Over time Television Commercials have altered drastically. The advertisements seen on TV today can not be compared to those of the 1950s and 60s. During this time period, advertisements were often much longer and often contained jingles. D. Machin in his chapter: Representation of social actors in the image explains a semiotic approach to visual images and regards the representation of social actors. In the first part he explains the different possibilities in which the viewer is positioned in relation to the people inside the image or clip. He defines four different terms, these are gaze, distance, horizontal angle and vertical angle which are the angles of interaction. What is meant by the gaze is that people in for example a commercial are either looking at the viewer or not, if not there is no interaction it can be seen as an exhibit. Secondly there is the distance which signifies the social relation but in commercials it is seen as the size of the frame meaning having for example close shots or long shots. The final category in this part are the angles of interaction, vertical angles mean that one is either looking down of up at someone. Horizontal angle in pictures can by face to face, full profile or anything in between.
The second part of the chapter talks about the kinds of participants, these can be individuals and groups. It also talks about categorization which are the resources that let the viewer know what kind of people are involved. The final component of this part is non representation which is a technique used to create anonymity. Agency and action are the final components of this chapter. An agency is simply said, who does what meaning that someone is capable of doing something this can be a human or non human actor. The action is what gets done.
I will now try to apply this methodology to an advertisement from 1955 Procter & Gamble’s Golden Fluffo Shortening, staring Mike Wallace who was a famous personality during this time.
Firstly, there is the gaze, within the commercial the viewer and the people depicted interact because for a majority of the time the actors are directly speaking to the viewer. The protagonist Mike Wallace looks at the viewer numerous times, the ‘cooking/backing champion’ however only looks at the protagonist. The viewer is directly addressed by the commercial. For the second part which was distance there can be seen short as well as longer frames. The view when the people are in the picture is more distance. Yet when the product is visible there is a very close shot. The frames taken from further away have a god distance they are not to far so that the viewer can still see every detail of the person the product. The final part is the angle. The horizontal angle of the advertisement is never fully face to face. Mike Wallace is always sitting fully sideways but facing the audience or slightly tilted to the side. The only fully frontal perspective is given when the product is shown on its own. When it comes to the vertical angle, for the majority of the ad the viewer is looking straight at the actors. The viewer only looks down when the product is presented however this angle is not very steep just a minor tilt. It is the same angle one would have when it is placed in your kitchen. This creates the impression that everyone must have this shortening in their kitchen.
When looking at the kinds of participant the advertisement s displays individuals, firstly there is only one the protagonist who is then joined by the ‘cooking/backing champion. While sitting at the table the ‘backing champion tells Mike Wallace how wonderful and great the shortening is to create pies. As the commercial begins with a famous personality sitting on a chai in a blank room holding the product, the viewer is directly draws to listen. This is a skill in order to sell the product. A further technique is using the cooking/baking champion in the ad because it brings across the impression that professionals use this product and that everyone can make professional pies with this shortening.
Within this ad there is not really a social agency given to the product nor the human. The agency of this product is that everyone can be a professional baker and the action is that it is able to now make fluffy and great pies through the use of this shortening.
Reference
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Machin, D. (2007). Introduction to multimodal analysis. London: Hodder Arnold.