Adbusters- Initial analysis

• Adbusters lack articles, it doesn't have a clear demarcation.
• Brings up topics that other magazines don't have.
• The layout is sparse, huge elements of white space.
• Woman is monosemic, simple and straightforward.
•  Adbusters is deeply Polysemic, the white space could suggest that life is boring or that it represents that news articles are useless or that you could write anything in them.
• There is an emphasis on photos and not much writing
• Similar to high-end fashion magazines by criticising them
• Adbusters are anti-consumerist however their merchandise shop shows commodity fetishism, which is hypocritical
• Adbusters has no adverts, it's anti-commercial and anti-consumerist

Groups of people represented in Adbusters

1. Poor people (poverty)
2. Depressed People
3. Upper class people (consumerism)
4. Black people
5. Men/Women
6. Old/young people

Roland Barthes

1. Proairetic: refer to something within a media product that suggests something will happen.
1. 
   
2. Hermeneutic: refer to something in the media product that creates mystery or suspense
1. Why are they behind the barbed wire in the first place
2. who are wearing those shoes, this high-angle close-up creates a lot of mystery
3. Symbolic: Something in a media product that creates a deeper meaning in the audience.
1. Mocking rich clothing brands with the pun "LouiBouton" refering to louis vuttion, this is a parody. It is also stereotyping that this is an african kid by the colour of their skin and the dry ground
2. The people behind the barbed wire suggests their immigrants
4. Referential: refers to another source of media product
1. Clear reference to LouiBouton, used without permission, this can relate to Water-aid
2. The ad criticises people who buy louibouton shoes and that it causes people to be put in poverty. This can increase the inequality of the world

Target audience for Adbusters is middle-class, assuming that they have a high-level of education

Assumes that the audience is media-literate

Presenting an anti-consumerist ideology: criticising a high-end luxury brands

Lacks anchorage

Claude Levi-Strauss

1. Binary Opposition
1. between the rich and the poor, the"Louibouton" logo to the ragged shoes.

Adbusters is an anti-capitalist magazine

• Black and white has connotations to sadness

Bricolage: When different things are put together

Adbusters looks like it has low production values

Commodity fetishism: The process of ascribing magic "phantom-like" qualities to an object, whereby the human labour required to make that object is lost once the object is associated with a monetary value for exchange.

Marxist belief: a struggle between the working class and the ruling class, and that the working class are being controlled by the ruling class.
 Believe that the rich control the world to get the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Lacks anchorage

Détournement: Hijacking/culture jamming

Positioning: how a magazine positions its target audience in it's articles

Nihilistic/Nihilism: The belief that the world has no meaning and there is nothing to live up to

The mise-en-scene of the milk bottles, followed with the dark skin with a high-angle close-up suggests extreme poverty. And the fact we don't see the face is that a lot of people get affected by this or that it suggests that the whole of Africa is like this.

1. Low-quality image of the feet suggest low quality of life and poverty of Africa
2. the mise-en-scene of the unclean feet give a message about African people
3. By the grossness of the image, it suggests that the target audience are sympathetic
4. Stereotypes allow more people to relate to an image/scene
5. Criticising Loubouton
6. High-angle close-up shop makes us uncomfortable

• Binary opposition between luxury and blandness/death yet again
• left image connotes sadness  and the high-angle shot shows she is vulnerable
• The representation of wrinkled hands and tattoos is unconventional and not sexualised
• The preferred reading is that we are supposed to find this woman vulnerable
• The tattoos stereotype suggest she's not cultural capital but rather working class
• the frame also suggests the magazine is trying to cover the image as if this is what actual magazines try to cover in their photos.
• Magazine is highly polysemic, yet it lacks anchorage
• The entire double page spread is all hermeneutic
• Detourment is showing that zucchetti is cruel

• There is no attempt at a visual aspect in this article
• This makes you more concentrated on the text instead of anything to distract you
• It adopts this mode of address to make you think about what you read, stating that everything you do in your daily lives ruins the environment
• The title is attention grabbing- the effect may be that the audience may kill somebody
• Big issue for IPSO, potentially for people suffering from such examples as depression may do such a thing
• The faded, smashed-up title is a symbolic code of the world we live in is completely screwed
• "chapter 1" is very unconventional
• article adopts a sophisticated lexis mode of address, assumes that the audience is educated
• Positioning is a direct mode of address, the articles makess the audience have all the blame and guilt.
• language is emotional and blunt, not poetic. 
• It's nihilistic: belief in nothing 
• Nihilistic/Nihilism: The belief that the world has no meaning and there is nothing to live up to

