Project 3.5: Deconstruction, Derrida, Truly Madly Deeply

• Search for more notes on Deconstruction and makes notes in your blog. Then put what you have noticed into practise on an image, film, some literature or piece of music.

Please see my notes on Derrida and deconstruction for the first part of this project. Here I will deconstruct Truly Madly Deeply because the advert I have chosen for A3 contains the strapline, “Truly Madly Thinly”, a direct reference to the film, and so it will be useful to link back to.

Brief synopsis

Truly Madly Deeply is a film about two characters, Nina and Jamie.  Jamie has died suddenly from a sore throat (unusual in our day), and Nina is experiencing grief but finding it difficult to move on. Struggling to come to terms with the loss, she has sunk into depression; her flat is falling apart, it is infested with rats, and she is missing days at work. Lots of men seem to be attracted to Nina but she’s not interested. Jamie reappears in her life one day and they have a heartfelt reunion. The relief to have Jamie back is huge. Jamie is almost the same as he is in life except for the fact he is freezing, so Nina must keep the flat very hot all the time which is uncomfortable for her. Nina misses days at work without realising it whilst they spend time together.  Once she returns to work Jamie starts inviting more dead people into the home and also fixes things up, rearranges them, but the rat infestation is fixed as rats are apparently terrified of ghosts. Nina begins to view the relationship more realistically, accepts that is wasn’t perfect and that Jamie was in fact sometimes a bit annoying and overbearing. The ghosts start to become annoying as they take over her house and Nina realises in an instant when she acts as birth partner to her friend that life is for the living. She connects with a man she meets in a cafe briefly and although she goes on a short date with him, she can only allow herself to go out with him properly and then home to his place once she’s accepted the death of Jamie. Jamie and his ghost friends watch Nina go and are pleased they have succeeded in helping Nina to let go of the past. It’s sad for Jamie (the audience must assume) but he seems content with the outcome, since it would seem that his reappearance was all about achieving this outcome in the first place.

Stages of grief

Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s grief cycle probably underlies some of the plot structure in this film, perhaps unconsciously, but I suspect not. Ross identified denial, anger, depression, bargaining and finally acceptance as the key stages in the grieving process.  A person might not experience these in any particular order and may only touch on one aspect whilst wallowing in another.  A person may also experience each stage several times, swinging between each of the them repeatedly.  In the model, a person cannot resolve the loss until they have experienced and ‘worked through’ each stage.  Nina goes through each of the stages.

It is a neat and tidy model that appears to have a beginning, middle and end, much like the stories we watch on-screen. However, some therapists have dismissed the model suggesting it can’t really be substantiated. Instead, people find ways to cope, or they don’t. My father, for instance, never found a way to deal with his divorce and spent the last 30 years of his life depressed and angry about the loss of my mother. Others cope extremely well and resolve to get on with life relatively simply, perhaps always missing the person they have lost, but finding ways to live without them in a satisfactory way, which may or may not include a new person. I have experienced grief three times, first following a relatively late miscarriage, then with the death of my father, and when I went through an extremely toxic and bitter divorce. The pain in each was immense and my sanity was tested each time. The divorce was by far the most difficult and from the moment I knew it was on the cards I felt lost in a place that was absolutely terrifying and deeply traumatising.  Truly, madly deeply, indeed, but without the bittersweet and tidy ending expressed in the film. Grief is in fact different for everyone and for each experience. Kubler Ross’s model perhaps fails to recognise the variants.

Nevertheless I enjoyed the film, recognising and identifying with signs of deep grief, carried away on an emotional journey to the song the characters sing together, and perhaps feeling some form of cathartic recognition.  I found the rotting rat element extremely interesting.  Nina realises she has a rat infestation and gets someone in to leave poison out for them. As I went through the breakup of my own marriage we lived in a flat that also had an infestation of mice. It was awful.They were everywhere and we lived at the end of a terrace which is where rodents are known to congregate and make their nests, apparently in a type of cul-de-sac. So when the poison was put down for them mid summer, despite assurances from the company that it would not smell, it absolutely did. A reek of death permeated our home as the marriage died, and the same thing happens in Nina’s home as she comes to terms with her lover’s death. Her sister comments on the smell.  As she begins to accept Jamie’s death the live rat’s return, signifying an end to her denial. My own denial did not resolve itself so neatly.

Tropes in films/TV shows

Deconstruction asks us to look at stories and unpick the mythical elements from the real. In this story there is much that I can relate to; the virtuosic performance from Juliet Stevenson is one, even though her representation offers a short hand for life, and is therefore simplified. Stevenson is able to convincingly portray someone who is not coping with the pain and anguish of her loss. However, her very emotional expressions in the therapist’s room are probably more ‘filmic’ than might occur in reality. Everyone is different and so express grief differently. The influence of Hollywood culture means therapists and laypeople might be tempted to think that all that snot and crying in the therapist’s chair is the ultimate goal for a ‘satisfactory grief process’. Culture tries to homogenise human feelings and expressions. (I do not say this pejoratively). Grief in other cultures is expressed in alternative ways. Collective ‘keening’ – pulling one’s hair our and wailing together might be more usual but would seem very strange to us, for instance. The interface of reality we grow up in gives us a form to live with. This form is what we recognise as culture and is subject to change and evolution. Films promote some aspects of culture as does other media in the way in which religion used to. Sometimes the formulas are unhelpful as they may not address reality, or be too simplistic.  The formulas we recognise in films may prevent us from actually moving through life effectively but I may only think that because I have grown up in a culture of therapy. Each culture has different ways of promoting an existential interface.

The following are a list of conventional tropes in the film listed by TVTropes.org, along with very brief notes by me beside each one.

(http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TrulyMadlyDeeply)

• Bittersweet ending – Nina has gone through the different stages of grief and having done so she is ready to move on. Luckily for her she meets someone entirely suitable – although in fact they barely meet – she simply looks at him across a room and there is an instant connection. Although she’s extremely rude on their first date, meeting him hours late, (before mobile phones) and then says she can’t stay anyway, they do meet again and by the end of the film the future looks bright for them. In reality, people may or may not find ‘the right’ partner so easily after the loss of one. In fact, the idealisation of relationships in this film might be an unhelpful aspect of modern culture. Love relationships in reality are difficult and require compromise and constant attention in order to continue well. What actually happens following a loss is that someone might enter into a totally inappropriate relationship, or be like my great-aunt, who never met anyone after her air pilot ‘beaux’ died in action in WW2. I also know of someone who has been through a string of disastrous relationships following her decision to leave her husband. Films perpetuate the myth of the happy ever after. Love relationships are defined by culture as explored in a thesis I have posted previously, in relation to the long-term project I am working on, girlhood. https://www.academia.edu/12426041/Romantic_Love_and_Anthropology
• Cast showing off (virtuoso performances contradictory to Brechtian ‘making you think’) – The film was specifically written for Juliet Stevenson by Anthony Mingella and he included aspects that would allow her to show off her talents such as singing and playing the piano.  In Brechtian terms this type of performance hinders any attempt at a collaborative process and the story becomes more about the actor than the underlying themes the story might be attempting to address. This would in his eyes get in the way of making an audience think. The film, despite its sad subject matter, is a feel-good film with manipulates feelings rather than engaging our minds or prompts us to action.
• Cruel to be kind – Jamie in the film returns in order to allow Nina to move on. To do this he must make her see that living with a house full of ghosts is not helpful in life and actually she will short change herself unless she can find a way past it. He does this by filling her house with strange dead men and telling her some home truths, rearranging her house. In fact, this may be tied to myth – that you can’t live well unless you let go through this specific and formulaic process of letting go. Cut Loose by Nan Bauer-Maglin is a book containing essays by people dealing with the loss of long-term relationship and the reality is far more variable and nuanced than the films would have us believe. It’s worth a read and is evidence of a world that is far messier than the films represent. The problem with films is they simplify complex situations and make us think reality can be formulaic, but mostly life doesn’t fit into neat story lines and often has no resolution.
• Dogged nice guy – of course the man Nina meets is terribly nice and seems perfect for her! In reality no one is perfect. People are difficult, mad, complex and awkward and the older you get the more that seems to be as people have to cope with all the stuff life throws at them.
• Elegant classical musicians  – this seemed to me about class. The film is about privately educated middle class English people with cultural capital, but with a good dose of shabby chic to make them approachable. The film is in fact described as the “thinking man’s Ghost”, a hollywood blockbuster with a similar theme. It is aimed at a different audience, slightly less populist.
• Ghosts and impossible goals  – this is pure fantasy. Ghosts have existed in stories for as long as stories have been around. An obsession with an afterlife is human and underlies our navigation of consciously knowing we will all die one day. In reality no one comes back from the dead. It would be horrific! A dead soul wandering round your house and moving in with you is probably as far from what anyone would want as it possible to be. However, coming to terms with death or endings is extremely difficult. I know someone who believed she had swallowed her late husband and he continued to live inside her, speaking through her. Grief can indeed make a person feel and appear quite ‘mad’.
• Her heart will go on – Films and stories often tell us that life will continue and you will heal. This isn’t always the case. Sometimes people don’t move on. Sometimes they are destroyed entirely by a loss. People are known to have committed suicide as it can be so awful, although of course, that is thankfully rare; but the issues surrounding this are complex. The film and the trope is simplistic.
• Hypercompetant side kick – Nina can do everything well. This seems to tie in with the elegant classical musician trope and might be considered class-based. It is also part of  a habit of separating women out into two unrealistic types. Idealised and perfect on one hand or slutty and degenerate on the other. It is different to more current trope I have noticed which presents women in a less idealised way. Examples of this are BBC 3’s Fleabag or Netflix production, Love  – both of which show women who are fallible, chaotic, flawed, self-destructive, challenging, attractive and intelligent all at once. Both newer TV programmes challenge the idealisation of women which exists in society and is sometimes cited as a trigger for emotional abuse. Women are idealised and when they fail to live up to those notions blamed and denigrated as being not good enough.
• Our ghosts are different –  The site I’ve taken this lists from suggest several reasons for ghosts hanging around and I suspect the ‘Power Of Love’ is the trope most relevant here. Jamie’s love for Nina is so great that his ghostly return is the only thing that can help her realise acceptance and move on.
• Street musician – Nine sees one

To summarise the film provides a western-centric story about love, the process of grief, moving on to a new partner, and does so in way that is neat and tidy, much like the Kubler Ross model of grief that therapists have used to steer people through loss. It is a helpful film in that it normalises and shares the sense of madness one can experience when grieving. But in reality the idea of love is more complex as is the process of coming to terms with loss. The film romanticises grief. I found grief to be entirely unromantic. It is lonely, bleak, depressing and extremely difficult.

The title and story connect both love and grief to madness. The madness connection is crucial. When I was at the height of my own grief I discussed how I felt like I was going mad with a therapist and she alluded to grief as a form of madness, as well as love being so. Madness on one hand is seen as an undesirable state of mind from which we need to be cured or when connected to love, potentially beneficial but also dangerous and destructive. In fact it would seem madness is a ‘normal’ part of human experience and perhaps not ‘mad’ at all but a real and understandable reaction to existence. Charles Lindholm looks at this connection and how useful the term madness might be in his paper, Romantic Love and Anthropology. (2006)

 

Image (c)SJField 2015

Ref:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/thriving-in-the-face-trauma/200910/grief-doesnt-come-in-stages-and-its-not-the-same-every

(http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TrulyMadlyDeeply)

https://www.academia.edu/12426041/Romantic_Love_and_Anthropology

http://www.ekrfoundation.org/five-stages-of-grief/

Maglin, N. (2006). Cut loose. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Project 3.4: Author, What Author?

• Look at Sherrie Levine’s work and the work of Cindy Sherman (or another two artists)
• Is the birth of the reader at the expense of the author and is there still any of Benjamin’s ‘aura’ left?
• Does any of this explain or validate the unregulated nature of the internet?
• Does this invalidate the interest of the artist’s or creator’s intent at the time of making?

I have already explored some of Sherrie Levine’s work in A2 and have been thinking and recording my thoughts since receiving feedback about the question of ‘meaning’. In my previous post I look at the subject of artists following capitalism’s example and appropriating signs, draining them of their original meaning, transforming the signification or attempting to nullify it, as Levine might have done. Whether or not the meaning is drained to zero is a contentious question perhaps, but original meaning undoubtedly becomes watered down in many cases and transformed, as is seen in advertisements in particular. It would also generally be useful when looking at meaning in texts to consider unconscious motivation from authors and the groups they represent, as well as more knowing intentions, which allows for layered interpretation.

Cindy Sherman is one of the most well-known appropriation artists, taking recognisable symbols from cinema, in particular female representations, and re-representing them in her photographs.  The reader is faced with an empty signifier since the recognisable role is minus subject, plot, text but still can be instantly recognised and imagined by the reader. We see the signifier and are invited to fill in the landscape/context through our inclination to give meaning to the signs we recognise. Women, like all humans, are handed roles to play and one crucial way for that to occur is through media. Real life is influenced by the film and TV shows we see. As someone who was given a large number of books over the course of my childhood by my father, which all contained pictures of movie stars from the early years of cinema onwards, I can recognise how these images played a role in shaping my own subjectivity and intersubjectivity. I expect one might be able to argue I felt compelled through the years to unconsciously follow something of Hester’s script in Rattigan’s Deep Blue Sea, despite having never seen it. We conform to the roles we are handed, often without question. Sherman plays with this idea and transforms herself in her images, appropriating from the cinema, leaving the script to be written by the reader, and the reader is mostly  bound to follow the patterns/stories/structures that exist in society.

Is the birth of the reader at the expense of the author? Is there anything of “Aura” left?

These are two very different questions.

If one thinks of language as an external resource, then the stories language allows us to tell and hear, the myths that enable humans to make sense of some aspect of existence, are external too. The very many flood myths from Gilgamesh to Noah is an example of a story that has existed for centuries across cultures and time spans, even though the characters are given different names and the plot minor alterations – at heart they are essentially the same story. (I wonder if this example can be used to suggest contradictions to the argument that language and stories exist externally.  I am also mindful of  Jung’s collective consciousness and his belief in the value of an internal mythical life which must have some bearing on all of this.)

I looked at Death of an Author in A2, and Barthes in that essay asserts that the author reaches up to the ultimate ‘ready-mades’ – words and stories. “…text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture…. if he (the author) wants to express himself, at least he should know that the internal “thing” he claims to “translate” is itself only a ready-made dictionary whose words can be explained (defined) only by other words, and so on ad infinitum” (Barthes, 1967) In any case, one might be able to suggest the author is ‘dead’ and the reader has greater responsibility over interpretation in a way that didn’t happen in the past, but the way in which our society is organised shows us that individuals are still very much lauded as beacons of virtue, referred to as ‘immortals’ even. Nevertheless, questions surrounding copyright and ownership are current, especially as simply putting anything online leaves it so vulnerable to being purloined and repurposed. (I’m not sure a magazine dedicated to exploring this issue managed to raise the finance it needed to get started.)

Regardless of the salience of the notion surrounding ‘authorship’, nowadays there are very many narratives available to tap into in the modern world because society is so complex. Perhaps because of that complexity, the authors of today’s art often leave a great deal to the reader by providing extremely open-ended work that can be interpreted to suit the reader’s world view . In smaller more cohesive societies the variations would have been far more limited, perhaps without any room for question whatesover and Foucault suggests as much. I am thinking about The Continuum Concept where we are told the ‘subjects’ each have very clear roles and no-one seemingly question them. Individual authors in that setting are unlikely as the community provides societal authorship as it did once in our own society. “The coming into being of the notion of ‘author’ constitutes the privileged moment of individualism in the history of ideas, knowledge, literature, philosophy, and the sciences.” (Foucault, 1969; 949) (The Continuum Concept is highly subjective and one has to tread carefully about how accurate it might be but it is a useful reference to a way of existing that is very different to our own, and may offer an example of something akin to how we might once have lived).

