Transcript lecture slides

Consuming the Globe:
The ‘Advertising Work’
online and offline
Is the global “profusion” of
commodities and “spectacle” of
capitalist advertising undermining
people’s ability to think, act, or make
a difference in their world?
By way of
illustration –
a variety of
strategic and
spontaneous signs
in public spaces in
Venice during the
2015 Art Biennale
Reality and/vs Representation?
The Treachery of Images, Magritte, 1928
Cover page of Charlie Hebdo
November 2015
theories of meaning-making and
modes of analysis
Structures of Meaning - within and contained by the text (written/visual)

Hermeneutics: ‘focus on the relationship between texts, their producers, and
the broader sociocultural and political economic contexts of their
production, and interpretation’ (Franklin 2004: 72-3)

Semiotics: ‘studies objects (texts, discourses) to arrive at processes (sense
production and interpretation)’ (Scolari: 2009: 130)

Various sorts of visual/textual analysis
Theories of reality and its representation

Meaning by naming - mimetic (object + name + depiction = meaning)

Meaning by/in context - constitutive (object + depiction/s + name/s =
multiple meanings)

Structure – agency problematic in terms of focus, and explanation

Various sorts of discourse analysis
EXAMPLE (1)
The politics of representation
Fu Manchu (1932-1973)*
* See L H M Ling, 2001, Postcolonial International Relations: Conquest
and Desire Between Asia and the West. Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan
The Cover of the
first issue of the
“The Mask of Fu
Manchu”, 1932.
A much imitated
design by W.T.
Brenda
Illustration of
the “Syrian
Room” from
the Concluding
part in Colliers,
1932
Dust-jacket
design for
American
hardcover
editions
An early British
dust-jacket design
(note the change
in the woman’s
hairstyle).
London: Cassell
1933
.. and from the
same publisher
in 1955 ....
Swedish edition’s
very art deco
cover design
(1934) but
without the mask;
now the wo/man
is wearing a
turban – which
way “east”?
Stockholm : Hugo
Gebers Förlag
Back to the
mask motif.
London : Corgi
Books 1967
And here is the
mask again in
the 1973
Cassell edition
The poster from the
1932 Hollywood
(MGM) movie with
Boris Karloff in the
role of Fu Manchu
The Kinks – ‘The
Village Green
Preservation Society’
These theories (and related methodologies)
relate to debates about
1) whether (and how) language structures or whether language
mediates meaning in line with competing theories of language,
human psychology, society, models of how media and
communications impact on individuals and society
2) whether structure (e.g. the economic system - capitalism,
socialism, communism) defines how individuals and communities
behave e.g.
- the power of images to generate ‘desire’
- ‘… needs are produced as a force of consumption’
(Baudrillard [1970] 2001: 45)
3) or whether agency (human actors (and their avatars?)) can and
do make a difference
- meaning-making and consumption as polysemic
- the sign (signifier and signified) operating in relation to a wider
context (the ‘referent system’)
Example (2)
‘decoding advertisements’
It is the images we see in ads which give
them significance, which transfer their
significance to the product. This is why
advertising is so uncontrollable, because
whatever restrictions are made in terms of
their verbal content or ‘false claims’, there
is no way of getting at their use of images
and symbols. … [It] is images and not
words which ultimately provide the
currency in ads.
(Williamson 1978: 175)
The systems which provide ads with [their]
basic ‘meaning’ material – a grist of
significance for the ad mill – are what I
call ‘Referent Systems’. … They are
clearly ideological systems and draw
their significance from areas outside
advertising.
(Williamson 1978: 19, see Baudrillard [1970]
2001: 45)
Example (3)
The politics of
representation/representation of
politics (David Harvey, inter alia)
Images from “The Politics of the
Globalised Image and its
Propaganda Value:
Abu Ghraib Re-Circulated”, Selina E.
Antony, MA Dissertation, GloComm
Program 2012-2013
[It] is because advertisements use ‘meanings’ as a currency
and signification as a market, that they can always
exchange them, take anything out of its context and
replace it: re-presentation. … The ability of advertisements
to incorporate criticism should remove any possibility of
complacency in having laid bare some of their formal
strategies.
(Williamson 1978: 177)
Mad Men:
Series 3 ‘Out of Town’: clip: Women’s Soft-drink
Series 4: 12/13 Blowing Smoke (27/45 mins)
summing up
Theories of meaning-making, and interpretations of meaning

the ‘text’ alone? - what about context?

meanings - static, mobile, singular, multiplex?

interpretation – art or science?

media as/and the message – production, content, reception

transmission - circular, linear, multidirectional?

structure & agency – who/what defines or confines the message and its
reception?
Stuart Hall figured it out like this:
“… while not wanting to expand the discursive
infinitely, how things are represented and the
‘machineries’ and regimes of representation in a
culture do play a constitutive, and not merely a
reflexive, after-the-event role. … This gives questions
of culture and ideology, and the scenarios of
representation – subjectivity, identity, politics – a
formative and not merely and expressive, place in the
constitution of social and political life. (Hall, cited in
Franklin 2004: 15-16)