What are you trying to sell me? Advertising has never and will never be simply focused on the item being advertised. The gaze is a relationship of looking, it is used to designate a subject and an object through customs and norms, supported through cultural and social mechanisms. In my opinion, the gaze is always a negative one, one that reproduces negative stereotypes. Then there is the gendered gaze, which is the relation of looking at female and male bodies. In advertisements the female body is almost always positioned in a way that is for the pleasure of a male spectator. The male gaze or the gendered relation of looking “where the female body is positioned as a passive object of a male dominated gaze.” This is because we live in a patriarchal society that is male centered, male identified, and male dominated.
In Image-Based Cultures: Advertising and Popular Culture, Sut Jhally states on page 201, “The image-system of the marketplace reflects our desires and dreams, yet we have only the pleasure of the images to sustain us in our actual experience with goods.” Like a diamond is connected to everlasting marriage and happiness, advertising points us in the direction of the good life, or where I as the consumer would like to be. The representation of women is so hegemonic that it does not even seem to stir up problems unless the image is an outrageous representation.
“Radio, television, film, and the other products of media culture provide materials out of which we forge our very identities; our sense of selfhood; our notion of what it means to be male or female; our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality; and of "us" and "them." Media images help shape our view of the world and our deepest values: what we consider good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil.”(Kellner 1)
In an ad by Dolce & Gabbana, the scene consists of five people, one women and four men. Two men are half naked, one of which is pinning the girl down, representing domination. All the men are staring at the women as she lay helplessly in a position that appears to be a struggle for her. The men are all Caucasian as is the women, this can also be seen as racial domination. Overall the ad as a whole screams sex and domination, not the selling of mens and women's apparel. I would also say that the ads by Dolce & Gabbana commodify women way too much.
I was unable to find a Dolce & Gabbana ad that a women was not surrounded by male spectators and fully clothed. Using Kellner’s semiotic analysis method, which he defines as a method “to reveal how the codes and forms of particular genres follow certain meanings.”(Kellner 6) The first thing I see in almost all the ads is male domination. The objectification and stereotyping that advertising does to the female body is unbelievable. Perfume ads, clothing ads, sports ads, car ads, any ad that has a female body in it, relates to sex and domination in some sort of way. Dolce & Gabbana advertises in a sexual and provocative manner that often involves men in perfect shape all pining over a female with features that are generally unattainable for most females. The gaze works by drawing our attention to the idea that if you wear Dolce & Gabbana and look the way these people look, that you will be the center of attention. Susan Bordo comments “It’s ‘never just bodies’ in images and advertisements; They offer meaning about what’s valued in our culture and evoke desire in us through those norms and meanings.” I could never agree more with what she has to say. Societies notion that it is a females desire to be chased after by men, that females should be ‘gazed’ upon in a way that elicits sexual openness. The power that advertisement has over people is generally unseen. A simple picture ad in a fashion magazine can influence people of all ages, targeting the female gender the hardest.
The ads portray heteronormativity, femininity, desire, and masculinity. Heteronormativity is cultural bias that is in favor of opposite sex relationships. The feminine and masculine qualities that are seen in the men and women are also conventional characteristics that are understood as normal gender qualities. Lastly desire is another visible sign that we see in Dolce & Gabbana ads. This desire is always a want or a wish for something/someone of sexual attraction.
Kellner, Douglas. "Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, and Media Culture." Gender, Race, and Class in Media. 3rd. ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2011. 7-17. Print.
Jhally, Sut. "ImageBased Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture." Gender, Race, Culture. Print.
Slides from class notes
I have seen the particular Dolce & Gabbana ad that you're talking about and I definitely agree that it is glorifying this notion of male domination. It does not only make these actions seem acceptable, but also, the woman in the ad does not appear to be showing any objection to their advances. I think that many ads seem to send the message to women that the only way to get by in society is to have men chasing after you, wanting you and not only one man, it has to be many. The tactic that many advertising companies use is to make women and girls feel inadequate with the way they are by sending this message that says they aren't good enough yet, but if they buy this product, they can be like her; which further perpetuates this idea that we, as women, have to look and act a certain way to be accepted in society and essentially, by men.
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