What’s more, pinpointing who an author might be isn’t always straightforward even in recent history.  Famously, Brecht, has much to thank the many women he worked with throughout his career, such as Elisabeth Hauptmann and Magarete Steffin for instance, but his name still presides over all of his work. He will always be Bertolt Brecht, the great author, and those other names are only known by very interested people. Foucault tells us that in contradiction to how things once were, “We now ask of each poetic or fictional text; from where does it come?” (Foucault, 1969; 951) The answer tells us what we might be allowed to think about the text. And Brecht’s authorship, a man’s, tells us it’s OK. We can trust it. The following Guardian article reports how a woman author elicited many more responses from agents when she used a male pseudonym so that particular issue persists. Foucault also tells us that authorship is a result of transgressive discourse, and is borne out of the need to apportion blame when ideas that challenged the status quo emerged.

Foucault raises the question of individuality and autonomy which is explored by philosophers and scientists today a great deal as neuroscience reveals how our brains work more accurately than before. Here is one example in an article about how there is probably no first-person point of view, “Our access to our own thoughts is just as indirect and fallible as our access to the thoughts of other people. We have no privileged access to our own minds. If our thoughts give the real meaning of our actions, our words, our lives, then we can’t ever be sure what we say or do, or for that matter, what we think or why we think it.”(Rosenberg, 2016). The book I read before starting this module, The Ego Trick also looks at how our brains are primed to make us think we have a mind, and that illusion is a result of social and physical functions evolved to further our genetic existence.

Regarding the question of aura, I think this is too complex and challenging to write about effectively here. Is that a cop out?  I just think one could write for a very long time about it and still not find a satisfactory answer. We certainly kneel down to kings and queens, and the gods that we believed appointed them, far less easily than we once did. We have new gods in the form of materialism and celebrity, which provide a different form of aura. Benjamin saw the weakening of ‘aura’ as a good thing. Art was becoming democratised in his eyes as I discuss in section 1. However, something powerful can and does happen when communing with some art. Even reproductions of art can make us cry, or the hair stand up on the backs of our necks, or convey something inexplicable and mysterious. I don’t think it is fair to say reproduced art doesn’t have that ability. But its true, it doesn’t come to us a in a cathedral with incense and chanting and religious rhetoric being sung at us while we cope with never-ending starvation and death and inexplicable disease, and beer for breakfast as the norm.

Does this explain or invalidate the unregulated nature of the internet. 

What is ‘this’ in the sentence? The problem with the idea of aura, or the fact that the idea of author is subject to more scrutiny that before? Or that fact that there is a scientific belief/knowledge that autonomy of thought may well be nothing more than fantasy/illusion?

I think the ‘power’ of the internet to give individuals more of a voice than they had before is over-played and over-imagined.  Of course, to say there has been no effect would be foolhardy – however, the way in which the powerful companies who dominate the web use code to categorise and market to and for people stops it from being the free for all some imagine. Yes, we now receive tweets and messages from people claiming we can self publish and be happy, but self publishing has always been around. It was referred to as vanity publishing. It is probably true that the opportunity to self publish is greater than it ever has been, but even so, becoming published and selling what you’ve published, or even having anyone read it is still remarkably hard work. Growing up in an environment that fosters self-belief still plays a role as it ever did and we seem to going backwards rather than forward in that regard.

The internet is unregulated, so anyone can publish stuff. But so what? What does publishing things on a webpage do for you? You would have had to get things seen by someone with influence pre-internet days too, just as its helpful now. The younger generation don’t assume they can’t publish and use the internet at will, and just get on with making their lives happen. But as ever, access to technology and self-belief play an important part. Social circumstance still have an impact.

In the end I think the internet is relevant but not quite as much as one might think. It has been the source of an economic and social revolution and has been assimilated into our lives remarkably quickly. But it’s just another means of transmitting information and it happens more quickly and easily now. (Strange how data and now money can be sent across the world in a jot but people don’t have the same ability, and for some without access to much that we take for granted in the west, it’s as hard as it ever was.) And just because it’s easier to get work ‘out there’ nowadays, it doesn’t mean the actual making of the work is any easier. Most blogs that are started are abandoned soon after and raising funds to self publish is not an easy task. The economy has changed because of the internet but the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer and the gap between the two growing. So if the internet is meant to be this great leveller and a democratic process I think it has failed. Internet shminternet.

Does this invalidate the interest in the artist’s intent at the time of making?

No. The artist is making because the artist must make. What happens thereafter is that the artist has a choice about letting go and allowing the work to go forth into the world and become whatever it is that the readers will make of it, regardless of the medium used to help disseminate the work. Louise Bourgeois’ book of plates and writing, He Disappeared into Complete Silence, contains a poem about a man who

“was not interested in being loved

or protected because he was interested in

something else.

Consequently at an early age he

slammed the door and never came back.

Later on she died but he did not know it”

The poem can interpreted on several levels, but one reading out of many, points to how an artist must let go of their finished works and let them be authored by the readers who find them thereafter. (Karshens and Schampers, Cluitmans, Mayhew and Schwartz, 2011) And it perhaps references how painful a process that might be at times. I saw on Instagram how photographer, Jennifer McClure refers to her editing process as killing her ‘babies’. It is very hard to let go of some images, I know.

So, of course the answer to the question must be an empathic no.

Image (c)SJField 2016

Refs

Cluitmans, L., Mayhew, A. and Schwartz, J. (2011). He disappeared into complete silence. Haarlem: De Hallen.

Alex Rosenburg, 2016, Why You don’t Know Your Own Mind, The New York Times,  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/18/opinion/why-you-dont-know-your-own-mind.html?_r=0 (accessed 2 August 2016)

Chandler, D. (2002). Semiotics. London: Routledge.

Micheal Foucault, What is an Author? 1969, Harrison, C. and Wood, P. (2003). Art in theory, 1900-2000. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.

Alison Flood, 2015, Sexism in Publishing, The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/06/catherine-nichols-female-author-male-pseudonym (accessed 3 August 2016)

 

 

 

 

Notes & Project 3.3: Myth is a type of speech (Cont…)

Some further notes on Myth Today followed by a deconstructed image:

“It is this constant hide and seek between meaning and the form that defines myth” (Barthes, 1973;)  

The words, “More’s the pity for us mortals who hanker after meaning and will read it in at a throw” from my previous feedback has stayed with me. The notion rankles with me for two reasons: we all go the same way in the end, every one of us, so all of us are ordinary mortals, despite the very human desire to elevate some and denigrate others. And secondly, to endeavour to make meaning is a human function evolved over many, many thousands of years. We are eusocial beings with an evolutionary adaptive purpose and “desire to share mental states and inner feelings” (Hrdy, 2009;38)  and have developed a complex means of doing so which far surpasses other apes. So, I suppose what I’m wondering still is, are those appropriation artists I have discussed in A2 trying to nullify meaning? Presenting the world with objects that aim to confuse and short circuit the drive to make sense and interpret form, as I see clearly in Dada. Nonsensical poems written in made up language seems an obvious example. I can recognise in Jenny Holzer’s Redacted series that the whole question of meaning and form is explored but I find it harder to make sense of this in Charlesworth’s or Prince’s work. Aside from that, I find the notion of relinquishing ‘meaning’ as meaningful and valid upsetting and challenging for any number of reasons.

“history drains out of the form ..()… will be wholly absorbed by concept. (The concept) is determined, it is at once historical and intentional; it is the motivation which drives the myth to be uttered. Grammatical exemplarity, French impartiality, are the drives behind the myth.” (referencing the Paris Match photograph Barthes deconstructs in Myth Today) and “Through the concept it is a whole new history which is implanted in the myth.”  Perhaps my interpretation of Barthes’ words is askew, but perhaps such a mindset reinforces a lack of responsibility, and potentially prevents a society from feeling able to make changes, or at the very least begin to question dominant myths. I do realise this is difficult territory as of course history is abundant with swathes of peoples being at the mercy of greater or lesser powerful rulers who have obliterated those they seek to rule.  but it is also abundant with challengers to those rulers. It feels like Barthes is suggesting the myth is impossible to see beyond.

Barthes goes not to say, “Truth to tell, what is invested in the concept is less reality than a certain knowledge of reality; in passing from the meaning to the form, the image loses some knowledge; the better to receive the knowledge in the concept….”  Again, I question this. Who is the arbitrator of the actual reality? Reality and ideas about what is right and what is wrong, for instance, change and evolve constantly. So who is the ultimate arbitrator of truth and actual reality. Nobody. Unless you believe in some form of God.

And so to the final part of the project; annotate an artwork with the following in mind:

“The meaning is always there to present the form; the form is always there to outdistance the meaning. And there never is any contradiction, conflict, or split between the meaning and the form: they are never at the same place. In the same way, if I am in a car and I look at the scenery through the window, I can at will focus on the scenery or on the window-pane. At one moment I grasp the presence of the glass and the distance of the landscape; at another, on the contrary, the transparency of the glass and the depth of the landscape; but the result of this alternation is constant: the glass is at once present and empty to me, and the landscape unreal and full. The same thing occurs in the mythical signifier: its form is empty but present, its meaning absent but full. To wonder at this contradiction I must voluntarily interrupt this turnstile of form and meaning, I must focus on each separately, and apply to myth a static method of deciphering, in short, I must go against its own dynamics: to sum up, I must pass from the state of reader to that of mythologist.” (This above is extremely difficult to decipher but I think I am helped by the following lines.) “And it is again this duplicity of the signifier which determines the characters of the signification. We now know that myth is a type of speech defined by its intention (I am a grammatical example) much more than by its literal sense (my name is lion)”. Below is another french image also related to France. Here there are social and historical myths some of which  I suspect lead into some of what Barthes is talking about although I can’t quite figure that out yet.

Working Title/Artist: Madame Georges Charpentier (née Marguérite-Louise Lemonnier, 1848–1904) aDepartment: European PaintingsCulture/Period/Location: HB/TOA Date Code: Working Date: 1878 Digital Photo File Name: DT49.tif Online Publications Edited By Steven Paneccasio for TOAH 11/25/2013

 

 

The picture shows a family, the wife of a rich and influential publisher who was painted by Renoir, dated 1878. It has a long working title, “Madame Georges Charpentier (Marguérite-Louise Lemonnier, 1848–1904) and Her Children, Georgette-Berthe (1872–1945) and Paul-Émile-Charles (1875–1895)” and the subject used her influence, according The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art‘s website, to ensure the painting was included in the 1879 Paris Salon, an annual exhibition. I find the painting interesting for two reasons. Firstly it is a family portrait without the father, and a relaxed informal one at that.  It is like a captured photograph that would defy all the formal posing and staring into the camera that I have always assumed was the norm during that era (although my assumptions are constantly being challenged as I look at more and more historical art). I have noticed that many paintings from that era use that informal style, fragments from time, a moment captured. It’s interesting to think that painting did what photography could so easily do but didn’t usually until later.

Before I discuss the other main thing that captured my attention,  I should reference the Japanese influenced decor, as the site states, “In the Japanese-style sitting room of her Parisian townhouse…”. There was, according to Wikipedia, a strong political and trade connection between Japan and France during the 19th century. Japanese art had a huge influence on the work of the impressionists and in notably as seen here the “freedom in placing the subject off-centre” (Wikipedia), which came as a surprise to me, as it implies that Western artists previously placed subjects in the middle of the frame. I didn’t realise that and find it hard to believe as it goes against things I have long held to be true and leaned at school. Whatever else, the composition in this picture places the focal point, the boy, just off centre and he is framed by his mother and older sister. He looks like a little girl but he isn’t, and his physical language suggests he is the lead in this image. I can’t work out his expression.  Is his look adoring or a little scathing. At first I think it’s loving and he looks up to the girl. But then I look again and it seems the opposite. Its hard to tell but perhaps that’s just the style of painting and not intentional. The mother’s expression is perhaps a little vacant, and almost submissive to the child, as if she is there only to protect and serve the child. I can’t tell whether she is looking out of the frame or at the daughter. In a way it looks as if the mother and the boy who looks so much like a girl are ganged up against the daughter whose body language is slightly defensive, clinging to the dog and looking away from them. But then I look again and it might just be that because I can’t recognise the boy as a boy my mind finds it hard to recognise the gesture which is something I don’t usually struggle with.

At first, aside from the interesting cultural practise of dressing the boy in the same style and way as the girl, I thought this painting was not much more than an example of a vanity project whereby a rich woman and her children were able to have themselves painted and flattered by a highly esteemed artist. The room is painted to look sumptuous and indicates wealth, style and class. It shows a family who have access to high quality decor that is expansive and supposedly broad minded, as in knowledgable and welcoming of other cultures, or westernised traces (however, history shows the French to be otherwise elsewhere in the world). But the more I look at it the more it seems like some sort of comment, intentional or otherwise, on the relations between the sexes in families. The boy and girl look identical.  But they are not. One will grow up to have, as far as is possible, a significant amount of agency over his life. (Does anyone have that much agency, one wonders, but perhaps comparatively speaking.) He is male, the son of rich and connected people, and protected by his mother. The other is female and will grow up with very different expectations and despite being older than the boy, already looks like she is lower in stature and afforded a different level of maternal protection and pride to her brother. I don’t think I can say what Renior was expressing here with any certainty. Did he mean what I see or is that simply my own reading?  It’s so hard to know. Feminism was not even remotely on any one’s agenda although I am sure women must have felt frustrated which is what led them to insist on some level of emancipation a few decades later. There is myth relating to the way in which children are presented here, one that does not tally with the myths we relate to our own children with today. The blurring of sexuality in the early years is still extremely strong here, as I suspect it was for a while.  But for me, a child born in the 70s and who had three boys in the 2000s I found it extremely surprising to learn that this child in the centre was a boy and not a girl. Such a blurring is incredibly strange to my own eyes. No matter how long I look the picture I find it hard to see a boy rather than a girl. The separation of the sexes and sexuality in children is something that I think we in Western modern times have very hard time with. And the confusion for children over what is acceptable to feel or not feel seems to cause all sorts of problems, for everyone, especially when the child feels they don’t fit into the gender binaries that have been considered the ‘norm’ for so long.  Nowadays there is a fast emerging awareness and that gender and sexuality don’t always conform so simply. But it seems very strange to me that differences were entirely, dress and hair-wise at any rate, ironed out for you  children in France int the late 19th century.

This is a painting of rich people for rich people to look at. That some should be rich and live in such comfort while so many others don’t was and still is considered perfectly acceptable and desirable by those living as such. It is a myth that still prevails and I am not sure if this painting questions it or accepts and perpetuates it. I think suspect the latter. The painting though is also oddly one of two different genders as children and suggests that they are both the same when patently history tells us that this is not true. The painting’s form through is ambiguous about this. It is difficult to read the expressions and I can really only use guess work and imagination to grab at meaning which makes sense to me, much of which I suppose is relative and subjective.

For me about this painting is the fact that the boy looks to my eye like a little girl in every way and so my mind cannot settle on any meaning because I know it’s a boy. I think it confuses meaning although I can’t say if the artist meant for that to happen since it was the fashion at the time and would not have seemed odd. (I think).

Refs:

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/07.122/ (Accessed 26th July 2016)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France–Japan_relations_(19th_century)#Japanese_influences_on_France (Accessed 26th July 2016)

http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Barthes-Mythologies-MythToday.pdf (Accessed 19th July 2016)

Notes & Project 3.3: Myth is a type of speech

 

“Structuralists search for ‘deep structures’ underlying the ‘surface features’ of sign systems: Levi-Strauss in myth, kinship rules and tokenism; Lacan in the unconscious; Barthes and Greimas in the ‘grammar’ of narrative.”

Chandler , Semiotics, 2001

Read Barthe’s Myth Today, respond to following questions;

Notes below and please also see previous notes on Myth Today here.

