull ural_ know] edge it calkon, the context in which it appears, and the way that its visual and linguistic signs point the reader in the right direction, towards the correct position for understanding it. This issue of positioning by the text is central to the way that ads {and other kinds of text) have been discussed by semiotic critics. In order to make sense of the signs in an ad, it is necessary for the reader to adopt a particular subject-position. The individual subject (the reader of the ad) positions himself or herself as a decoder of the ad's signs, and as the recipient of its meanings. The individual subject has to occupy the reading-position laid out by the structure of the ad, since this reading-position is the place from where the ad makes sense. The situation is like that of Advertisements 45 someone in an art gallery walking past a series of pictures. It is * only possible to see a particular picture properly if you stand still, at an appropriate distance from the picture. If you walk past ■* quickly, stand too close, too far away, or too much to one side, you can hardly see the picture. There is a particular position * from which the picture 'makes sense', and to make sense of the picture you must occupy the position which it demands. Here it * is a physical position in space which is important, but, returning to ads, it is not only physical position but also ideological posi- f tion that counts. Ads position us as consumers, and as people who have a need or desire for certain products and the social ■» meanings which these products have. There is a subjective iden- tity which ads require us to take on, in order to make sense of •* ads' meanings. But this notion of positioning by the text has several draw- * backs as a way of describing how people read ads. It tends to treat all ads as if they were in the end the same, since all ads are * regarded as positioning the individual subject in such a way as to naturalise a dominant ideology of consumerism. It tends to ■* treat all real individuals as the same, since the positioning of sub- jects by the ad's structure of signs is a general model which f applies to all readers. As we have seen, a quite well-defined group ; of readers were positioned by the VW Golf ad to receive all of its f- meaning. Other readers and groups of readers might easily i decode the ad perversely, 'incorrectly', in which case the ad <* would still make a kind of 'sense', but a very different sense from the one the advertisers intended. The theory of textual position-■» ing assumes that there is one 'correct' reading of any ad, which ! is its true meaning. It de-emphasises the ambiguity of signs (like ^ 'doctored'), since all the signs in the ad seem to lead finally to the ![ true meaning. It assumes that the 'scientific' discourses of semi- otics and the theory of ideology are more objective than other analytical techniques, and can reveal a 'true' meaning of an ad -a* which most real readers do not perceive because they are in the ! grip of ideology. We can see in more detail how some of these 4 problems affect the analysis of ads by looking at an ad from one \ of the most successful campaigns of the 1990s, a Wonderbra ad. l r / 46 Media semiotics Advertisements 47 Wonderbra This ad can be read in a number of different ways, from different subject-positions, and problematises the distinction between an evident surface meaning and a concealed depth meaning which semiotic analysis can reveal. Like the VW Golf Estate ad, it draws on cultural knowledge of other media texts. It also appeals to an awareness of the critical discourses about advertising from feminist analysts and critics of ideology. It becomes very difficult to see what the 'true' or correct meaning of this ad might be. Discussing this ad brings us face to face with the limits of semiotic analysis, and of the theoretical model of media communication which has been developed earlier in this book. Our first step must be to identify the signs in the ad, and then to decide how they relate to mythic meanings. The picture isjan iieonic/sign denoting.a woman, who is._leaning_.against_,some-^5Si,£^^BL.4S_2EgiL^9S:?- She *s wearing a bra, and in the original picture the bra is bright green (this is the only colour in the picture, the rest of the picture is in tones of black and white). There is a syntagm of linguistic signs, 'Terrible thing, envy', and a further syntagm 'Now available in extra vert green'. There is a further iconic sign denoting the brand label which would be attached to a Wonderbra when on sale, "to read this ad, we would identify the connotations of the signs present in it, seeing how the anchorage between the picture and the text directs us towards the 'correct' reading of the ad. But there are several TERRIBLE THING, ENVY. i 2 Wonderbra poster advertisement ways of reading the connotations of the signs in this ad, and several social myths which the ad invokes. The relay between the bra denoted iconically in the ad and the linguistic sign 'Wonderbra' makes it easy to see that this an ad for a Wonderbra product. There is a further relay between the greenness of the bra and the linguistic sign 'envy', since green signifies enyy_in a culturaij:oo^(just^jt^red signifies anger,, for instance). But the iconic sign of the green bra does not anchor the meanings of 'envy' here in any obvious way. Let's assume that 'Terrible thing, envy' signifies the response of the reader of the ad to the picture. Perhaps