Assignment 5

Advertisement goes back as early as to the ruins of Pompeii and the Ancient Greeks, which makes sense considering the benefits for the salesman of sharing the positive features of the item with the buying public. But it was not until the 1950s in America that advertisement became a profession. Besides increasing in numbers, advertisement also increasingly focused on the consumer instead of the product itself. Advertisement agencies did not only praise a product, they sell an ideal way of living. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was the American Middle Class that advertisements were targeting at. With more televisions in private households and housewives forming a new product audience, brands created innovative television advertisement that played with the anxieties and aspirations of the customers.

In order to uncover the visual, sonic and narrative structures of such advertisements, Machin´s multimodal analysis can be applied to these historical advertisements. His method is divided in 3 parts: first looking at the way the viewer is aligned with the experiences of the participants (participants used to refer to characters from the advertisement), second how visually participants can be categorised and its effect and third how the actions and agency of the participants can be interpreted.

The first thing one can look at when trying to identify the relation of the viewer and the participant is analyse the gaze of the participants. If the participant looks directly into the camera, the customer feels acknowledge and is demanded to do something. If there is no eye contact, the participant can be observed by the viewer, in this case the participant does not demand but offer something. Lastly if the participant looks off frame, the audience is invited to think alongside the participant.

Next the angle of interaction has an effect on the customer. Horizontal and oblique angels create attachment or detachment, for example if the customers look from behind the back of the participant this can create the feeling of standing together or it can create anonymity. Vertical angles create superiority, inferiority or equality, depending on whether we look from above, up to someone or on eyes height with someone. Distance has an effect on the perception of intimacy; for example close-ups can create intimacy or have a claustrophobic effect.

The second part of Marchin´s method deals with the different forms of participation of the viewer; first dealing with depicted individuals and groups in sources. Individualisation and collectivisation can appear at the same time for different participants and can either invite the viewer to feel connected or opposed to someone. Further categorisations on the one hand cultural categories such as hair or dresses, on the other hand biological stereotypes such as physical characteristics can invoke positive or negative connotations. Lastly those non-represented categories can have an effect on the perception of the viewer. The third category of Marchin looks at who does what with what effect in the advertisement. This step becomes clearer once applied to an actual case, which I will be doing next.

I chose this 1962 commercial for Green Mint Mouthwash for mediating the stereotype of the American housewife´s duties of socialising and looking neat. The advertisement introduces the viewer to Helen, who is not invited to any social events anymore due to her bad breath. A salesman of Green Mint Mouthwash offers her a solution, as his touted mouthwash will destroy her mouth-odour and finally her friends will invite her back to their gatherings.

The advertisement consists of 2 modes, on the one hand Helen and on the other hand the salesman. Following the steps of Machin´s method we will first look at how the viewer is aligned with the experience of the protagonists of the advertisements.

Analysing the gaze of the participants, Helen does not look directly at the viewer but instead looks off frame, which makes her as an exhibit of the advertisement. Machin describes that this gaze invites the viewer to engage with the thoughts of Helen, without demanding anything. In the beginning were Helen is not invited to the parties, she looks downwards, which leaves the audience with a negative and sad feeling towards the bad situation she is in due to her smelly breath. In the end, when Helen used Green Mint Mouthwash and is walking into her friend’s home, both women look off to the left top corner and create a positive and happy feeling.

On the other hand the salesman looks straight into the camera, demanding the viewer to feel with Helen. The angle of interaction is on eyes height, which invokes equality and emphasizes the bond between viewers and participants. The close-ups of Helen create intimacy and sympathy for Helen´s problem. This intimacy is also strengthened through the individualisation of Helen, as it creates the feeling of “this could be me, or one of my friends” for the viewer.

Next the cultural category of Middle Class Women as an aspired and positive notion is mediated in the advertisement, only after Helen re-joins her friends she is happy again.

Lastly Machin´s remark on agency and action plays a crucial role for the narrative structure of the advertisement. It is the product that helps Helen; therefore the focus lies on the agency of the mouthwash and what it can do for the customers. The salesman introduced the product, but mainly because it cannot speak for itself; the main protagonist is the mouthwash.

References

Machin, D. (2007). Introduction to multimodal analysis. London: Hodder Arnold. (chapter 6: “Representation of social actors in the image”)

Marchand, R. (1985). Advertising the American Dream. Making Way for Modernity, 1920 –1940. Berkeley etc.: University of California Press

Marling, K.A. (1996). As Seen on TV. The Visual Culture of Every-day Life in the 1950s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 202–241.

Tungate, M. (2007). Adland: a global history of advertising. London and Philadelphia: Kogan Page Publishers.