• Look up Minou Drouet – controversial French child prodigy poet and author who wrote “Tree that I love”; a tree is often used by people in semantic arguments about notions of reality, what is real, language or objects, a tree is always a tree, except when it isn’t; i.e. at most basic a sign to indicate the collection of atoms that form the shape we come to recognise as tree, however, also a sign that offers up scope for various metaphors, i.e. growth, stability, rootedness, green credentials. Astroff’s conversation regarding the desolation of the forest in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya is cited as an example of ecological foresight about the destruction of the planet, and it is true the words fit well with the current green concerns. However, directors often link the subtext in the well-known forestry monologue to Astroff’s sexual desire for Yelena
• Roses and black pebbles – think about examples of elements within images that signify passions, emotions, or even events?  Windows – opaque, see through, closed or open – signify openness or opposite, eyes, seeing, net curtains can signify class, economic status, or hiding, privacy, curtain twitching; rain can signify weeping, or cleansing, storms can be indicative of passion, rage, fearful situation, danger, seaside – travel, holiday, distance between two parties; all signs signify something, and often they are common and unoriginal, but in advertising for instance that commonality makes them useful as universally understood containers of meaning. For instance an umbrella is seen as a means of protection and so used by insurance company, Legal & General in their logo.
• Anti physis/pseudo-physis; ideology expressed through images which look benign but actually contain a constructed reality that adheres to the dominant ideology.  Breast milk versus bottled milk is a contentious subject that evokes feelings of guilt, depression, rage, and antipathy in mothers towards anyone with the opposite view-point.  It is hard to argue that capitalism has not appropriated female breasts  – supplanting their primary function, that of feeding babies, and turning them into a sign used in marketing campaigns to sell newspapers, plastic surgery, baby milk powder, cars, TV programmes, a way of life; an undermining of women of as people with minds, rather as objects to be owned etc…. Breasts in our society are sexualised and it is seen as entirely ‘natural’ but in other societies this seems laughable (Detwyller, 1995), and is just as idiosyncratic, if looked at through a detached, alienated lens, as feet being sexualised in Japan over the centuries.

From course folder …..And in your blog think carefully about the passage on Meaning & Form. “The meaning is always there to present the form, the form is always there to out distance the meaning”.  

The question of meaning:

All expression is a function of externalising internal and unconscious events. It does not happen in a vacuum or in isolation. Expression is action in relationship.

“Does meaning cause language (visual as well as literary) or is meaning the result of language? Is language a means of conveying the underlying and overarching truth, or do we understand to be true, that which language tells us is true?”

• The words ‘reality’, ‘truth’, ‘human beings’ like all words are all symbols; signs for concepts, rather than the things themselves.
• If reality is based on ‘perception’ guided by sign systems, some more reliable than others, rather than absolute ‘truths’, then meaning is constructed and understood by whatever systems are in place to express, communicate and understand ‘perception’
  
• And  …”we live in world of signs and we have no way of understanding anything except through signs and the codes into which they are organised”.(Loc 419)
• However, as stated by Chandler, “...we need not accept the postmodernist stance that there is no external reality beyond sign systems, (but) studying semiotics can assist us to become more aware of the mediating roles of signs and the roles played by ourselves and others in constructing social realities.” (Loc 419) Materialist viewpoint (we are nothing but atoms and a sign system part of the illusion we are any more than that) may make scientific sense but doesn’t address notions that whatever illusion we exist within, it is very real to us, and to deny its reality risks reducing life to being entirely meaningless, perhaps rendering emotions such as empathy or grief for instance potentially defunct, however, empathy and grief, along with love, rage etc are key evolutionary adaptive behaviours relating to our development, behaviours that facilitate our continued development – the illusion matters and is what we are
• Whether or not one accepts the post modern stance in its entirety or a less extreme view, Susanne Langer is quoted in Chandler’s book: “Symbols are not proxy for their objects but are vehicles for the conception of objects… In talking about things we have conceptions of them, not the things themselves; and it is the conceptions, not the things, that symbols directly mean” (Langar 1951, 61) (Loc 481) Therefore, language is conceptual and not physical, even though it helps to construct the perception of a physical reality.

Although I see language pertains to concepts rather than things, I am not sure I agree that language is not physical. I know she’s saying the word is not the thing, but the word is a physical response to the thing occurring in relationship to the thing, which makes language a physical manifestation of a relationship (I think). I am a bit confused by this. Isn’t language borne out of the physical self although rendered conceptual, but I question separating ‘mind’ from the physical?  Memory and concepts are held physically. Mind is physical. The structuralist argument is that concept becomes reality, thoughts and ideology become material structures, but are initially informed by the physical world, which might suggest that one without the other isn’t anything. So the question, “Does meaning cause language or language cause meaning?” perhaps has no answer either. I find it difficult to get away from the the idea that the production of language is a multilayered and organic process that is forever changing, evolving, feeding into and reflecting.  In the same way that death and life are not really separate things, rather different aspects of a process whereby genetic coding continues replicating. We can see ourselves as containers for that code’s immortality.  Like a fractal pattern, language can be seen as containment for expressive events either seemingly insignificant or the opposite of that, just as we are containers for the expression of genetic code’s immortality.

Expression is a reflexive response that occurs NOT in a vacuum, but rather organically, within the context of the paradigm in which expression is made and received. Rhetoric of all sorts comes about because someone is good at exploiting the responsive action of expression, be that speech, dance, photography or whatever else we humans do to ‘say something’, including staying silent, as in Cordelia’s response to Lear, when she refuses to make empty promises of love in return for land and power. Cordelia’s response, when she replies, “Nothing, my Lord”, when she’s asked to say how much she loves her father, is a powerfully manipulative (perhaps unconscious) behaviour that has a huge impact on Lear. It’s a mistake to read that response as benign.

Furthermore, rhetoric may be many things; it might be subversive, empty, hollow, or meaningful. And in some cases it’s what isn’t being said that conveys meaning. This is one of Lear’s central themes and is embodied in Regan & Goneril’s declaration of love for their father, King Lear, in exchange for land and power, and Cordelia’s refusal to speak beyond giving simple yes or no answers. Nevertheless, rhetoric can also stem from a place of genuine concern and desire to reveal problems, but with seemingly positive intentions, as indicated in a recent article in The Guardian, placing the blame for events, which were in part a result of rhetorical power, at technology’s door. “In the news feed on your phone, all stories look the same – whether they come from a credible source or not. And, increasingly, otherwise-credible sources are also publishing false, misleading, or deliberately outrageous stories.” The author goes on to say that, “At the same time, the levelling of the information landscape has unleashed new torrents of racism and sexism and new means of shaming and harassment, suggesting a world in which the loudest and crudest arguments will prevail. It is an atmosphere that has proved particularly hostile to women and people of colour, revealing that the inequalities of the physical world are reproduced all too easily in online spaces.” (Viner, 2016) The phrase “new torrents of racism and sexism” alarms me as such things have always been around. All news does not look the same on your phone, not if you follow different news sources, although, yes, technology will do its best to show you what it thinks you want to see and not much more. And in any case, all news looks the same on the Daily Mail page if that’s all you read. Yes, there is a new medium for transmitting the bile but the bile itself is not new. Nor are the lies being told to the public by those in power. The medium is new.  Lying, propaganda, bigotry are as old as humanity. And I would be interested to know how theories about social contagion and collective consciousness fit in with the premise that technology is responsible for the spread of ideas. Ideas do travel quickly, but I wonder if there is a case to be made that suggests ideas always did spread quickly and technology is a digital manifestation of something that went on anyway.  The difference now is that we can see it happening. It has been made visible by technology. The article by Viner is really intelligently written – I admire how well researched and ordered it is (I long to have that ability!) But ultimately, questioning the reliability of language is not a new phenomena. And the strength of Viner’s argument triggers in me a suspicion that there is rhetoric there which should be analysed and deconstructed before accepting it as a set of absolute truths. Shakespeare in Lear explores similar concerns over langauge and how words can be manipulated and exploited, and technology was a long way off when he addressed them.

Meaning is subject to relationship

As I discussed earlier, meaning is not only subject to intention, but formed in relationship. It is possible to say a thing and mean it explicitly, only to have one’s mind changed a moment later by a response from someone else. We see it all the time in arguments and debates and especially in teaching.

Student 1: “I think this art work is rubbish”.

Student 2: “Really, do you not see this and that about it?”

Student 1: “Oh yeah, I do!  OK.  I’ve changed my mind.  I like that art work.”

Student 2: “Hang on, I think you may have been right. I agree with some of your first position.”

Student 1: “Now I don’t know what to think. I like this about it but I don’t like that.”

Opinions change, become more complex and evolve, and that doesn’t make some statements any less true or false at the time of being said.

Expression is an action. “Meaning is not transmitted to us – we actively create it according to a complex interplay of codes or conventions of which we are normally unaware” (loc 417). We respond and adjust our thoughts.  The action occurs in relation to other actions, past and present, genuine or imagined, and are always reflexive even when thought of as controlled, despite huge effort being made through the semiotic academic project to understand and control that reflexive action. The propagation of myths is ‘action’, responsive and organic, and the result of a shift elsewhere, another reflexive action.

What happens when structures change?

Structures have changed a great deal since the enlightenment. For many centuries we existed within a reality that adhered to The Great Chain of Being,  a didactic ideology  – underscored by a powerful sign system i.e., religious texts, religious art, religious figures which supported and perpetuated the position of those in power. As science and enlightenment emerged those ideologies were and continue to be challenged. A new reality has taken over, secular and science based, supported by the texts of Darwin, Dawkins and E O Wilson for instance, rather than by biblical myth.

What prevents the newer science based realities from being seen as myth, or indeed being myth?  And what else drives modern secular myths? According to Marxism, industry and capitalism do. Whatever is responsible for driving new myths or truths, structures have changed and realities that exist within them have changed too, (although history has a habit of hanging around long after the fact, and there have been some arguments along those lines in relation to attitudes left over from years of English Empire still affecting how people think today, following the referendum result which are discussed in the following articles.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/12/theresa-may-has-vowed-to-unite-britain-my-guess-is-against-the-poor)

Out of scientific and less magical thinking, come the Structuralists and Post Structuralists and within that, the semioticians, including Saussare and Barthes, all of whom aim(ed) to deconstruct our ‘reality’, expressed through signs for there is no other way; “we learn through semiotics that …()…we have no way of understanding anything except through signs and the codes into which they are organised” (loc 425). Whether or not the sign is the only reality, or not, is debated. To suggest there is no reality without the sign might be argued as reductionist and is questioned. “Theorists who veer towards the extreme position of philosophical idealism (for whom reality is purely subjective and is constructed in our use of signs) may see no problem which has itself been described as idealist (e.g. Culler 1985, 117). Those drawn towards epistemological realism (for whom a single objective reality exists indisputably and independently outside us) would challenge it. According to this stance, reality may be distorted by the process of mediation involved in apprehending it, but such processes play no part in constructing the world.” (Loc 1234) (Whatever else is true, the constructed thought processes that have grown out of our own Western history don’t always apply so easily in cultures that have not been part of the history which formed it.  Which is why it is not always appropriate, for instance, to analyse cultures outside of the West in Freudian terms as the lens through which that takes place can lead to projection and an imposition of one cultural view onto another. I have written far too much but feel the way in which we interpret life through a heavily influenced Freudian lens is critical  – I think we cover this later.)

Returning to the question asked in the folder, “Is language a means of conveying the underlying and overarching truth, or do we understand to be true, that which language tells us is true?”  

“Theorists differ over whether the system precedes and determines usage (structural determinism) or whether usage precedes and determines the system (social determinism)” (loc 393)

This questions seems impossible to answer definitively not least because of the choice of the word “truth” which can in certain contexts be contentious.  (Although, despite arguments for the opposite view, not in all cases.) There is a drive for authenticity in acting which is described as truth, but that is not the same as the idea of truth which exists between two opposing sides. Both might see their own reality as the truth. As for the debate between structural or social determinism, as with all deterministic arguments, they appear to only look from the bottom up which ignores other influences. Are there not many more factors involved? And as I suggested earlier, the process is organic, so perhaps it is limiting to suggest any form of absolute determinism. The best we can do is to examine how language functions, perhaps relying on semiotics, and train ourselves to respond to the signs we have learned to trust in a considered fashion, as well as retaining some degree of scepticism since there is always the possibility that the sign system we choose to rely on might in time prove to be just as misleading as ones we have previously rejected. In any case, Barthes suggests we “might purport to discriminate … (but that)… would be illusory”. (1975; 51)

Changeability of meaning vs fixedness of the symbol

Meaning within a sign is subject to change, “form and concept are inseparable” (Loc 2166) In the past a Swastika did not mean ‘Nazi’.  Now it does.  It is impossible for someone to separate that history even when one is told about its former use. Context and history feed into the emotional response a sign (word or other) triggers. A more mundane, less emotive example might be the word “Smartie” or the visual image of one. Is a Smartie always and only only ever a Smartie? A child may be trained, using behaviorism techniques, to use the potty with a reward of a Smartie.  The Smartie and all related cousins in the form of confectionary/chocolatey treats then potentially embody concepts surrounding far more than a sweet.  Even the fact I suggest the Smartie is a treat is indicative of the social construct we place around sweets. In the case of the potty learning treat, the reward  becomes unconsciously tied to the relationship with the parent, development of a sense of self, unconscious feelings about separation, learning, relationship with food, sugar, treats etc.  Before potty training, the Smarties might just have been seen as a thing to eat (although if a parent chooses to use this technique then Smarties are likely already to have been established as a ‘treat’, something potentially bad, something potentially used as proxy for attention, love, and punishment by its absence etc.) Potentially, a whole world of mythical thought becomes tied up in a single small round coloured bit of candy covered chocolate. And so meaning is rendered subjective.  A Smartie may mean many things to various people and even to the same person. Feelings associated with a heavily reward-based behaviourally-engineered upbringing to one person, or a joyful reminder of childhood parties to another. Or both.

Expression is an action

I am constantly reminded while studying this section of the course about a time when I was in a play at drama school. It was Women of Troy by Euripides. We had a strenuous and highly physical rehearsal process. I was in the chorus.  One night I opened my mouth and understood not only every word but every syllable that came out of it.  The ‘meaning’ felt as if it were flowing through me, as if Euripides’ spirit (for want of a better word) in the form of his words had allowed some historical event and a woman’s personal response to it to travel through history and emerge through my being in that moment. It was the weirdest experience I ever had in a play.  It was an illusion but one that was made possible using a set of sign systems and conventions of a theatre.  But the most important thing here for me is the fact I understood each and every part of each word I spoke.  Not just intellectually, but throughout my entire body, emotionally, physically.  It was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time, not least because I knew ostensibly I was in a play so safe, even though in that instant I knew, as much as it is possible from that distance in time and place, what it would feel like for me to be one of those women being dragged away from their homes. My mouth opened and out came the expression that Euripides had sent us through the centuries, via a translation, shaped and modelled as English words in this instance, which were made up of a collection of sounds that came together as something real and true, but were the ultimate outcome of a collective, highly physical experience in the form of a rehearsal period where we (the actors, director and movement director, plus Eurpides and the translator) embedded the words into these very particular movements. Together we all contributed in a relationship towards creating a physical form, out of which came this incredibly fluent meaning. The language we used consisted of words (translated), physical experience, muscle memory, thought, empathy, imagination, history, being human, actual knowledge, learned knowledge and presumably other elements too which I may not have access to. The sounds (phenomes) each had meaning which went beyond the meaning of words. The words contained the expressive responses which had been internalised and then transformed as they erupted externally in the form of speech and movement, augmented with costume, lights, positioning, all signs.  We became the form, enabling some meaning to be shared. And the meaning resonates still, in me and anyone I tell about it at the very least.