a female reader would envy the woman because she owns this bra (&e_Jffa_^_signifed_as_aL deared_object), but the reader's envy feels 'terrible'. Perhaps a female reader would envy the woman because of the sexual attractiveness which the bra gives the woman (the bra is a sign of desired sexual attractiveness), but the reader's envy feels 'terrible'. Perhaps a heterosexual male reader would envy the bra because it holds the breasts of the woman (the womanis signified'as a desired object), but the reader's envy feels 'terrible ."Perhaps a male reader would envy the woman because she can display her sexual attractiveness by wearing this bra (fjemale sexual display is signified as a cleared m^ but not men), but the reader's envy feels 'terrible'. Perhaps a heterosexual male reader would envy the person to whom the woman displays herself in the picture, her partner perhaps (the. woman's partner is a desired subject-position), but to envy the partnerlJ^terribTe1^ There ,is _a.jange_pf possible mearrfng? of the linguistic signs* and of possible relay^b^tweenjmg^i^c^andjconic algns. But in each case, the relationship of the reading subject to the picture is one of desire, either a desire to have something or to be something, and in each case the reading subject feels terrible about this desire. Envy is signified in the ad as an attribute of the reader, but is at the same time acknowledged as an undesirable emotion. Another set of decodings of the ad would result if the syntagm 'Terrible thing, envy' represents the speech of the woman in the picture, but I shall not list them all here. This would affect the relay between the iconic and linguistic signs, and the way that the linguistic signs anchor the meanings of the 48 Media semiotics Advertisements 49 iconic signs. Once again there would be several ways of decoding the ad, and several subject-positions available for the reader. As before,- enviousness would be signified as an attribute of the reader, but the condemnation of envy would come from the woman rather than the reader. The ad would establish a desire to have or to be something, but also withdraw permission for the desire. The ambiguity which I have noted briefly here is reinforced by the connotations of the model's pose. Her arms are folded. This gives greater prominence to the lifting up and pushing forward of her breasts which the bra achieves, reinforcing the decodings of the ad which focus on her sexual desirability. But her folded arms also create a kind of barrier between her and the reader, and this is a common cbnnota&onjinplS^l armsin our culture in g_eneral..JLike the linguistic syntagm 'Terrible thing, envy', the v0\ ^ folded arms are an ambiguous sign, connoting that the woman & is to be envied, but that she is unattainable or critical of the one who envies her. Similarly, the woman's sidelong glance might ^ J connote flirtatiousness, or a sardonic attitude, or both at the same tune. The ad therefore exhibits a kind of give and take in the possible decodings which it allows. It offers the reader a range of possible subject-positions, but denies them to the reader at the same time. This is a feature which is very common in ads, and depends on irony. Ironic statements contain a denoted meaning, and a connoted meaning which contradicts the denoted meaning. The linguistic syntagm 'Terrible thing, envy' denotes that envy is a negative emotion, but it connotes that its speaker is envious or envied anyway, and doesn't really mind being envious or envied. This ironic quality of the syntagm means that envy is regretted but also enjoyed. The social meaning, of envy is being made ambiguous 'by the ad in a very subtle way. Envy, it seems, is bad, but it is also good in the sense that it is pleasurable. The irony of the linguistic syntagm is reinforced by a relay between it and the picture, since the double decoding of the syntagm is parallel to the doubieness in the meaning of the woman's gesture and expression. As noted above, her gesture and expression can be read in at least two ways. The mythic meaning of the ad as a whole then seems to be that the woman, the bra, and the reader, can mean several things at once. The woman, the bra and the reader are not single and fixed identities, but sites where several different coded social meanings overlap and oscillate back and forth. We do not need to decide on a single social meaning for the bra, the woman who wears it in the picture, or for ourselves as readers of the ad or buyers of the bra. The ad invites us to enjoy the unanchoredness of its signs, and the multiplicity of the bra's social meanings. This oscillation of meaning back and forth, which irony makes possible, has very major consequences for the semiotic analysis of the ad. The outline of a critical semiotic analysis of the Wonderbra ad would be something like this. The adjiddresses^ ing them with a sign connotinj^sexj^a^^ and power (the woman wearing the bra). These^socialmearto to the ad, canj:ejittamed byjyomen ifj|ieybuy the bra. To buy the bra is to 'buy into' an ideological myth that women should present theraselyeg.la.s_.ohjects.lor men's sexual gratfficjtwn. To critique the ad in this way is also fo'cd^ue It as., a mechanism for 'pe^ffilSKg an_ oppressive, ideology. However, as we have seen, it is by no means certain that the ideological message of the ad revealed by such a critique is the 'true' meaning of the ad. There are a number of coherent alternative ways of reading the ad, and a