Advertising assessment LR

Advertising assessment learner response

1) Type up your feedback in full (you don't need to write the mark and grade if you want to keep this confidential).

19/29

WWW: Ishmeet, strong response for Q1- lots of close textual analysis of unseen advert

EBI: Q3- too much description of Sephora advert but not enough focus on post-colonialism and how it impacted the advert

2) Read the whole mark scheme for this assessment carefully. Identify at least one potential point that you missed out on for each question in the assessment.

• Q1-- Promise of irresistible appeal – ‘sex sells’ (common narrative in men’s grooming; Barthes’ action code). Female desire – woman as active sexual agent, empowered sexuality (third-wave feminism). Arguably reflects a changing representation of women post-1980s. Man as the hunted, looked-at object; objectification of men (Gill – female gaze). Snatched, paparazzi style shot – over-exposed subject, celebrity (intertextuality).
• Q2-- Hyper masculine, heterosexual image does not seem to reflect the significant social and cultural changes of last 50 years in terms of gender roles. Reinforces hegemonic masculinity. Representation of female desire arguably reflects female empowerment/third wave feminism. Female sexuality places power with women rather than men. Traditional representation of masculinity more in keeping with 1960s or 1970s; Reinforces glamorous James Bond style of masculinity.
• Q3-- The advert very deliberately looks to construct an authentic representation of the black experience. This therefore challenges Gilroy’s ideas of othering and double consciousness. Sephora use a range of locations to reflect different aspects of the black community – hair salon, kitchen, bedroom, dressing room. It is inclusive – diversity of gender and age is incorporated as well as race.

3) Look at your answer and the mark scheme for Question 1 (Diamonds advert unseen text). List three examples of media terminology or theory that you could have included in your answer. 

•  Black tie as a phallic object (Mulvey) – being grabbed by female model.
• Costume barely visible for female models – flesh on display. Heavily made-up faces –constructed/Photoshopped image. Links to Kilbourne’s analysis of women in advertising.
• Promise of irresistible appeal – ‘sex sells’ (common narrative in men’s grooming; Barthes’ action code).

4) Look at your answer and the mark scheme for Question 2. What aspects of the cultural and historical context for the Score hair cream advert do you need to revise or develop in future?

• Hyper masculine representation reflects traditional view of gender roles in 1950s and 1960s.
• Emphasis on traditional hegemonic masculinity perhaps a reaction against the gains made by women during the 1960s culminating in the Equal Pay Act in 1970.
• Aggressively heterosexual representation perhaps shows male insecurity in light of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967.
• Anchorage text in the Score advert reflects male insecurities in a changing world – repeated references to ‘men’ and ‘masculine’ in design, production and use of the product suggests an acknowledgment that hair cream was seen as a more female product in the 1960s.
• The representation of the male as hunter in a foreign jungle setting suggests a reference to the British Empire and the colonial dominance of the 19th century.

5) Now look over your mark, comments and the mark scheme for Question 3 - the 9-mark question on Sephora Black Beauty Is Beauty. List any postcolonial terminology you could have added to your answer here.  

• If the advert was largely a response to the racial profiling scandal, then perhaps it could be read in a more cynical way, with a predominantly white company looking to recover from negative PR. Similarly, the 15% pledge that Sephora has committed to still means  black producers will account for only a small minority of the products on Sephora shelves.
• The advert very deliberately looks to construct an authentic representation of the black experience. This therefore challenges Gilroy’s ideas of othering and double consciousness.
• Scenes of video tutorials and the representation of women from different backgrounds suggests cultural conviviality – building on the idea that aspects of black beauty have formed the basis of mainstream beauty culture.
• ‘Othering’ or racial otherness: Paul Gilroy suggests non-white representations are constructed as a ‘racial other’ in contrast to white Western ideals.