Annotated art work to follow

References

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/11/06/a-lost-child (accessed 15 July 2016)

https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-barthes-3/ (accessed 15 July 2016)

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth (accessed 15 July 2016)

Stuart-Macadam, P. and Dettwyler, K. (1995). Breastfeeding. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.

http://www.thealphaparent.com/2011/10/15-tricks-of-formula-companies.html (accessed 15 July 2016)

Chandler, D, 2004. Semiotics,

Evans, J. and Hall, S. (1999). Visual culture. London: SAGE Publications in association with the Open University.

Dawkins, R, 2014. Selfish Gene Explained, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9p2F2oa0_k (Accessed 14th July 2016)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/13/racism-is-not-human-nature-a-work-of-fiction-can-help-us-understand-that (accessed 18 July 2016)

Project 3.2: Structural analysis (3)

…continued from Structural Analysis (1)

Gainsborough’s portraits of society ladies often show them in the guise of mythological characters. Photographic family portraits from Victorian times to the high streets of today usually have the father as protector, the pater familias, and the mother as his support and the nurturer:

Find two examples of portrait photography, one formal and one informal, and annotate them to see what connections from the formal are observed in the informal and give your thoughts on why this might be so

I have chosen this portrait because I do love how a great male artist is naked, doing something relatively benign albeit fairly intimate, usually private, and yet he communicates a sense of ease, even though his laughter and expression suggest he wasn’t entirely in on the decision to have his photograph taken while in the bath. (I feel it only fair to say that Picasso allowed himself to be photographed in all sorts of unusual ways and an image by Robert Capa shows him holding an umbrella for his lover on the beach in a photo where the woman is very clearly shown as the dominant force – who knows how much of that is reality as there are also plenty of stories about Picasso being exactly like so many of his fellow males from the age in terms of dominance). The photographer who took the bath photo was David Douglas Duncan, someone who reportedly took over 10 000 photographs of Picasso during their 17 year friendship. (Life, 2009) I also chose it because I have taken several photographs of my children in the bath over the years, which continues a family tradition since my mother took several of my bother and me too.  I suspect many parents photograph their children in the bath, or did, before chemists and other developers started reporting pictures of naked children in case of potential harm. Now that people tend not to have snaps developed I suspect pictures of children in the bath continue but snaps of adults in the bath are relatively rarer.  We usually shut the bathroom door, don’t we?

This photograph is not like the Hunter one where an ‘informal’ but constructed image is made formal.  This is a snap – but a great one due to subject and place, and entirely informal in every way. Even so it still references paintings and more formal spacial structures.  The subject is to the left of the picture, he is framed by the pipes leading up to the ceiling behind him and the taps/shower pipe and edge of the bath.  He is well lit and the shadow of his form can be seen behind him on the wall of the bath.  There is space around and above him, without which he might seem cramped and perhaps even too close to us, or maybe even imprisoned by his framing.  Instead there is an airiness, room to breath which together with the expression on his face gives the image a sense of easiness, joviality and deep friendship.

I am reminded of a friend of Picasso’s in Lee Miller’s famous portrait taken by David E. Schema in Hilter’s bath. Although Schema took it, the suggestion in various articles is that the idea to photograph this scene was hers. I find it a very disturbing image.  Although she may have been wanting to display a defiant attitude towards Hitler by getting in his bath, the mingling of personal space and intimate activity is distressing.  Her boots, which according to the Telegraph article (Parker 2014) (linked above), were covered in mud from Dachau where she had just been and photographed evidence of the atrocities that took place there. What interests me is that there is such a difference between the two images in their intention, even though the ‘forms’ are so very similar – resulting in totally opposite messages being communicated. Are these good examples of how content can be quite different within the same form, and how we are guided by a collection or chain of signifiers when receiving information?  And comparing these images is part of my ongoing determination to comprehend zero, empty or free floating signifiers which were alluded to in the conversation I had with my tutor and Peter H following feedback from A2. Here are two images, each of which tell a very different story, and it makes me wonder how one can empty a signifier of meaning, as, I believe, it is thought many of the artists working with appropriation are attempting to do.

 

As I have stated several times in the past I am not a fan of traditional nudes, however, I don’t mind nakedness in the least. What I find offensive is, as Berger describes it, the uniform of nudity that women have been obliged to don in their appointed representations over the centuries, and still do. Men on the other hand have tended to be represented with medals, property, land, and other signs indicative of power, strength, dominance.  Picasso above has been stripped of all of that. In the Lee Miller image there is a prime example of that kind of male power based imagery in a portrait of Hitler resting on the side of the bath; an example of the male-owned, nude representation of women in the form of a small statue, and an alternative to that in the form of Miller, who nevertheless looks away from the viewer; but mid wash just like Picasso. It’s an enormously difficult and complicated photograph.  In the Duncan picture there is an intimacy, joy, relaxation, slight embarrassment, but a direct and relatively confident gaze back at the viewer. Although mid action, i.e. washing, he is engaged, he is part of a scene which breaks the fourth wall.

Compare this too to one of the first images I spoke about for this course, In the Bathroom by Pierre Bonnard, a painting that was made using photo-referencing. The influence of photography can be seen in the way in which the photograph captures a moment in time, just as Picasso and Miller have been captured, mid ablutions.  The painting somehow seems prurient though.  We the viewer are being invited to spy on this woman whose face is passive, meek, almost insipid, and with an indirect gaze.

In the Bathroom 1907 Pierre Bonnard 1867-1947 Lent by a private collector 2005 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/L02553

The informal portrait of Picasso can be compared to the informal but constructed painting by Bonnard – but there is so much more life rather than the pretence of it.  Not just because it is a photograph instead of a painting, but rather because Picasso is treated like an equal, a fellow human being whom one can have a joke with, as opposed to the women drying herself who is being observed, owned and spied on.  Her pert breasts painted to look utterly ludicrous, not least because of the spacial dimensions which don’t remotely tally with her actual physical position, and this was done decades before plastic breasts appeared.

Finally – here is a photograph of my brother and me in the bath in the early 70s.  It’s one of my favourite childhood photographs and reminds me of running around all day on the beach in Cape-town and not caring about all the things that infect our lives with so much worry today. I will need to think about the various signifiers in this image and compare them to the others I’ve mentioned, and perhaps other images of people in the bath, young and old.  It might be a useful exercise in terms of semiotics to do a table. In the meantime, I am minded to think about the differences between how we respect certain boundaries in terms of children compared to adults, about the changing nature of those boundaries, about how those changes impact on us.  I suspect the answers t the questions such an excercise might raise are many and complex. I like the picture of Picasso in his bath very much.  He is made human and warm in it and it manages to convery something genuine about the relationship between Picasso and Duncan in the split second that it was taken.

Taken by my mother circa 1975 of my brother and me in Cape-Town

References

Parker 2014, The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/10621799/Lee-Miller-the-woman-in-Hitlers-bathtub.html (accessed 12 July 2016)

Picture credits 

1. Picasso by David Douglas Duncan from Life, 2009, The Great Life Photographers, Thames and Hudson, London (obtained online from https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/178947785163968505/ accessed 12 July 2016)
2. In the Bathroom 1907 Pierre Bonnard 1867-1947 Lent by a private collector 2005 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/L02553 (accessed 12th July 2016)
3. From personal archives taken by my mother, Evelyn Dean, c 1975

 

Project 3.2: Structural analysis (2)

…continued from Structural Analysis (1).

Gainsborough’s portraits of society ladies often show them in the guise of mythological characters. Photographic family portraits from Victorian times to the high streets of today usually have the father as protector, the pater familias, and the mother as his support and the nurturer:

• Find two examples of portrait photography, one formal and one informal, and annotate them to see what connections from the formal are observed in the informal and give your thoughts on why this might be so

3. FORMAL  – Women reading possession order, Tom Hunter, 1997

Hunter’s image is described on the Saatchi Gallery website as giving his outsiders a “visible presence and quiet nobility.” (2016) The image also prompts viewers to question assumptions about our relationship with the notion of ownership. In order to deconstruct it, it is necessary to look closely at the painting the photograph is based on.

• Formal portrait with direct reference to Vermeer’s Woman Reading a Letter at an Open Window, approximately 1957/59.

• Woman standing reading letter by an open window
• Title tells us the window being open is important
• The title also says exactly what is happening in the picture so perhaps can be described as tautological
• Wikipedia suggests x-rays show a cupid in the top right hand corner (although the fruit perhaps makes such a signifier overkill, hence its removal)
• Plentiful bowl of fruit on the bed
• Window open
• Green bed curtain to the right creating formal rules of thirds dimensions –
• Also, curtain is open, revealing what was hidden,
• The viewer is being invited in, this is a private moment being made public Performative perhaps
• Red curtain flicked over the open window
• Woman reflected in the window
• Light from outside lighting woman in painterly style of the time, pre-camera use
• However, it is reported that Vermeer may have used a camera obscura (Wikipedia)*
• Bedroom – dutch houses, like in most of Europe, were only just beginning to have specific rooms and according to one source Dutch houses were generally quite cluttered unlike the room in the painting (Jansen, 2001-2016) The room appears tidy and ordered and would have been painted with upper and upper-middle class taste in mind to appeal to  buyers in a competitive market (Jansen, 2001-2016)
• Turkish carpet and oriental bowl on the bed

The painting is a collection of signs which collectively come together tell a story about a women yearning to break away from social conventions, directly in the form of a love affair, and indirectly from the structures that house or ‘imprison’ her depending on your view.  She reads a letter by an open window. The open window is suggestive of her yearning to leave the space she inhabits, and of the possibility she might do so, also of the fact that something from outside may enter in.  According to Wikipedia there was a cupid in the top right hand corner evident in x-rays (Wikipedia), however, the bowl of fruit on the bed is enough to be suggestive of some form of eroticism.  Apples have long been signifiers of temptation, we use the word ‘fruity’ to imply sexual naughtiness.  The bowl is abundantly filled and on the bed.  It is not normal for a bowl of fruit to be on a bed so to question its presence and position seems the right thing to do. Being on the bed makes it quite a big statement. The green curtain in the foreground is apparently a trope used elsewhere by Vermeer (Jansen 2001-2016) and while it may be tempting to think of it as like a theatrical curtain, that was a convention that didn’t really start being the norm until a century or so later when scene changes were covered up to contribute to the illusion. However, the curtain being pulled back in that way is certainly suggestive of a ‘reveal’ or tricking the eye into thinking you might be able to really close the curtain.  In fact such curtains were employed in real life to cover up nudes; rich people would buy nudes to hang in their houses and then cover them up. This is described as ‘tromp l’oeil’ (tricks the eye) and signifies there is something akin to a nude that might be covered up. Painting illusory curtains in this way was not uncommon at the time and a visual ‘colloquialism’  amongst Vermeer’s colleagues. The reading of a love letter is a private moment but in this picture it is visible from several directions, suggesting this women’s love life is on show.  What is also on show is a Turkish carpet and the aforementioned bowl which is oriental – both suggestive of something exotic and alien or foreign.  Whilst such objects were purchased and shown off by rich homeowners to signify their wealth, and so adding to the overall picture of a modern, wealthy home to potential buyers of art, the erotic signification is clear too. “The exotic and erotic are often intertwined in  Western conceptualisation of the Other” (Dubisch, 1995;33) It adds to the suggestion of highly charged sexuality, but perhaps a darker more dangerous form of eroticism which might have been challenging or perhaps seen as a little ‘risky’ for the middle class Dutch homeowners, in a similar way to how the idea of racially different sexual coupling is explored in E. M. Foster’s Passage to India; non-Empire sanctioned sexuality is registered as dangerous and uncontrollable, something to be curtailed. If one were to accept that as a possible interpretation it becomes a very modern painting that deals with a comprehension of inner psychological issues in conflict with external social constraints, as well as questions surrounding empire building, rather than simply relating to a love affair. It is probably helpful to also consider that the Dutch were at the time sailing around the world, appropriating land and people, whilst building its own empire, much like Britain was. Dutch legacy is still seen today in Africa, America, India etc. So the idea of foreign, exotic Others, who potentially offer tempting but also ‘frightening’ experiences would also have been in the collective consciousness of the public.

The reflection of the woman might be suggestive of an early reflexive comment on the introspection of Western art buyers at the time, wishing to see something of themselves reflected in the paintings they value, and so artists needed to pander to that. Or a comment on the practise of painting which is  a refection of the world, even when stylised and rendered heightened versions of reality.

This is a formal portrait, of an imaginary woman (possibly modelled on Vermeer’s wife) perhaps trapped in a marriage whilst in the throws of an erotic  love affair with an(O)ther, an intruder, who is unable to escape the confines of her marriage. Which in turns leads to a greater story about an internal opposing conflict between civility (marriage, middle class-ness, money, things, ownership) and the natural, base and potentially dangerous forces that exist within, and which can be triggered by alien intruders – outsiders invited in through the process of Empire building.

And so to Tom Hunters image:

http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/artpages/tom_hunter_woman.htm

• Formal, conventional but starkly rendered dimensions  – lines, angles, rules of thirds
• Woman reading a document
• By a closed window
• Sunlight streaming in
• Bed
• Baby on a blanket on bed
• No middle class decorative accoutrements, not made to appeal to middle class taste
• Empty shelves apart from what look like speakers for listening to music
• Some form of decorative wall art, but it is cropped so we only see a small part of it – the frame is not contained
• Painted walls different colours, not smooth, the opposite of the middle class expectations in the original, or when transposed to modern middle class expectations
• Baby looks towards its mother
• Mother focused on possession order
• Title suggests the woman is a squatter, and reading the history behind the picture confirms this, at which point text and context become crucial to the image
• The image is a direct reference to the Dutch painting by Vermeer, not only is the image influenced by the original, it appropriates the painting, along with the title.
• The image is a photograph – indexical, a trace of the formal scene but also of the original painting it is copied from
• Women dressed in darkly coloured, long skirt and green, long-sleeved shirt which emulate historical styles, although the dress is modern
• Her hair is scraped up in a loose pony tail so informal, despite being in a formal highly constructed portrait.

This portrait is formal, but it is not a simple portrait and doesn’t show a formal situation, rather a formal representation of an informal, albeit formally staged, private moment. This is a women in front of a closed window, and the relationship of the painting to the picture suggests that the state of the window is highly relevant, as does the fact that in the title Hunter doesn’t reference the window at all. If the woman in the original is hoping to escape the confines of her marriage, here is a woman who has little or no chance of escape from her situation. She, unlike the original, wants to stay in the house which she is being evicted from. The whole relationship is inverted. This photograph rejects the idea of ownership, whereas the painting supports it, not only in terms of things, but also of women and foreign lands, along with their people.