number of possible subject-positions from which to understand it. The signs in the ad are too ambiguous, too 'poly-semic' (multiple in their meanings), to decide on one 'true' message of the ad, Furthermore, the ad seems to be constructed so that it can disarm an ideological critique of its meanings. The ad signifies (among other things) that women can choose whether or not to become 'extravert': sexually desirable, displaying their bras and themselves as signs of desirability. The irony in the ad signifies that women can both choose to become desirable and at the same time distance themselves from being perceived as objects of desire by others. Irony like this was used by Madonna, who popularised bras as fashion items and was also represented simulta-' neously as an object of desire and as the controller of her own image, for instance, and the ad's irony may therefore function as an intertextual borrowing, offering its readers clues about its relationship with representations of powerful and desirable 50 Media semiotics f I Advertisements 51 women. To take on the identity of a desired object can be enjoyed by women, but they can also retain their power, as subjects (and not just objects) by adopting an ironic attitude towards this status as a desired object. The Wonderbra ad takes on a feminist ideological critique which would see women as signs of desirability and objecthood, and is ironic about this critique. The wearer of Wonderbra has two kinds of pleasure; both the pleasure of being a desired object, and the pleasure of refusing to be perceived as a desired object while nevertheless being one. In fact, both of these pleasures can exist simultaneously. The Wonderbra product becomes a sign of a woman's power over the way she is perceived, for she is perceived as both desirable, and in control of the social meaning of her desirability, at the same time. The Wonderbra ad's contexts and readers The Wonderbra ad discussed here was one of a sequence, featuring the same model, similarly ironic slogans, and similarly ambiguous mythic meanings. The 'Terrible thing, envy' ad ran in a range of glossy women's magazines, and ads like it were also displayed on poster hoardings around Britain. The ad campaign began on St Valentine's Day, February 1994, a day on which romance is celebrated, so that the social meanings of St Valentine's Day clearly supported the codings of the ad. While the readers of women's magazines are mainly women, the poster versions of these ads would have been seen by a.wide range of people of both sexes and of varying ages (which was one reason for offering the different reading-positions outlined above). For example, 40je£_cmtofDeriun^sales are to men fpr„w^en_at Chj^tmas. Some perfume ads are targeted atwomen, to increase brand awareness and the desirability, of a brand. But poster ads address men too, who can be prompted to recognise and select a brand for purchase as a gift. This is called 'overlook' in advertising terminology and refers to the targeting of one audience with an image apparently designed for another audience. The Wonderbra campaign was very successful. It reportedly cost £130,000 to put the first three Wonderbra posters on 900 hoardings around Britain for two weeks, and £200,000 to publish the same three ads in women's magazines until June (Cam- paign, 9 January 1995; 21). This is a relatively small cost for a ' national advertising campaign. The response to the ads led to the production of a total of fifteen different ads by January 1995, and * by then the campaign was running in ten countries. The effects of the campaign are difficult to assess, and the * responses of real readers of the ads are even more elusive. TBWA, the agency which created the ads, won Campaign of the Year for > Wonderbra in 1994 (they also won silver at the 1994 Advertising Effectiveness Awards). UK sales of Wonderbras rose by 41 per > cent and the manufacturer (Playtex) reported sales of 25,000 bras per week. It seems reasonable to deduce that the multiple > meanings of Wonderbra signified in the ads were able to prompt at least some of these sales. But in addition, the campaign was > mentioned in at least 400 stories in the local and national press, on radio and on television, supported by public relations initia- > tives. The woman denoted in the ads, Eva Herzigova, had previously been unknown but became the subject of extensive 1 journalistic interest. Wonderbra ads were displayed in Times Square, New York, and during the football World Cup in Dublin, > with puns and references specific to their location and occasion respectively. Kaliber beer ads were produced by another ad I agency, Euro RSCG, which referred intertextually to the 'Hello Boys' Wonderbra ad by replacing Eva Herzigova with the Scot- t tish comedian Billy Connolly pictured next to the slogan 'Hello Girls'. Giant Wonderbra ads were projected against the side of i London's Battersea Power Station, with the line 'Happy Christ- mas from Wonderbra'. 