Contextual Factors: Background information

ADbusters are against adverts, they believe that adverts are misleading and promote a false ideology, they also do not like the idea of consumerism 

For a magazine, adbusters doesn't show many text

Adbusters has a dark and controversial subject matter

Adbusters is only one of two texts that are not for profit

Curran and Seaton: Power and Media industries
There are a few different companies who own all of the other companies

• "Audiences are made"

Livingstone and Lunt: Regulations

The rules and regulations a media product must follow

IPSO- British

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Digital Convergence:


Buy Nothing Day

• Anti-consumerism
• Very difficult to do

• This page is an extract from a book
•  It is unconventional, it shows that there wasn't much commitment to the page
• but there are elements that are conventional such that it has a letters page 
• Adbusters is actually not as atypical as it's supposed to be
• Adbusters criticises big organisation
• Adbusters is produced 
• Non-profit organisation
• Propaganda reinforces beliefs we already have
• target audience is:
• liberal
• open-minded
• young adults
• middle-class wealthy aspirational audience

Woman Magazine

mid-shot
Alfred Hitchcock is a movie director who directed the birds and psycho
Mise-en-scene includes
shoulder length hair also seems sensible
brunette
well presented with a sensible hairstyle
brown eyes
attractive middle age women, hegemonically attractive
Bold text saying "Woman" stating that this is the hegemonic norm of women of 1964. The style of the font of the masthead is serif, and handwritten, suggesting the mode of address is friendly, the model is also smiling with pearly white teeth, with a fake smile.
Additionally the way she looks at the audience perhaps shows she is relatable, being relatable means that she is not dressed in beauty as if she is going to a party but rather just going into town or something, suggesting that the target audience isn't well educated and has low self-esteem
"Seven Star" shows signs of exaggeration to show how great the magazine is. Stereotypically suggesting women should be in the kitchen "improvements for your kitchen"
aimed towards working class, straight, age 30-50 women
Pinkish background enforces it's for women
"are you an a-level beauty?" is a direct mode of address, making the target audience feel bad about themselves
Binary opposition: Dark background vs the Yellow banner on the front

• Woman magazine is published weakly
• Published by a company called the IPC
• Still sells magazines to this day
• Cheap magazines 7d = 80p
• Genre of this magazine is women's lifestyle
• Woman magazine is aimed at a broad audience
• It's circulation was 3 million copies

Socio-Historical context

what was going on in society at the time

Content:

• 'extra special about men' assumes the audience like men, therefore are women
• 'knitting' assumes the women enjoy to knit and all women do it
• 'gardening'
• 'back to school clothes' suggest that the target audience are mothers and are straight
• This magazine has a heteronormative theme

Documentary

more women going into higher education

26,000 women were now going to University by 1960

Women's rights were very popular by the end of the 60's

wanted equal pay

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Ideology: The beliefs of the producers that they are trying to give out through their products
The producers ideology is that all women should be housewives

Hegemony: A widely held belief for a certain people group
Women belong in the kitchen according to the front cover

Anchorage: Words that go along with an image to give it a specific context
"Seven star improvements for your kitchen"

David Gauntlett: theories of identity
pick and mix theory: audiences can select which ideologies suit them, and completely ignore the elements of the product.

"so any girl can assemble it quickly"

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Reinforcing Hegemonic Norms

1. That there are very specific roles women should follow (women are good at cooking). That they should be loyal to their husbands/that they are heterosexual. "Are you an A-level beauty" suggests that all women aren't beautiful unless they read such magazines as the Woman magazine. Women have plenty of spare time. Women have to wear make-up, in order to be attractive, you've got to be young
2. Heterosexual women, but possibly appealing to men as thats how the male genders would've wanted women to be like in 1964. It enforces what the hegemonic norms were in 1964
3. 
   

The magazine encodes certain stereotypes that if you do not follow in society, you will not be accepted in society.
There is a reality to stereotypes, if someone is told something a numerous amount of times, this will enforce that 'belief' more and more. For the magazine, it reinforces a women's place in society, it reinforces patriarchal hegemony. Stating men are better than women, with the magazine also produced by men.