Although this is an appropriated image it is difficult to believe this is the appropriation of zero meaning, even though I can see that some of the signifiers play subtle jokes with our perception of what makes up the ‘reality’ (see feedback for A2). With reference to the outfit the woman wears, here perhaps is a postmodern references to the way in which signifiers are potentially meaningless – the outfit the woman wears links her further to the historical painting, but is also a sign that makes fun of the viewers potential reception of a visual cue.  The woman’s outfit creates a pastiche, a quiet demure, old-fashioned outfit worn by a female quietly reading  – the letter she reads relates us to the commonly held view that ownership of property is a right, and that living in a property one doesn’t own without paying rent is a wrong, and that therefore she should face the consequences of squatting; although in reality, that is unlikely to be the view of the artist since he has placed the child so prominently in the foreground, nor does it appear to be the overall discourse contained within the image.  Does that mean the signification of the outfit might be described as having zero meaning, or is it in fact simply a visual inversion designed to make us question our assumptions? The viewer sees a quiet, perhaps benign although dignified, still, female person dressed in a certain way, and using body language, both of which  we recognise from historical representations of ‘ladies who were painted’, when in fact the image is about the opposite of that position. Whereas the Dutch were busy appropriating lands and people, here the woman has appropriated a home. Is Hunter asking us to consider, which form of appropriation is acceptable, which is not? And why? And are the moral implications based on some of Barthes’ myths? In other words, should we accept the social norms as just, or as something to buy into without question? The woman in the Dutch painting was in all likelihood painted in such a way as to suggest she was having a torrid affair with someone outside of the marriage/home; the woman in the photograph has gone beyond that and has a child, representative of the future. Future looks to its mother and there is an expectation conjured up in that relationship. Since the window is closed, what is being signified is that the woman and her child are trapped, inside an economic system that embraces ownership for some and under certain conditions, and within historical relationships, but not for all. Which implies that Hunter is suggesting we should question historical socio-economic norms since what the Dutch and British, and many other countries did in the past isn’t really different from what the woman has been doing. Or if it is different, perhaps her reasons are more urgent.  Although in her case she is up against the law in the form of a ‘possession order’, whereas Empire building and all the countries associated with it had law on its side at the time. Additionally, there is no tromp l’oeil here, with any suggestively placed curtains.  The photograph is barefaced and unashamed, unadorned. A clearer less theatrical straightforward rhetoric. More Brechtian in its subject matter. The placing of the infant (the infant which makes the photograph hark back to so many Madonna & Child portraits) might have been a sentimental ploy but somehow the photo bypasses that trap, perhaps because the child is placed on the bed where the fruit would have been – which establishes the fact that this goes beyond love affairs and yearning but relates instead to fundamental issues such as life and death. The modern version seems to be focused on a specific historical relationship we have with ownership whereas the original painting seems to trigger broader questions about sexuality, female positioning, social and cultural structures, and historical, political events. Although Hunter employs a recognisable iconic version of female idenity he does so without rendering her an object – perhaps it becomes abundantly clear he is utlising long held visual tropes in an affect of alienation or distancing to overturn the assumptions that fed into thier originators.

The fact that this is a photograph rather than a painting contributes in several ways to the way in which the image will be read. “…in the common sense attitude of everyday life we routinely treat high modality signifiers…()…as ‘a window on the world’ and we assume ‘the camera never lies'”. (Chandler, 2002;22%) Even though we know this is a photograph and we know it is constructed and based on a painting, it is still a photograph and so tricks a human mind into believing it is reality. Despite all that has been written about why this might be, there are still plenty of questions about why photographs are so powerful as asked by photographer and author, Stuart Franklin, in an interview with Guernica magazine. “We don’t understand what photography is doing. We don’t understand the power of its rhetoric.” (2016) The painting clearly resonates with us as it has stayed in the public imagination, even after an incredibly difficult history having been lost and attributed to other artists. But there is something very powerful about the photograph which seems to out run the power of the painting. Not only perhaps the fact it is a photograph, but also that is an inverted version of its predecessor, prompting us to ask questions about common held assumptions relating to ownership and value.

*Quote from wikipedia: “This use of light may support speculation among art historians that Vermeer used a mechanical optical device, such as a double concave lens mounted in a camera obscura, to help him achieve realistic light patterns in his paintings.[3]” (Wikipedia)

References:

http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/artpages/tom_hunter_woman.htm accessed 9/7/1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_Reading_a_Letter_at_an_Open_Window accessed 9/7/16

http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/girl_reading_a_letter_by_an_open_window.html#.V39zmGMw2-I  accessed 9/7/16

https://www.britannica.com/art/proscenium accessed 9/7/16

Dubisch, J. (1995) Lovers in the Field from Kulick, D. and Willson, M. (1995). Taboo. London: Routledge.

Chandler, D. (2002). Semiotics. London: Routledge.

 

 

 

Notes on Myth Today by Roland Barthes, 1957

Myth Today is an extremely complex and difficult text about the way in which languages, visual or oral, are used to perpetuate myths in society that people believe to be the natural way in which things are, how assumptions are made, and accepted as the only way life is lived.  These myths are augmented by the language of myths, which obscure the realities beneath them. Advertisers and propaganda makers rely heavily on social myths to sell their products/ideas. These are notes from parts of the text that I am able to penetrate.

• Myth – a system of communication, a mode of signification
• Every object can pass from a closed object into the existence of a signifier.  Minor Droutet’s Tree is given as an example
• Barthes establishes that verbal or visual mean of communication are carriers of myths
• Links myth to semiology, to Saussuare and signification
• Looking at basic semiotics, describes: Objects  – signifier + signified = sign, i.e. rose + passion = love
• Myth is a “second-order semiological system”
• Two semiological systems; language object such as word or image, reduced to put signifying function when it becomes myth.  Myth sees only the global sign.
• Myth is the second language, not interested in the parts, but only in the thing signified from the sum of signified, signifier = sign, out of which grows the myth.  Rose, passion = love. Love = all that we learn to think love is
• Signified formed by a string of signs (made up of signifiers and signifieds)
• Form and concept: signified can have several signifiers, dependent on history, context, and ‘repetition of forms’, really crucial as allows myth to be deciphered.  insistence reveals intention
• Myths can be spread over a large expanse of signifier -i.e. a book, or a single word
• Myth hides nothing, it’s function is to distort
• There is no need of an unconscious order to explain myth
• Literal and immediate
• it can appear only through a given substance, without the signifiers and signifieds it cannot materialise, manifest
• In images is multidimensional – oral, linear
• Meaning distorted by the concept, i.e. the concepts surrounding romantic love being ‘natural’ behaviours distorts the underlying social source for the myth
• Myth a double system, making it hard to identify and get hold of as signification of a myth is constituted by a moving ‘turnstile’ between empty and present
• Myth an ideographic system: i.e. the whole of Moliere can be seen in a doctor’s ruff
• Reading myths;
• Focus on an empty signifier and allow the concept to fill the form
• If the signifier is full, you need to undo it, an obvious signified becomes an ‘alibi’
• Focus on whole – meaning and form, receive ambitious signification
• Myth transforms history into nature (the natural mother figure who looks, with her head to the side, at her child)
• Myth is an inflection, not a lie or confession
• Myth is read as a reason rather a motivator
• Myth is always motivated
• Myth is fundamentally borne of the bourgeoisie
• The avant garde revolts against the bourgeoisie, but is of them and only contests the language it uses rather than its status
• ‘everything in everyday life, is dependent on the representation which the bourgeoisie has and makes us have of the relations between man and the world.  These normalised forms attract little attention, by the very fact of their extension…’ (15/26)
• Petit-bourgeois norms are the residue of bourgeois culture, they are bourgeois truths that have become degraded, impoverished, commercialised, slightly archaic, or shall we say out of date?
• The bourgeoisie is constantly absorbing into its ideology a whole section of humanity which does not have its basic status and cannot live up to it except in imagination, that is at the cost of immobilisation, and by the impoverishment of consciousness.
• Myth is depoliticised speech
• Myth gives a naturalised image of reality
• The function of myth is to empty reality
• It abolishes the complexity of human acts
• Myth exist on the left too – leftwing myth supervenes precisely at the moment when revolution  changes itself into ‘the left’; when it accepts to wear a mask, to hide its name, to generate an innocent metalanguage and to distort itself into ‘Nature’.
• Statistically myth is on the right
• It takes hold of everything, all aspects of law, of morality, of aesthetics, of diplomacy, of household equipment, of Literature, of entertainment.

Strategies (rhetorical figures) used by Myth include:

• Inoculation – admitting the accidental evil of class-bound institution the better to conceal its principal evil.  One immunises contact of collective imagination by means of a small inoculation of acknowledged evil
• Privation of history – miraculous evaporation of history is another form of a concept common to most bourgeois myths; the irresponsibility of man.  This seems extremely apt for today’s UK society
• Identification – Petit-bourgeois is man unable to identify with Other. Otherness must be reduced and transformed to sameness. Other is a scandal which threatens his essence. The petit-bourgious  class is not liberal (it produces Fascism, whereas the bourgeoisie uses it); it follows the same route of the bourgeoisie, but lags behind it
• Tautology – An ugly thing. One takes refuge in tautology as one does in fear, or anger, or sadness. Tautology creates a dead motionless world. See my blog post for Project 1 – Operation Black Vote advert
• Neither-Norism, a lack of commitment, hovering on either side and nullifying both. Modern form of Liberalism. It becomes embarrassing to choose between sides of an argument. One no longer needs to choose, but to endorse. New Labour in the 90s.
• Quantification of quality – myth economises intelligence; it understands reality more cheaply.  The ‘naturalness’ of an actor is a conspicuous quantity of effects for instance. Society will dismiss what is plain for all to see, had they not been shrouded in a mythical realities.  Myth stops people from questioning, from the child-like “why?”, from saying, “but that isn’t…”  It shuts people up.
•  The statement of fact: An unalterable hierarchy of the world, a refusal of explanation.  Class system inevitable and cannot be dismantled is a belief held by many as a statement of fact.  Terrible Twos is an actual thing… (it isn’t) etc.

Necessity and limits of mythology

• Man sees the reality and yet is complicit in Myth making making and living (see Brecht’s Einvertandnis)
• Mythologist remains excluded, at a distance. The mythologist cuts himself off from all the myth consumers  – mythologist can become estranged in some cases from society if he wants to liberate the myth.  To decipher the Tour de France or Good French wine is to cut oneself off from those who are entertained or warmed by it
• The mythologist wreaks havoc in his community
• Utopia is an impossible luxury for him
• Mythologist deals with the rhetoric surrounding the object, not with the object itself (how else though? Since the object is nothing without the signification and the eventual myth that is projected onto it. The object, surely, is not anything)
• “The fact we cannot manage to achieve more than an unstable grasp of reality doubtless gives the measure of our present alienation“ – (23/26)  Perhaps, unless you’re one of RD Laing’s understandably ‘mad’ people people, at which point it becomes wholesale alienation.  (Or a teenager? Again an especially traditionally alienated group)

Image (c)SJField 2016

Myth Today, Roland Barthes, 1957, From Mythologies, (translated by Annette Lavers, Hill and Wang, New york, 1984) http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Barthes-Mythologies-MythToday.pdf (accessed 27/06/2016)

Project 3.2: Structural Analysis (1)

Gainsborough’s portraits of society ladies often show them in the guise of mythological characters. Photographic family portraits from Victorian times to the high streets of today usually have the father as protector, the pater familias, and the mother as his support and the nurturer:

• Find 2 examples of naturalistic paintings of a particular genre – landscape, portraiture or whatever, and annotate them to discover the similar conventions of representation: medium, format, allusion, purpose, etc.
• Find two examples of portrait photography, one formal and one informal, and annotate them to see what connections from the formal are observed in the informal and give your thoughts on why this might be so.

I am being asked to deconstruct four pictures using some of the structural methods explored by people like Barthes, Derrider and other structuralists and post-structuralists we’re looked at – two from the Naturalistic period, one that is confusingly difficult to determine; and then two photographic portraits.

This post focuses on 2 paintings.  The next post will look at the portraits.

I studied 19^th century naturalism and realism when training as an actor, and comprehend that that movement was informed by emerging scientific thought, regarding evolution, psychology and anthropology. And also, that it did not explode out of a void, but had been preceded by earlier shifts in art and greater societal change, such as he Enlightenment. I have written about this period a little during TAOP. A quote, written by Jan Van Nimmon, from a webpage about the Illusions of Reality exhibition catalogue “Published in conjunction with the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and the Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki”, describes the mid to late 19^th century naturalism and realism succinctly.

“Differentiating naturalism from realism tends to clot discussions of late nineteenth-century art. Deftly avoiding that hazard in their introductory essay for Illusions of Reality, Edwin Becker, curator of exhibitions at the Van Gogh Museum, and Gabriel P. Weisberg, whose Beyond Impressionism: The Naturalist Impulse (1992) remains the standard work on the subject, offer the reader two first-rate – if second-hand – definitions. First, they cite the lucid essay published in 1982 by Geneviève Lacambre, then chief curator at the Musée d’Orsay (14). She pointed to characteristics of naturalism: “scientific exactitude, psychological examination, and a large-scale format” and the practice of “showing their subjects as if caught – frozen – in a specific, characteristic instant, akin to the photography of the period in their attitude, though not in their scale.”[7] The authors also quote Castagnary’s Salon of 1863 (15): “The naturalist school declares that art is the expression of life in every way and degree, and that its singular goal is to reproduce nature to its maximum power and intensity: it is truth balancing itself with science.”[8]” With that in mind I have chosen the following two images to deconstruct.

1. From the aforementioned webpage, Conveying the Child’s Coffin by Albert Edelfelt, 1879

Link to larger higher quality file: https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/u/0/asset/conveying-a-child-s-coffin/LAG1bHKWVB7VvQ?hl=en&ms=%7B%22x%22%3A0.5%2C%22y%22%3A0.5%2C%22z%22%3A9.69482652077566%2C%22size%22%3A%7B%22width%22%3A1.289224462069119%2C%22height%22%3A1.5770463610694792%7D%7D

If this were a family portrait it would be macabre; but painted very beautifully, in the same style of a candid photograph, it becomes a tragic portrait of a family, informal. Today however, we might not be so shocked or surprised to see a photograph like this painting in the news. Although I did not consciously choose this photograph with refugees in mind, I think I may well have been drawn to this particular image because today we are faced with a number of journalistic photographs of families in boats either crying with relief when they arrive, or mourning, having lost people during the short but perilous crossing of the Agean sea. We have seen dead bodies and the very well known image of a dead child, which shocked so many people, although only temporarily until another news story took its place. I was surprised when researching the image to find it on a cushion and being sold as a ‘lovely present for a father or son”. The painting is very beautifully done and the artist apparently won an award for it (GoogleArts&Culture) but to give someone a present with a picture of a dead child being rowed across an estuary in a boat seems odd to me, although I would appreciate seeing the painting in a frame on a wall.

• Two rowers on a dingy in a lake
• Light
• Strong sunshine – the first Finnish painting to be done outside in the open (GoogleArt&Culture)
• Three women, one of which is obscured by one of the rowers, and she rowing herself, as the man in the foreground has both hands on his oar; I am surprised by the fact she’s a she, but that’s my own bigotry I suppose – although I cannot say who she is, I am assuming attached to the rowers, and again assuming they are providers of a service due to the looks on their faces, particularly the man on the left, which are respectful but detached, whereas the faces of the women we can see are far more mournful. Painted faces are harder to read than photographed faces. The other two women sit behind the coffin and a child in the centre. The older woman – dressed in black holding a bible wrapped in a handkerchief, hair covered by a shawl. A younger women, not dressed in black but holding a bundle (I wonder if it has the dead child’s things in it)
• A living child, sitting just off centre of the boat in the foreground, looking downwards at the water, holding flowers, in foreground – the focal point
• A small coffin behind her
• Painted in formal dimensions, rules of thirds both vertically, horizontally and diagonally, so classic Western perspectives, many triangular shapes making up the whole, reinforcing and representing centuries long tradition of picture making and reading
• Painting about loss, sadness of child mortality rife at a time when across classes – hygiene, medicines and diet only just beginning to evolve into more modern practise and child mortality still high – the reality and lack of sentimentality is new and very much in the vein of Realism, unlike the structure of the painting which follows traditional patterns
• No histrionics, no heightened drama despite the awful sadness of the scene, again linked to Realism
• Quiet, real, emotional expressions in all faces we can see, body language extremely simple and authentic looking, believable; Like Strindberg or Ibsen – playwrights working in true Naturalism
• “French critics particularly lauded the fact that the painting did not come over as sentimental; instead it displays a serenity and nobility in accepting the inevitability of the cycle of life. While it is realistic in style, it does not seek to show the coarseness of the common people or to avoid any sense of beauty.” (GoogleArt&Culture) – “serenity and nobility in accepting the inevitability of the cycle of life”.  A quiet, acceptance of life’s turmoil is celebrated. There is no unseemly keening in this picture. The opposite of keening is portrayed as beautiful.
• A Christian cross rests on or beside the coffin, establishing religiousity – establishing the importance of the church in the mourning process, of God being important, a protector, taker, where the dead child will now have gone.  It’s god’s will that this child has died early (rather than possibly poverty, lead poisoning, malnourishment or any of the other societal disadvantages people lower down the social rung may have been subject to)
• Other vessels using water crossing in the distant background – life continues, life goes on, inevitable nature of loss
• Older matriarch wears black, holds bible, looks like the leader of this family group – Natural order of things again
• Why does the woman in blue hold the bundle? What does that signify? I’m not entirely sure about this
• The little girl’s hand on the boat as she holds on and looks into the sea processing her grief is incredibly evocative “A very fine exhibition design is employed here at the entrance to the exhibition: three very large details of workers’ hands from paintings within the show are juxtaposed on the wall with a loop of Antoine’s film, showing a worker’s hands caressing a vast lump of silken dirt. The motif of the worker’s hand is ubiquitous in Naturalist imagery; the hand, and not the eye, becomes the window to their souls (fig. 2).” (Caterina Y. Pierre, Ph.D.)