1 In a situation like this, it becomes even more difficult to deter- mine the 'correct' meaning of an ad. Even if a semiotic analysis 1 claims to determine the 'correct' meaning which the signs and codes of a single ad construct, the ad is not a self-contained struc- > ture of signs. The meanings of the ad will be inflected and altered by the intertextual field of other ads, press stories, and media i events which surround the ad. The Advertising Standards Authority, which ensures that ads are 'legal, decent, honest and > . truthful' received 959 complaints about the sexual suggestive- ness of the poster ad for Opium perfume in 2000 (Amy-Chin > 2001), and the ad was withdrawn. The ad did not generate controversy when printed in women's magazines, where its audience 52 Media semiotics Advertisements 53 was assumed to be predominantly women. But the appearance of the ads in poster form, coupled with widespread coverage of them in newspapers, alerted many people to them. The Opium ad was reproduced on the front page of The Sun newspaper on 20 December, and was connected to previous erotic ads including the Wonderbra series, one of which was reproduced by The Sun on the same page. Readers of ads bring their decodings of related texts to their decoding of the ad. Indeed, when the Wonderbra campaign became a media event in itself, the effect of the ads may have been to advertise the campaign as much as to advertise the product. These factors, which have to do with the social context of ads and of their readers, make any reading of an ad as a self-contained system of signs with a determinable ideological effect very difficult to justify as 'true'. This chapter has focused on the ways in which semiotic analysis helps us to decode the meanings of ads. Ads have been discussed here as relatively self-contained texts, although we have seen that the mythic meanings which ads draw on and promote are also dependent on cultural knowledge which exists for readers outside of the particular ad being read. The meanings of signs are always multiple or 'polysemic', and we have seen how some ads narrow down this polysemic quality of signs but do not eliminate it altogether, while other ads exploit polysemia. In the next chapter, which deals with a range of glossy magazines, we shall encounter polysemic signs and the importance of cultural codes again. We will also be considering the importance of models of how readers are positioned again too, drawing on some of the insights which psychoanalytic theories of subjective identity have, contributed to semiotic analysis. As we have seen here in the case of theories of ideology and readership, it is always necessary to think about the limitations and assumptions behind our analytical techniques, as well as making use of the critical power they offer. Sources and further reading The first and still very perceptive use of semiotics to analyse advertisements is Williamson (1978), which is more theoretically dense than this chapter but illustrates its points with reference to a huge number of magazine ads that are reproduced in its pages. Later studies of advertisements include Goffman (1979), Dyer (1982), Vestergaard and Schraeder (1985), Myers (1986). Goldman (1992), Cook (1992), Myers (1994, 1999) and Cannon et al. (2000). There are also useful sections on advertising in Alvarado and Thompson (1990), and Harris and Thornham (1999). Ail of these books use semiotic methods to some degree, and recent books also discuss the limitations of critical semiotic studies of ads. Advertising producers' perspective on their business can be found in Campaign and Admap magazines, White (1988) is an example of a book by an advertising practitioner on making ads, and Meech (1999) discusses the advertising business. Umiker-Sebeok (1987) contains a series of essays on advertising, some of which present the case for using semiotics to make more effective ads. Althusser's (1971) theory of ideology is quite difficult. There are books like Fairclough (1995) which contain explanations and discussions of ideology, and it is often better to see how this concept is deployed in relation to concrete media examples. This is done in the books listed above which use semiotics to critique advertisements, where ideology is discussed with specific reference to ads. Suggestions for further work 1 Note the situations in which ads can be found (on bus shelters, on trains, on hoardings, in magazines, etc.). How might the situation of an ad affect its meanings and the ways it is decoded? 2 Analyse the representations of men in a group of ads. How similar or different are the codes used to represent men to those used to represent women in ads you have seen? What are the reasons for these similarities and differences? 3 Choose three ads for a similar type of product (car, training shoe, pension, or soft drink, for example). How similar and how different are the mythic meanings of the products in the three ads? Why is this? 4 Ads for some products (like cigarettes) are not allowed to recommend the product explicitly. What semiotic strategies are used to connote desirability, pleasure, or difference from competing products in these ads? Are the same strategies used in ads for other products which could be explicitly recommended? 5 Both ads discussed in this chapter contain linguistic signs as well as visual ones. How do ads with no words attempt to organise the multiple connotations-of what is denoted visually in them? 6 Compare ads from earlier decades with contemporary ads for similar products (Williamson 1978 has many ads from the 1970s, and 54 Media semiotics Myers 1994 has some from before World War II if you cannot find your own). What similarities and differences do you find in the semi-otic strategies of each period? Why is this? 7 Analyse the connotations of the brand names and logos of five products. Why were these names and logos chosen? Could any of them be used as the name of a product of a different type?