Voyeurism: Taking pleasure in watching someone or something
The magazine gives women the pleasure of social interaction, talking about it with your friends

bell hooks: Feminist Theory

• argues that feminism is a struggle to end patriarchal hegemony and the domination of women
• Feminism is not a lifestyle choice; it's a political commitment
• Race, class and gender all determine the extent to which individuals are exploited and oppressed

Advertising in magazines

• 1/3 of total revenues across the industry are advertising, it is therefore vitally important that the magazine and advertising content target the same audience in order that the advertising brands benefit from increased...

Analyse the ways in which the advertising in Woman constructs stereotypical representations of women, for example:

1. Women's place in the home - wife and mother
2. Women don't make important decisions
3. Women are dependant on men for acceptance and protection
4. Women as sexual objects, and inferior to men

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• The copy adopts a direct mode of address which is friendly
• This soaps will show you kindness, like a gentleman
• The very first sentence is an example of interpolation
• This advert makes big claims about what women actually are, that you are not attractive if you don't buy the soap
• She is stereotypically attractive, full breasts, slender body, hourglass figure.
• Her body is being used to sell the body, that if you use the soap, you'll get her body shape/style
• She is an aspirational figure
• The advert is not meant to sell a product but rather a lifestyle, that of course appeals to men.
• Sexual objectification, all we know about her is a object purpose, only for the product to be used upon.

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• Man is pleased by how the woman looks after putting on the make up. Sexual tension, in some ways this advert is subversive, she potentially is rejecting this man, or rather that he is stalking the woman.
• Serif font "beauty at a moment's notice..." suggests a stereotypical feminine type of beauty of it, aimed towards women, also a tagline and suggests it's easy to use.
• Assumes that the only thing women are shopping for is make-up and are doing it everywhere they go.
• The layout is much like a comic and presents a storyline, the use of panels creates a sequential narrative
• The title being at the bottom supports the z-line theory, presenting everything in a straight possible way
• "at a moment's notice, putting on make-up is hegemonically the right thing to do, it assumes that women not wearing make-p is not attractive
• This advert creates a clear insecurity to the target audience, manipulating the audience, thinking that they are ugly.
• The compact mirror is an essential part of the narrative, suggesting that she can see the man and is smiling
• Being in black and white suggest classiness, restoration of the equilibrium, presenting as if it's the happy ending of a romantic film, intertextuality

How can the ad effect men?

• Men are expected to approach women, and women should not approach men
• Men cannot wear make-up and women should
• Men should be constantly formal, wearing suits and looking professional all the time

Pros to stereotypes

1. Provides a solution to make certain people groups happier
2. Allows producers to target a target audience
3. It makes it much easier to make a product
4. Can be used to make a profit
5. In a patriarchal society, women are safer, don't need to go to war and have men to protect them
6. Uniformity, can make life a lot easier
7. It is possible to have a positive stereotype, e.g men are strong "man up"
8. Stereotypes help us make sense of the world 

Brand identity

How businesses presents itself to its consumers and how it wants to be perceived

Vogue has more sexual connotations with thick lips and styled out eyes that are sharp

Woman is less sexual and more aimed towards women who have gone through that hegemonic age of looking for men and are rather housewives.

High production values

On vogue, the focus is on the model, the text blends in with the dress so it doesn't distract you from the woman

Woman magazine, cover lines are very large and visible

Vogue assumes that the audience has cultural capital as they should know what the price is, since you need to squint to see the price

Vogue is more full colour and glossy, whereas Women is more dull
Vogue is £4.50 and Woman is 50p.
Direct Mode of Address for Woman is aimed towards working class age 30-50

• Vast majority of the magazine is on women however this article is on men. This is not however a regular feature.
• The enlarge font of "MEN" suggest men are superior
• This article's purpose is how to get it's target audience (heterosexual women) a man.
• The representation of women is Woman magazine are fairly stereotypical
• The reason being that women are meant to make happy. This article reinforces patriarchal hegemony
• This article reinforces binary opposition
• The advice in the article is accepted by the reader, showing Stuart Hall theory of reception.
• The article is giving the audience vital information
• The man doing his tie reinforces a man in his right place and a woman in his right place
• A critique of arrogance, "'Man's is creations masterpiece but who says so?' -Man", Taking the piss out of men
• On the dominant image, it shows the woman having power, Subverting stereotypes of patriarchal dominance, and the man is doing a stereotypical woman pose. There is also binary opposition with the man wearing black and the woman being in white.