Structural references 

I suggest the structuralists would read that the image promotes the idea that there is a natural order of things in this life, including death. The sorrow and pain of life, along with the social order of the time, is not something we can do anything about and must live with it. That plays into a far greater story than the immediate one which is represented, that of a tragic but relatively common death of a child. It is well known today that children died often during the industrial age and many people did not make it to old age. The deeply structured class system allowed the capitalist leaders to thrive (although even they could not escape the common illness that threatened life) and capitalism itself thrived. In order for that to continue the structures needed to remain in place. Although the working class people represented in the painting are not demonised or villified in anyway, in fact they are rendered very beautifully, but naturally, structuralists might argue that this painting is suggesting that the working classes and death are equally necessary ordered aspects of life. And that God wills things to be that way. And that we cannot expect anything else. That life is tough but that God has designed it to be so. Industry continues regardless in the boats in the distance, one of which is a ship.

2. Beautiful Days, Jules Alexis Menuer, 1889

• Painting based on photograph taken by artist (see earlier UVC projects about this) “Muenier’s camera lucida, used to transfer photographic images onto his canvases, was displayed a little bit too high to be viewed properly by a short person like myself, but it was still instructive to see his personal equipment here, emphasizing the large extent to which he used photography to create a painted picture.” (Caterina Y. Pierre, Ph.D.)

 

• Family portrait, informal
• Constructed to look candid
• Family sitting at table outside, in nature, natural setting
• Mother, grandmother (or other older female generation)
• Father in hat with pipe – in photograph you can’t see his eyes, in the painting you can. He looks either at the child or directly at the viewer. It is hard to tell.
• Both women smile at the child
• The man does not
• There is a leaf in the foreground of the painting (not the photogprah)  – signifies possibility of autumn at the very least, but certainly nature, time passing, regeneration, death, birth
• The table has china cups, a sugar bowl and coffee pot, as well as wine bottle on it, suggesting the end of a meal rather than afternoon tea: all the acoutruments of a genial way of spending time, convivial, relaxed, feeding enjoyable, maybe Sunday lunch, aspects of civilised living but in the outdoors
• People enjoying nature
• Perspective in the painting allows you to see into the distance in the painting, land, countryside, but no so much in the photograph. (see into the future? Which is filled with lovely light) It is perhaps a false perspective (heightened realism) – and so the ‘nature’ element is important to the image. It’s not indoors, it’s light and airy.
• A little girl stands at the table, she is not seated (like so many children choose to be at a table) -is she leaving? has she been playing? has she been helping her mother? However, she does mirror the maternal figure by standing. She is set apart from the two older adults as they are still seated. As the child mirrors the mother’s position – it makes me think the photograph is suggesting a story about the new generations taking over from previous ones, making space for the future. I’m almost tempted to think there is some suggestion of death here and as it is Naturalism that wouldn’t be surprising – but the title is Beautiful Days – so whatever else is true, there is a sense of nostalgia, of time passed, of a moment in time having gone, a good moment.
• They all look to her – she has everyone’s attention. They are looking to the future. The eye-lines make a triangle, traditional western perspective. The little girl is the central focal point.
• She looks up to her mother, her hair is loose and curly, natural, although very brushed as was the fashion, in all likelihood (looks more so in the painting)
• The older woman is dressed in black, mourning?
• The younger woman is in a patterned colourful, possibly fashionable dress. My suspicion is that the dress in the painting is a palatable (to upper classes – buyers of art) heightened version of country-style Victoriana that lower-middle class to middle class women would have worn at the time. The dress in the photograph is less refined than the one in the painting. The cloth seems silkier and more delicate in the painting. The photograph communicates a much more robust and more ‘real’ sense than the dress in the painting which is idealised; more floaty, etherial, delicate, prettier, bigger bustle ect.
• The face of the young woman is also idealised in the painting, as is her gesture. She has the same head to the side look of Botticelli’s Venus. Nowadays we don’t see that head to the side as much as we see women with open, sexually inviting mouths in adverts and Instagram photos (or that fish pout). (A friend of mine has been collecting these open mouths – it’s very certainly a ‘trope’)
• The women in the photograph are smiling far more that the ones in the painting. The mother has a look of maternal concern in the painting and the older woman looks ever so slightly disapproving perhaps by something the child is saying or else about something else entirely – the faces are harder to read in the painting, because the expressions are painted representations rather than photographic. Both women look much warmer and more amused by the child in the photograph. The mother looks like she is needing to be quite patient in the painting with whatever the child is saying.
• The father/male troubles me – He seems incredibly one-dimensional, which makes him look almost absent. He doesn’t have the same look of worry that the older women shows in her facial expression – he just looks disinterested although feigning interest (is that my warped perception though?) Maybe that was the intention? In the photograph he looks even more distant and I suspect that’s because of the shadow from his hat covering his eyes.
• Finally the bottle of wine is positioned very differently in the painting to the photograph. It is the apex of a triangle and has been placed directly below an opening in the treeline, pointing to a bright future perhaps.

Considering the tenets of Naturalism – the image appears to be like a candid every day setting, but it is in fact a heightened example of Realism due the ‘heightened’ way it is portrayed – dress being more floaty and idealised for instance. It is representative of an everyday scene, of a seemingly uneventful family meal rather than anything historically ‘important’ or mythic which fits with the genre. There is no fantasy or magic realism – it’s far more mundane and almost like a vernacular photograph of an everyday lunch scene, perhaps Sunday lunch; at any rate, an elongated meal – no doubt influenced by the photographic revolution. The story the painting tells is also more ambigious than the one in the photograph. The position of the fallen autumnal leaf seems important to me – it’s very strategically placed, and I don’t think it’s just because they’re outside. One of the things about Naturalism is the aim to show all aspects of real life, including loss, sadness, debauchery, and not to idealise or mytholigize (although as said there is quite a strong sense of class and feminine idelaisation in the painting). So I wonder if there is a suggestion of loss of some sort – all eyes are focused on the child. She is the future. We can’t say who the older women might be mourning, or if she is, but there is a suggestion of renewal, death and birth in the picture. The title harks back to something – days that were beautiful, is that possibly coming from a position where the days are not beautiful anymore? At first I wondered if the little girl’s future death was being suggested. The older women’s look is telling. In the photograph the two women are actually laughing/smiling very warmly but the artist has not shown that in the painting. Instead concern, worry. I do find it hard to read the man’s expression but then perhaps that’s as it always was. But due to the the light and sky and the gap in the trees at the top of the bottle, the triangle pointing to that places in the background, I think the picture might be more optimistic, even though it does reference loss in with various signifiers.

Structural references 

From a structural place, the family, with present maternal figures and absent men (even though one man is there, he appears emotionally more absent than he might) is being represented as a “beautiful” thing. This is nature, this is how life is to be lived. Women in their very specific roles, feeding people, providing lunch, offering gentle authority and direction to the child, who will grow up and do the same, being that she is also female. It is nature. In the same way that things die, and grow and the cycle of life continues, the role of the mother as shown here, is the natural order of things, kind empathetic, not too crazy, head to side, gentle and no direct eye contact with viewer. First she is a little girl, then she is the mother figure heading up the domestic existence of a family, then she is the widowed matriarch helping to support and give authority but in second place to the gentle but firm mother of the child. This picture expresses how society saw the role of the women/mother figure, re-establishes it as reality for the viewer and makes it an unavoidable ‘truth’ about life. Neither picture seems to ask questions of the society they portray, instead they confirms everyone’s role in it. The way they are both structured is typical of Western tradition with triangles and perspective. They are gently radical in that they portray normal people (albeit slightly idealised and made more palatable, genteel, beautiful than reality especially in the second example here); Beautiful Days presents us with a simple scene rather than some great mythical fantasy from the bible, or royalty, or history. The second is gently radical in that it shows a tragic but common occurrence from the day without sentimental drama or histrionics, as was often the trend in the lead up to Naturalism. I would add that Naturalism in painting has less of a specific genes than Naturalism in the theatre, as artists had focused on little details of life throughout art history, whereas the theatre was far more histrionic prior to the movement, influenced by psychology,  science and cultural concerns in an industrial age. Each painting helps to cement what Barthes’ refers to as visual mythology about society. i.e. the role of the gentle, authority of Mother as a God-given natural situation?

In an extreme example of how we make assumptions about what is natural, the Ache once thought it was ‘natural’ and rightly ordered in the universe, to dispatch women once they reached a certain age, when they were less able to contribute work-wise to the village. A member of society was sanctioned to hit such women over the head with an axe once at that point – a duty that was deemed natural in that society. (Hrdy, 2000; 282, 29) The social order supported that myth and it had become neutralised by their stories and expectations. So the word and concept of natural along with its relative “Naturalism” are probably words that require more than a degree of caution since what looks ‘natural’ may often be so due to varying degrees of hegemony. Or Barthes’ Myths. (See notes on Myth Today next)

http://www.thedramateacher.com/realism-and-naturalism-theatre-conventions/

http://www.britannica.com/topic/naturalism-arthttp://www.sothebys.com/en/news-video/videos/2014/04/naturalism.html

http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring11/illusions-of-reality-naturalist-painting-photography-theatre-cinema-exhibition

http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring11/illusions-of-reality-naturalist-painting-photography-theatre-cinema-exhibition

Hardy, SB, 2000. Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts & The Shaping of the Species, Vintage, London: 282, 29

 

Project 3.1 (b): Rhetoric of the Image

‘Rhetoric’ definition – the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the exploitation of figures of speech and other compositional techniques. (Google)

‘Image’ definition – 1. A representation of the external form of a person or thing in art. 2. The general impression that a person, organization, or product presents to the public. (Google))

We have been asked to make very brief notes on 2or 3 current adverts. Since I made rather long notes about the first one I tried hard to be brief here (and failed). I should have chosen a less contentious advert.

I was interested in the way in which either side of the argument relating to the forthcoming EU referendum is being advertised. The current polls suggest that the Leave people have over the weeks rolled out a more powerful and convincing campaign; perhaps because organisations on that side of the argument are tapping into fear; certainly fear of other people – xenophobia as described in this article on Huffington Post ; fear of job security, fear of economic cost, which all serve to trigger and intensify feelings of anxiety during an extended period of ‘austerity’. These messages help to construct a raft of possible myths (depending on one’s position) perpetrated by people who believe that the UK will be better off outside of Europe for any number of actual reasons. “26 million people are looking for work in Europe. And whose job are they after?” (click link to advert) is spelled out in big letters with a gigantic finger pointing at ‘you’ and ‘yours’, playing on fears relating to job security, which is so prevalent at the moment due perhaps, not to the hordes of people expected to ‘invade’ our isolated bit of land, but rather by a turbulent changing economy. Those insecurities in fact relate to how we are currently only part way through a technological revolution that began in the late 80s, early 90s; with a fundamental and deep structural re-configuration taking place, or at any rate an urgent need for one, over the way in which a capitalist society might operate as technology develops.

The IN people however seem to have been less successful at finding emotive myths to tap into. Perhaps that is because the arguments for staying in Europe are based within more rational terms than those based on xenophobic bigotry, such as the amount of money it costs to be IN, and how that is earned back over time due to free trade; or else how the seemingly large amounts it costs to be part of Europe are relatively small when compared to other parts of the country’s budget. Recently Gyles Brandreth humorously pointed out in an episode of Have I got News for You that perhaps none of us really know what will happen if we leave the EU. But the problem for the IN side of the argument is that not many of us really know why we are in Europe in the first place, or what we will lose by leaving. As demonstrated when a Facebook contact of mine recently asked, “Will someone please tell me what it’s all about?” She attracted a host of quite strident answers pertaining to either side, which may be why I can no longer find the post to reference properly here; but I was struck by the fact that her question was likely to be fairly representative of many people’s confusion over the issue. We are being asked to vote on something very few of us understand. That said one of the major challenges is encouraging people to vote at all, especially those who wouldn’t traditionally do so.

Saatchi & Saatchi, an extremely high profile agency, were commissioned by an organisation called “Operation Black Vote” to encourage ethnic minority groups to register in time for polling day (If anyone tried last night they will have failed as the website crashed). The advert has caused some controversy all round and in the article below is castigated by Nigel Farage who called it ‘disgusting’ (H Stewart, 2016) which in light of some UKip posters is an interesting response. (see example above)

Links to the Saatchi & Saatchi/OBV poster, along with an article in The Guardian about it below:

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/may/25/eu-referendum-poster-minority-ethnic-voters

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/may/25/eu-referendum-poster-minority-ethnic-voters#img-1

Linguistics

 Sign

• A vote is a vote – strapline placed in the centre of the advert – perfectly balanced above the seesaw
• Equally set beneath the seesaw, again central, The EU Referendum is on 23^rd June, below which, further factual information calling for action Register to vote by 7^th June at aboutmyvote.co.uk
• Finally at very bottom of the advert is the logo of the organisation specifically set up up to encourage certain groups of the population to vote and participate in politics (Wikipedia).

 Signified

 A vote is a vote

There is something strangely empty in the cadence of this strapline which perhaps fails to communicate the strength that Saatchi’s client might have hoped for. Barthes refers to tautology as an ugly thing “…one takes refuge in tautology as one does in fear, or anger, or sadness, when one is at a loss for an explanation: the accidental failure of language is magically identified with what one decides is a natural resistance of the object….” And later he equates such statements to tired parental explanations that answer a child’s questions with “…’just because, that’s all’, a magical act that is ashamed of itself, which verbally makes the gesture of rationality but immediately abandons the latter…” And finally, “tautology creates a dead, a motionless world.” (Barthes, 67:26/27) That, if he is to be believed, might explain why I found the cadence empty, devoid of any powerful rhythm, content and possibly even meaning. So what it might be signifying is difficult to answer. Nevertheless, I’m sure deathly emptiness was not the intention.

Barthes refers to ‘fear, or anger, or sadness”. Which of these things is Saatchi (inadvertently or not) suggesting Operation Black Vote (OBV) feels towards the people it hopes to encourage to vote? Fear about what might happen if certain groups don’t vote? Therefore tapping into or perhaps attempting to induce fear (as the Leave campaign have done). Anger and its accompanying emotion, frustration, towards the people who don’t choose to vote, or perhaps at a possible outcome should they fail to vote. Or is it sadness because people really ought to utilise their right to vote if they have one, since all over the world people have fought extremely bloody battles in order to earn that right. Regardless of the conscious and unconscious motivations behind the strap-line, in the end my initial response was, “And? So what?”, perhaps in a mode of belligerence to the latent sense of ennui from an authoritarian object which the strap-line just about communicates. I would be interested to know what people who the advert is aimed at feel when they read it, and wonder if/how different reactions might be. (At the moment, I’m waiting on a friend’s response. – see notes at bottom)

The EU Referendum is on 23^rd June

Register to vote by 7^th June at aboutmyvote.co.uk

Because of the ‘dead, motionless’ and empty tautological statement that the advert starts with, the next two lines, the factual information and call to action tumble out of a sense of nothingness and so fall flat. How this advert might encourage people with an “entrenched cynicism about politics” (OBV; n.d.) to vote is difficult to imagine.

