Control
Background: Erving Goffman’s study Gender Advertisements (1979) considers the myriad ways in which women are negatively depicted in popular culture. Of interest to this study is Goffman’s semiotic understanding of the composition of ads as its relates to the relative levels of power of men and women. It is a social fact that men still universally hold power over women in all societies, and in terms of how advertising portrays visual power, we can say that Goffman’s study still holds true in today’s media ads. The varied dimensions of posture, position of bodies, location of body parts, height and depth of figures, all suggest that women are inferior, and men are superior. The trope that often runs through the ads I have collected is one of men in control. The concept that I develop here is that the hegemony of the gaze, the hegemony of the visual, the hegemony of the positioning of individuals in the ads parallel the hegemony of men within political, economic, and social sectors of society. The Ads: Whether in visual means (ads 6, 10, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22) or specific situations, the message of this trope is that men control...they control society and women. Discussion Questions: (1) How is power produced in the various ads on this page? How are specific positions of power in the ads created in visual senses? (2) Are there are common themes in terms of the ways in which control are manifested in the ads? (3) Can you discover similar ads in which women hold control over men or in which men hold control over other men? (4) What are the effects of these ads on children? What do these visual forms tell children about men, women and relationships? (5) Is there a connection between the issues of power in the ads and the particular products that are being sold?