Back to Basics: 2019

Denotations: everything you can see

• Red: setting
• Attractive White Woman
• Black: mise-en-scene is that she has black hair and dress
• Loreal: Brand
• Shampoo bottle: symbolic code
• Hand: gesture
• Glossy hair: mise-en-scene, iconography
• Words: Slogan, details

"expert for damaged hair" san-serif text

Mid-shot

Connotations: This relates to that, this means that

1. Romance and love
2. Ideal women of beauty, target audience is middle age white women
3. black signifies formality, elegance and authority
4. Loreal brand font presents order combined with craziness
5. Hand signifies she doesn't want men following her or that she can handle herself, also shows direct mode of address.
6. glossy hair

Intertextuality and mise-en-scene is a reference to a classic romance film

San-serif bold font of 'paris' has reference to romance, fashion and love

The light colours have connotations to being innocence, purity

the red colours have connotations to being, romance, love and sex

This advert has a binary opposition between love and innocence

Adverts by making the audience dissatisfied with their lives, and that the products can fix that

• pink shades: crazy cool, epic, mocking

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COMPONENT 2

1. Media Language: terminology
2. Representation: how its presented
3. Audience: what they see
4. Media Industries: who owns it

compared with the past, Gauntlett argues that the media today 'we no longer get singular, straightforward messages about ideal types of gender identity'

Evaluate the validity of this claim with reference to the set editions of woman and Adbusters and the historical contexts in which they are produced.

Stereotype: a wildly held belief of a certain group of people

ROLAND BARTHES

SEMIOTICS

• Codes such as Proairetic, Hermeneutic and symbolic

CLAUDE LEVI STRAUSS

STRUCTURALISM

• Binary Opposition

The way which magazines work are that they are specialised industries, completely different to everything, including newspapers

Magazines are mainly gossip, have a smaller audience and have a specific interest.

They are less focused on general current affairs and have glossy covers\

Magazines have a smaller circulation

Circulation: how many copies are produced and sold

Ideological Perspectives of Newspapers & Representation

Newsworthiness

The process of selecting which stories include involves weighing up their newsworthiness

Intertextuality

Where a media product makes sense, only through it's reference to other media products

Bias
inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair

1. The 2016 election results, Memorial day, Doctor who weeping angels, planet of the apes

Also making reference to war movies and documentaries

1. That the producer knows about what is occurring is the USA at the time of the newspapers publication
2. That liberals are not smart, that the daily mirror do not like Donald Trump, for example expressing their anger by using "what have they done?"

The mise-en-scene of the dark cloud is a proairetic code, inferring it will bring the country to war

Statue of liberty represents America

Assumed knowledge, producers believes that the audience already know Donald Trump "It's president trump"

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Left-wing is more about equality

Belief in the government regulation

The power of the government

Collectivism

Right-wing is more about hierarchy

Free market

The rights of the individual

Individualism

Broadsheet are more serious and contain a lot more wording on their covers and address many issues in a serious matter, more emphasis on writing. Aimed towards higher classes/ middle classes.

Undeniably Conservative, broadsheet makes a lot of assumed knowledge, and their content is quite political.

Tabloids are more comedic, punny, jokes about what is occurring in the news. Their covers contain a lot of big one worded titles with big pictures covering the cover. They are more aimed towards lower classes. The type face is much larger, implying that their target audience has a lack of education.

Provocative, sensationalist. Informal and colloquial (writing with abbreviations and slang)

Polysemy: many interpretations 

Anchorage: The 'fixing' of a particular meaning to a media text, often through the use of captions

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Put him in a bin, saying that he's disgusting and trash. Also funny for kids

The use of the pun in the title, is aimed towards the working-class as the target audience

Lists everything negative about Corbyn in bullet points in a very straight forward way, emphasises how many things are terrible with Corbyn.

The use of colloquial language "Jezza" suggest that he's childish.

Enemy to the UK

The sun does this so they can construct the right wing audience

Bias: favouring one viewpoint over another

Agenda: The underlying intentions of a group.

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