Operation Black Vote

I feel a bit weary of saying the following but I think it is an important element in the advert, as well as in relation to Saatchi’s apparent decisions when fulfilling the brief. Although the logo and name of the organisation Operation Black Vote (OBV) seemingly tells us exactly what the group do, what is signified by that particular combination of words, for many reasons, has the potential to suggest a range of messages that the organisation would not have chosen. Is our society’s difficult relationship with with skin colour, and therefore its way of receiving and interpreting things associated with race, the responsibility of the organisation? The answer should be a resounding ‘no’, but some awareness of how words are received is indeed the responsibility of the marketing department and its chosen advertising agency. Saatchi will have been paid a substantial fee so identifying and highlighting how the name might be received, given context, is a reasonable expectation. As is avoiding certain tropes. Instead, the agency seem to have honed in on particular stereotypes and enhanced the underlying differences groups may feel in some instances, which might be what gives the group’s name an aura of pastiche. It’s a name that was chosen by the organisation nearly 20 years ago. I would suggest it might now be an unhelpful title, considering the organisation’s aim is to tackle mythical views present in society, along with some sense of self-identification in young people about their role in a society where they have traditionally felt excluded from the political machine. (Stewart, 2016) But perhaps, as I am seeing the term through the lens of a white person, whatever is making me see the potential for pastiche is irrelevant, especially since the advert is not aimed at me.

Wording shape and spacing

Finally the wording is centralised and balanced giving a visual/spacial impression of balance, indicating a desire to express the need for a balanced debate, balanced response, a balanced representation of people within the voting process. i.e. the voting system needs “your*” vote to truly reflect a balanced view. If you “you don’t vote” the results may not be balanced in the final result and might be skewed by who does choose to turn up, and who doesn’t (Authoritarian messaging). *Your – i.e. the audience OBV’s work is aimed at, ethnic minorities, especially young people, who statistically are under-represented in the voting process.

I do wonder if the title of the organisation might not have carried the same level of suggestive pastiche if the overall advert had come across as less divisive. Again, my own lens may be what is contributing to me seeing it as divisive.

 Denoted image

• Urban/suburban very English looking housing estate and tower blocks. English because of shape of house and blocks. Houses, updated Victorian terraces on left hand side and possibly modern take on Victorian terrace, or else modified and extended. Tower blocks mid to late 20^st century architecture.
• Usual cloudy English sky, not too grey, a bit of an anaemic blue but processed to look more ‘stormy’ than it actually is – shadow emphasised, some grain added too
• Grass – background, looks relatively natural
• Grass foreground – highly clarified
• Seesaw – perfectly balanced, colour and dirt enhanced
• People – Woman in sari, strongly lit, aged, again clarified to enhance wrinkles, colourful, inexpensive sandals, grey tied back hair, ethnicity obvious with red circle on forehead – bindi, a look of measured, strong defiance on her mature and sensible face. She looks like a women who knows her mind, isn’t afraid to speak it, to stand up to people, no matter how threatening they might appear to be. She wears a wedding ring, and gold jewellery. Man: highly lit, clarified and enhanced, looks HDR – especially in the face, lots of tattoos, of which there is a skull, some barbed wire, a traditional looking pattern, a cross in his cheek bone, a spider web on his neck and something else on his forearm which is too difficult to make out. He wears ripped jeans, Doc Martins (very English brand) and a white polo short with red and blue stripes (colours of British flag). He has very short hair, i.e skin head. He points his finger in an aggressive manner at the women and his facial expression looks highly aggressive, as does his body language.
• There is a path behind the seesaw
• They appear to be in a park/playground
• The processing gives the image a look of a cartoon

Connoted image

It’s very difficult to pull apart what is actually being said in this advert, or rather why it is being said and how that might encourage people who may not be automatic voters to take part in a system they feel alienated from. My initial reaction was – here is a skinhead having a go at women because he’s a racist. Voting, I’m think I’m being told, might change that.

My 12-year-old son’s initial reaction was, “Why has the so-called aggressive man got all those tattoos? That’s so obvious and offensive.”

The setting is very English but not the bucolic, pastoral, possibly rather idealised middle-class England we are often shown (no Constable here – more of Ken Loach’s England, although I’m not sure Ken Loach would not go for the highly processed HDR with such enthusiasm)

The women is middle-aged, not young, and appears a sensible, responsible member of society.  The man is not too old to stop being frightening but not so young as to seem silly – he’s meant to be scary.  He wears British colours (stripes on his shirt) but the advert suggests that doesn’t give him the right to claim exclusive Britishness.  Other variations of Britishness have just as much right too even if they wear clothes that may not look as easily identifiable as “British” in the eyes of some. Saatchi are guilty of entrapment because they are utilising signs that are likely to trigger predictable responses, and consequently related arguments, surrounding Britishness.  That may or may not be a good thing – I can’t tell.

• My questions as a person responding to the advert are;

1. Why are they sitting on an object designed for children in a child’s playground?
2. What is he saying to her?
3. Why is she listening?
4. What is the point?
5. If I vote will I be able to stop this sort of thing happening?
6. If I don’t vote will this sort of thing continue to happen?
7. What exactly are you saying about a vote then?  Because the vote is a vote line seems meaningless.

• My questions and responses as someone interested in visual culture are;

1. Why the heavy HDR on the man in particular (I find it very difficult to get past that but I also am aware that it might only be photographers who would care….) This is something about taste I think and although I joke I think it’s important and plays into myths too in some way
2. Are Saatchi intentionally aiming to inflame people by choosing a caricature (the skinhead) to represent a view; a view that is meant to be representative of an organisation in some way, if only as some form of Other in relation to them, but whose main goals are encouraging societal inclusion. Was the conscious intention to be inflammatory in order to prompt some immediate action? I assume that Saatchi were keen to have very obvious and easy to read signifiers, regardless of whether or not they are deemed ‘appropriate’ or offensive.
3. In contrast (and despite the over-lit, over clarified editing) the women is far less of a caricature, although still a very obvious signified representative – a middle aged ethnic women who chooses to dress traditionally rather than in western style clothing, therefore still linked to a heritage that is viewed as non-British by some or many (one could get into Empire here but I will refrain) In addition her facial expression and body language are strong, firm, unthreatened which might go against some mythical views that women in saris are meek, shy, afraid of men, subservient, not able to stand up for themselves, don’t consider themselves able to vote
4. I understand that the seesaw is meant to signify balance therefore suggesting that if only “you” the receiver of this advert would register to vote we could have a balanced and true outcome in the referendum but I question its use. Both people look a little strange, even ridiculous, especially him on the object meant for children. (And unconsciously, are we are being told this referendum and the interracial fights that will certainly continue if “you” the errant voters don’t register to do so are childlike, playful, not actually very grown up? Or that the genuine racism one might experience is akin to playground bullying in some way. Since I think the whole idea of balance in the voting process can only ever be a fallacy I’m not sure I can think of an alternative balance metaphor that might have been less strange – but if one were to go down that path, a set of scales might have been less suggestive of childishness. Perhaps childishness was the thing they wanted to suggest though.
5. The shadow and ‘grain’ in the sky gives the picture an overall menacing feel – are they suggesting the referendum is full of menace, the fight between the two protagonists is menacing (it looks that way), the failure to vote will promote a menacing atmosphere
6. Thanks to the manipulation and processing, harsh lighting contrast, body language and dirty seesaw, non-prettified setting the whole photograph looks quite ‘ugly’ – see also Barthes words above about tautology. I wonder if it was merely meant to look urban instead. But in the end, the fight that might take place or is taking place is potentially ugly and grimy, says this advert. Unless “you” vote.

Myths

Warning: Some of these myths are debatable and will vary according to people’s personal views

• Voting makes a difference to everyday lives, including to the lives of people who are extremely distanced from traditional political machinations
• Voting in the EU referendum has the potential even to stop racists from ruining lives – that’s how important it is (racism cannot and will not be eradicated anytime soon, regardless of what takes place in the referendum). In fact life will continue be difficult across a range of issues for people who are excluded from the political system either through self-imposed absence, disinterest or a sense of not really mattering
• People with tattoos and very short hair who wear braces and Doc Martins are violent thugs – do people still dress in this way or just in films nowadays? Whatever the answer some may be violent racists thugs and some might not be. Saatchi honed in on a cliché and presented us with a cartoon (intentionally or not)
• All sorts of assumptions and myths made about women in saris are being made and I feel a bit nervous about decoding those myths (this is meant to be brief so perhaps I’ll just leave it at that)
• The process of voting is the best way of achieving a balance of power. Perhaps it might be. But perhaps in fact activism is a better, more productive way in some cases. Whatever the answer there is no way of achieving perfect balance in any world, but especially not in one that contains racist thugs (regardless of their clothing)
• Racism is easy to spot – because the people who are racist dress in a coded costume. In fact racism is often disguised as concern about schooling, housing, even shopping. Racism is often muddled up with classism. Groupishness exists across social spectrums and between any number of and types of social groups and cannot be rectified by voting in a referendum that for many feels like something entirely separate from their everyday lives (when in fact it probably has a profound impact on they way in which the structures within which they exist operate – however, its difficult for anyone to work out how/why/what)
• Non-voters are easy to spot – they’re likely to be the ones in the clothing that looks a bit foreign. This is patently not true and perhaps it seems a bit lazy to rely on that sort of thinking in the making of this advert (unless the intention was to deliberately offend)
• Relations between groups is stormy like the way in which the sky has been edited – the press/media can be guilty of fueling things with their messages, and in this case they do seem to have been divisive

Overall the advert looks like it is deliberately playing into people’s fears, pre-conceived ideas, clichés (we all have them) surrounding immigration and the various attitudes to it.  It reminds us that there different versions of Britishness, in some cases as a result of previous immigration, but at the same time stokes concern and provokes alarm about differences in subtle and not so subtle ways. Nigel Farage complained about the advert as you might imagine since it relies on an obvious illustration of someone we are meant to assume is racist, playing into our preconceptions, who seems to behaving  aggressively and violently towards a non-white women.  And Farage, like so many in his party are extremely keen to deny that their rhetoric is about race. But I would imagine lots of other people finding it offensive too. For many of the reasons outlined above.  In the end I think the advert is difficult to read because the messages aren’t entirely clear, or some aspects of it are so obviously skewed and cliched that it becomes almost a bit of an offensive joke.

Edited and added later:  I spoke to my friend today.  She is of Jamaican descent although born in the UK.  She is married to a white Irish/Italian man and has 3 boys, 15, 13 and 8.  She said the main thing she saw in the advert was the strong women who was on an equal footing to the man.  She didn’t really notice the man as much as the woman, who she was pleased to see was strong, sure of herself and able to stand up to the aggressive body language.  She did not understand why the man was dressed as if from the 60s and thought he was a bit of a cartoon.  The equally balanced people and the seesaw were the fist things she saw and she liked the fact that they were equal.  My friend asked her eldest son about it and she felt it would convince or encourage him to vote.  He felt it gave a positive message. In light of my friend’s response I would say that Saatchi have succeeded in producing an equal and strong representation of a person that can be described as one of an ethnic minority group, when  so often in the past, such representations have been less positive.  However, the man is a caricature and that is really clear for anyone to see.

(An interesting article looking at how we view democracy – https://theconversation.com/ancient-greeks-would-not-recognise-our-democracy-theyd-see-an-oligarchy-60277)

References

http://www.itv.com/news/story/2014-04-22/farage-defends-racist-ukip-immigration-posters/ (accessed 08/06/2016)

http://www.obv.org.uk/about-us/mission (accessed 08/06/2016)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Vote (07/06/2016)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27105374  (accessed 08/06/2016)

https://theconversation.com/ancient-greeks-would-not-recognise-our-democracy-theyd-see-an-oligarchy-60277 (accessed 04/06/2016)

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/may/25/eu-referendum-poster-minority-ethnic-voters (accessed 07/06/2016)

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/may/25/eu-referendum-poster-minority-ethnic-voters#img-1 (accessed 07/06/2016)

http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/operation-black-vote-see-saw-saatchi-saatchi/1396259# (accessed 07/06/2016)

http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/05/25/operation-black-vote-turns-saatchi-saatchi-hard-hitting-eu-referendum-poster (accessed 08/06/2016)

Myth Today, Mythologies, Roland Barthes (translated by Annette Lavers, Hill and Wang, New York 1984) http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Barthes-Mythologies-MythToday.pdf (31/05/2016)

Image (c)SJField 2016

 

Project 3.1 Rhetoric of the Image

Pick apart 2/3 contemporary adverts

‘Rhetoric’ definition – the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the exploitation of figures of speech and other compositional techniques. (Google)

‘Image’ definition – 1. A representation of the external form of a person or thing in art. 2. The general impression that a person, organization, or product presents to the public. (Google)

1. Coca Cola Life

The first advert I’ve chosen is for Coca-cola Life.  I chose this because I was fascinated by it as I sat in a traffic jam and took the above picture, hoping that a real women would walk by and then someone pushing a pram did which might seem fortuitous.  The image on the link below doesn’t have any wording other than the usual Coke strap lines.  However, the photo I took had type on it stating the facts about the drink being less sugary and calorific due to a plant extract, which is sadly cropped out due to the position of my car.  The photo is also cropped on the billboard so the woman’s facial expression becomes even more prominent. The advert is no longer in the same place so we have to rely on the link here: http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/stories/health/choice-and-information/introducing-coca-cola-life

Here is an image (a picture that represents a company) + (the impression that the organisation presents to the public) advertising a new version of Coca Cola called Life. It was launched in 2014. According to Coca-Cola’s site it has 45% lower sugar content than regular Coke and is made with a plant extract called Stevia. (Coca-cola.co.uk, 2014)

Linguistic

Sign:

• The Coca Cola logo is placed in the top left hand corner in white cursive letters. The logo is set within a red circle.
• The red circle hovers – in the shape of a sun or planet – embedded in the image at the top rather than the bottom
• Beneath that in red capitals “Taste the Feeling” – this is a new slogan to be used across the entire Coke brand (C.Isadore, 2016)
• The bottle of Coke is held so the wording on the label is clearly seen. The lettering is white, as it is on the logo – matches. The label on the bottle is green, which is different to the well-established red logo, a more familiar site and symbol.
• Underneath the words Coca-Cola is the single word Life. This is in another font. It is a curly font, and gives an impression it could have been written by hand rather than typed, although we know it was printed. (authentic, organic, wholesome, real, a person as opposed to a machine)
• In the photograph I took on my phone the words “less sugar and calories” as well as with Strevia plant extract are also included on the left hand side of the billboard

Signified:

• Powerful famous logo, No 15 within list of 50 most influential brands in the world (Fortune, 2015). Coke is known all over the world and crosses socio-economic boundaries. Everyone knows Coke.[*]
• The Coke brand continues to be powerful and remains a constant in the viewers’ life
• You can rely on Coca-Cola because it is familiar – red on white background, recognisable logo
• If you drink Coke you will taste the feeling that drinking Coke gives you – you can taste more than just a drink but a feeling too
• The Coca-Cola logo is repeated on the bottle, only this time the background is green. By repeating the name but introducing a new colour the viewer is being told that something has changed, something is different
• The colour green is equated with the Green movement; a political and ecological way of thinking that signifies caring about the earth, how we treat nature, ourselves, others. It has spread right across Western paradigms and been embraced in the same way people might once have embraced a religion, fanatically in some quarters, or else worn like a coat by people or companies that are highly skilful adopters of powerful signifiers – in a conscious exercise of impression management (a term introduced by G.K.Simon Junior, Ph.D, in his book Character Disturbance published in 2013). (I’m not saying us humans are not a scourge on the earth. Perhaps the fate of Easter Island was a micro-precursor to what will happen to the whole planet in time – quite quickly possibly.) It is seen as a movement that is on the side of good and against big business, corporate life, against greed. To be green is to care deeply about how the earth is treated and to be highly responsible, to eschew certain practices, especially those commonly and historically believed as having been employed by big business.
• By including both the red brand and then the green branded label the viewer can deduce that Coca-Cola is still a brand that can be trusted to deliver more than a drink, a drink that gives you a feeling you can taste, and that it is also now a big business that has a conscience, is on the side of right, is connected to movement that is seen as ethical and responsible
• The ethical and responsible aura is something we might associate with a local health food store, local, approachable
• In addition to being politically green, green habits are viewed as physically healthy and often connected to the organic movement, a way of producing food that was often sold in health food stores
• Organic food is viewed as more expensive but of higher quality and healthier
• Organic is seen as a luxury by many, or as a necessity by people who might be very concerned with their health and looks, like a famous super model might be. By associating with the green organic and health conscious movement Coca-Cola Life takes risks by being seen as part of something that is out of reach to many and therefore not applicable to them, as well as attempting to appeal to a niche market, and to people who want to be associated with the niche market, even though they might not be part of it. Would the actual super models who prefer pink salt, coconut oil and all things fresh and organic actually pick up a can of Coca-Cola Life?
• The words ‘plant extract’ links to health foods, supplements, science
• Life – the name of the drink is one of the most positive affirmative words that it is possible to have chosen.
• Life – the opposite of death.
• By drinking this soda you will be given life.
• You can taste the feeling of Life – the drink allows you to not only feel alive but to taste what that feels like. And by association be it. Be life. Imbibe life. Become life. Have a life with Life.
• Regular Coke is associated with bad health, rotten teeth, too much sugar, no nutrients. Life suggests that this new Coke is removed from all of that and circumvents any death due to bad health.
• The word Coke is still linked to its historical use cocaine either via urban myth or history depending on your view
• Cocaine, although consciously seen as a bad, destructive and unhelpful narcotic also has the reputation of being fun, exciting, dangerous and used by ‘rock-stars’ and models. I won’t dwell on this but its’ worth making the connection between that meaning of the word within the whole package of the word Coke because the association has an impact and plays into the myths – discussed later.

Image

Description of Denoted elements in the image

• Woman
• Blonde
• Blue eyes
• Rings on fingers
• Leather car seats
• She’s in the back seat leaning on the front
• There is a seat belt in the front
• The seat belt is prominent in the picture
• She has red-painted nails
• She leans on the back of the front seat of the car looking at the viewer with an alluring look in her eyes – she looks sexually inviting
• The hand in the foreground is relaxed
• She holds the bottle (not a can which doesn’t hold the same cultural cache as the iconic bottle) labelled Coca-Cola Life so it can be seen.
• She’s holding a drink suggesting she must thirsty
• Her hair is tousled as she sits in the back seat of what looks like a spacious car with leather seats.
• The photograph is edited to look like it has a recognisable Instagram filter – Lo-fi perhaps.

Description of connoted meaning – coded/iconic/cultural

• Blonde – culturally viewed as the ‘sexiest’ of the hair colours, very much part of a white European cultural heritage, the culture that prompted the title “Gentlemen prefer blondes” still permeates the lens through which we view conventional ideas of beauty across Western paradigms.  However, Coke do use other ‘types’ in different advertising for other products.  Blonde actress/model, Rosie Hungtindon-Whitely is their Life mascot
• Hair is tousled and is the sort of blonde that we might associate with surfers rather than highly coiffured locks from a salon – free, wild, youthful. (In fact blonde hair reminds us of infancy, little girls – (Randomfacts.com, 2012))
• Her lips are more than hinting at the well-known ‘fish pout’ so popular in selfies on Instagram (My niece posted such a photograph recently which surprised me – I would have thought that look had had enough ridicule to deem it the opposite of acceptable but apparently not) Here the model manages to affect the fish-pout with her lips, suggesting its originally intended meaning – sexually aroused – without seeming overtly ludicrous – rather than conveying the more up to date intended or unintended meanings (pastiche, satirical, gauche, naive)
• The seatbelt – from denoted notes “The model does not wear one” – The seat belt’s prominent position in the photograph suggests it is a crucial element in the image; there is no seatbelt holding her in, keeping or making her safe, sensible, responsible. The suggestion must therefore, as represented, be that she is the opposite of those things; irresponsible, risky, reckless, dangerous, possibly an ignorer of rules
• Eyes – blue, usually deemed in white European conventional ideas of beautiful as desirable; and piercing, sexually teasing, indicating she’s in a sexually charged conversation with whoever she’s looking at/talking to
• Leaning on the back of the front seat, from the position of the back seat of a car that has the look, due to cream leather seats, of an American and iconic car (something we might have seen in a US teen film). Since her hair is tousled, as if she’s been in the throws of passion, and she’s looking sexually inviting, we are being invited to connect her, and therefore the product, to the sort of activity, which we have routinely been told by aforementioned films, that young people get up to in the back seats of cars…drive-ins, US movies, in fact the billboard image is reminiscent of a drive-in movie, but here from the POV of the car
• The jewellery she wears tells you this women is trendy, fashionable, youthful, confident
• The well-manicured red nails suggest she is confident – red nail polish, especially on fingers is not a first choice for many, pulling it off requires confidence. Had her nails been any longer she’d have looked gauche, unfashionable, pastiche, old-fashioned – the length is on point, fashion wise
• “Taste the Feeling” – the connection between the woman’s body language and the phrase suggests that by drinking Coca-Cola Life you can literally taste the feeling of sex, sex with a conventionally considered beauty ideal, and since she’s apparently so desirable – if she, a women who looks like that, is staring at you in that way – you must, ergo, be as sexually desirable yourself – therefore Coca-Cola Life could make you a ‘sex god’ or ‘sex goddess’; when you drink it you could feel sexual, you may even feel sexually aroused, you might feel attractive AND to boot you can taste all those feelings too, taste sexual arousal, maybe even taste the women who are advertising the products across the Coke platform.Therefore those feelings can be imbibed, affecting you in a similar way to how a magic potion, such as you might find in Alice in Wonderland, might be able to. Having drunk it and ingested some of its magic, you may become as sexually attractive as the women in the advert. As all Coke products are tied to this strapline we are told they all potentially have this power.
• One cannot forget the link between the words Coke and cocaine -at the very least a synonym, but according to urban myth backed up by many, many articles online which say there is a great deal of evidence, Coke did once contain a “significant dose of cocaine” although the article this quite was then from suggest Coke denies that.(Palermo, 2013)) Nevertheless, cocaine is said to engender people with a great deal of short-term  confidence.
• The name of the brand – iconic and considered an integral part of international language, a sign of ‘American culture’ is ‘cool’, carries a form of cultural capital; which has been exported all over the world – see “The God’s Must Be Crazy”, where a coke bottle lands on the head of a local agrarian man in Africa. We associate that brand with images that permeate our view of adolescence, popular culture, 50s America, drive-ins, romantic, idealised, fun, cool, – by investing all of that with their new brand, Life, the new drink continues to communicate all the historical cultural capital
• AND is invested with something new: Eco economy, health foods, responsibility, nature – personal, political and corporate
• If you drink this Coke, you can actually imbibe, swallow and therefore be part of, exude all of the old ‘cool’ associated with Coke as well as the new, be responsible, taking care of your own body, of the planet, of the environment,
• AND – it will make you live longer. It will, if you believe the advert – the name of the product, literally give you the opposite of death.
• In addition you will be exciting, sexually attractive, sexually appealing, maybe even able to attract super models
• BUT in order to maintain a sense of ‘cool’ the advert doesn’t give you everything on a plate. Remember you just get to “Taste the feeling” – Perhaps “I don’t want to belong to a club that will accept me as a member” (Groucho Marx). So on top of everything else, the advert suggests you can taste it –  but will you actually have the whole meal? Actually have what they’re using to sell it? There is an Ambiguity which also maintains a distance, a coolness, and reserve,  – one that isn’t in fact real because in truth lots of people do drink Coke, despite a fall in sales and status (still No 15 most powerful brand in the world though – (Fortune.com, 2016)).
• There is a dichotomy between the responsible notions of “Green”/health, economics/politics and the dangerous, sexually alluring, what has she just been doing, or what is planning to do – look in her eyes, which is suggested and reinforced by the placement of the seatbelt which doesn’t strap her in
• The way the photograph has been processed is like an Instagram image in colour if not in shape (square, before Instagram changed recently) This allows the advert to have a similar accent and rhythm as the images the people they are selling to have – therefore part of their tribe
• And finally, for, now – she’s thirsty. Or will be. Might this be linked to either recent or impending activity suggested by body language?

Myths – The advert relies on several cultural myths to help sell its product, which in turn reinforces perceived realities and therefore potentially is responsible for augmenting the myths it taps into. (Endeavouring not to speculate but my perception of mythical beliefs in our society are going to be different to other peoples’, so whilst I can probably find citations to back up my some if not all of my ideas here, others will certainly be able to find equally convincing but apparently opposing citations that look just as authoritative, I’m sure.)

• Anything linked to a “plant extract” must be healthy and good for you. Sugar supplements and indeed sugar itself have however been linked to carcinogens/causes of cancer. Stevia was, according to Wikipedia, banned in the US but that has since changed. There are plenty of articles about Stevia online offering varying levels of advice about its potential for danger or not, so its difficult to know exactly how much to take notice of. In fact it is easy to become bombarded by the plethora of nutritional advice online, however, a recent article by Garreth Williams, a philosopher at Lancaster University, which was published on theconversation.com, suggests that ‘modern processed food poses health risks’ and that rather than concentrating on individual nutrients we should ideally be preparing and eating whole foods. (2016) Coca Cola Life, despite it’s link to a “leaf extract” probably doesn’t fit that description, no matter how you (the advertisers) try to frame it.
• Products advertising themselves as lower in sugar (or low in fat) are better for you – in fact, health advisers suggest avoiding food that advertises itself as such because in many cases the terms used are nothing more than marketing ploys, and in fact often these foods are more processed that the sugary or fatty versions. This article offers a balanced view about sugar substitutes : http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/artificial-sweeteners-sugar-free-but-at-what-cost-201207165030. It can be difficult to find measured and intelligent advice about this because often the issues will be couched in what Barthes refers to as mythical language.
• Health food makes you live longer – Coca-Cola Life is a processed food, despite its leafy connection; it is not a whole food, but it is tapping into the fears and beliefs people have about food. Regardless, the key to living longer and healthier lives is often deemed to be primarily class/economically determined (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/11/473749157/its-not-just-what-you-make-its-where-you-live-says-study-on-life-expectancy) rather than soda-pop determined. It may be that people who don’t have to worry about meeting basic life requirements make healthier choices about their diets, but that along with a number of other complex influencing external and internal factors play a role. Choosing to drink Coca-Cola Life therefore is unlikely to have any impact on one’s longevity even though in its advertising one might perceive a health food connection, and the suggestive name. It taps into the myth that you can quite simply change your diet in order to live longer. This myth fails to recognise the myriad of/various other factors that play a role in overall social longevity.
• The whole ‘Green’ movement is fraught with potential myths. (Please don’t incorrectly assume I am suggesting the science to back up the green argument is isn’t there in that statement– and I’m not an anti-green/anti-ecological believer) It’s too big a subject to unpick here but I would just say it’s something to be wary of when a company adorns green credentials, or appears to align themselves with a ‘Green’ agenda of any description, no matter how tenuously, especially a very large corporation with plenty of money behind it.
• “A brand makes you cool which makes life better” – well, this one is tricky, because it does in one sense because you might become ‘cool’ (or the variant thereof depending on your generation; dope, wicked, sick…etc) in the eyes of others who buy into the myth. Brands can and do add to a person’s capital. The myth therefore is more about whether or not being culturally ‘cool’ makes life better or not. (I suspect it can be argued that it doesn’t, but gives the illusion of doing so, which is almost enough in the short-term, but in the longer term will always be revealed to be not very much more than fantasy, even if it’s fun for a time while when you’re in the midst of it – real life does have a habit of taking hold though, regardless of who you are, I suspect)
• Blonde, young and beautiful is highly sexually attractive – And, in fact those things are, due to the fact we are told by the Spectacle that they are, but so are many other versions of ‘beauty’ Beauty ideals are culturally specific and this example here, for now, is deemed the ideal – however, it is a fairly narrow and exclusive view. And one that is subject to change over time. This advert reinforces the ideal. White, blonde, youthful. To be fair to Coke, I have seen other Coke adverts that do employ alternative versions of beauty, notably – here http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/19/news/companies/new-coke-ad-campaign/index.html?category=home-international Pre-industrial and pre-agrarian cultural beauty ideals show us just how varied human notions of beauty are in reality. Look at conscious alternative representations in art as well. There is nothing unusual about human-beings having culturally specific ideals of beauty or changing their bodies in some way, hair dying, tattoos, enhancement, foot binding etc – but these behaviours feed into myths surrounding ideas of beauty and are reinforced too by media’s sometimes narrow representation
• Aside from the green, ‘natural’ connection the biggest Myth in this advert is to do with female sexuality, which is also utilised in the advert on the link to Money.nn.com above. Stevia is natural, so it sex, ergo Coke Life (or any other Coke product where sexuality is tapped into) is a healthy, natural thing to drink making you healthy and naturally sexy. Again, being fair to Coke, they have not only relied on female sexuality in the past but the well-known Diet Coke advert from a few years ago turned things around by playing with and turning round the notion of men, constructions workers, in particular, cat-calling women. In that advert they had women leering over the perceived ideal of sexually attractive man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbXM9ATC5_4. There Coke tapped into a myth, most likely promoted by Hollywood, about human sexuality.
• Being sexually alluring might lead to a life that is ‘better’ (although better than what is probably a good question); and in this case healthier, and what’s more the advert suggests that drinking Coca-Cola Life potentially gives you the right to include yourself within the above paradigm by association if nothing else – one of the beautiful people – if she’s looking at you that way, you must be attractive to her therefore you’re possibly like her in some way, especially if you drink the soda
• You can and should have it all. Today people are expected to have it all, “because you’re worth it!” It is possible to live responsibly and continue to live ‘dangerously’ too – (although in reality only vicariously through your contact with the advert)
• To be ‘dangerous’ to is to be sexually attractive
• Danger gives you ‘life’
• Life (as defined in the advert) is available in a product you can buy and drink in a can or bottle
• The image has a similar look to Instagram filters and so Coke is being sold by people that are the same as “you and me” – everyday people
• Ultimately the images present a reality that looks dreamy, sun-kissed, sexy, fun, youthful, fashionable, recognisable

2. See next blog post

 

References:

http://fortune.com/worlds-most-admired-companies/coca-cola-10/ (01/06/2016)

http://facts.randomhistory.com/blonde-hair-facts.html (04/06/2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbXM9ATC5_4 (04/06/2016)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2284783.stm (04/06/2016)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevia (04/06/2016)

http://www.livescience.com/41975-does-coca-cola-contain-cocaine.html

http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/artificial-sweeteners-sugar-free-but-at-what-cost-201207165030 (04/06/2016)

http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/stories/the-sweet-news-about-stevia-extract-our-zero-calorie-sweetener (04/06/2016)

https://www.quora.com/What-font-is-used-for-Coca-Cola (04/06/2016)

http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/19/news/companies/new-coke-ad-campaign/index.html?category=home-internationa (04/04/2016)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2815775/Green-Coke-calorie-free-leaf-sweetener-South-America-sugar-regular-critics-warn-s-marketing-gimmick.html (04/06/2016)

 Myth Today, Mythologies, Roland Barthes (translated by Annette Lavers, Hill and Wang, New York 1984) http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Barthes-Mythologies-MythToday.pdf (31/05/2016)

[*] Gods must be crazy film DMB http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080801/