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Reading Advertisement Semiotically

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Submitted By cosmiclass
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Semiotic is one of considerable approach in study of media, especially television ads. Emerging from meaning-based models, semiotic of television ads differ from the traditional information processing approach to advertising reception principally because advertising meanings are constructed within the signifying frame of the “text” by audience or “ads reader” rather than simply being delivered in content by the advertising. In effect, passive terms such as ‘reception’ and ‘processing’ in advertising-audience relationship are rejected by meaning-based models and replaced with the more active concept of ‘interpretation’.
Splashy mass media published photographs of 'exciting' and female models writings that stimulate the libido had struck the country in line with momentum reform.
Feminism is a theory and politics that contains competing perspectives and prescription for action. However, in general terms, we may locate feminism as asserting that sex is a fundamental and irreducible axis of social organization which, to date, has subordinated women to men. Thus, feminism is centrally concerned with sex as an organizing principle of social life where gender relations are thoroughly saturated with power. The subordination of women is argued to be evident across a range of social institutions and practices, that is, male power and female subordination are structural. This has led some feminists to adopt the concept of patriarchy, with its derivative meanings of the male-headed family, ‘mastery’ and superiority.
Liberal feminism stresses equality of opportunity for women. This is held to be achievable within the broad structures of the existing legal and economic frameworks. In contrast, socialist feminist point to the interconnections between class and gender, including the fundamental place of gender inequalities in the reproduction of capitalism. Instead of liberal and socialist feminism’s stress on equality and sameness, difference or radical feminism asserts essential differences between men and women. These are celebrated as representing the creative difference of women and the superiority of ‘feminism’ values.
Still fresh in our memory when a manufacturer launches TORABIKA Coffee products Torabika Duo form of mixed coffee and milk. Along with the launch, advertisers make the jargon of 'pass susunya'. These ads then protested the community because visualization word milk on TV ads, which directing people to the image (once again) the woman's body. Advertisers are deliberately creating double understanding of the idiom ‘pas susunya’. Namely, combination of coffee and milk fit to taste the community criterion, as well as an understanding of 'right to wear on a particular body part woman', which means the same for most people. But it turns out the variant products coffee was consumed by the people. The result is a dual understanding of the meaning of the word 'milk'. One interprets the milk in the sense of milk, while others understand it as breast. This polemic ends with visualization of scenes cut out that can be generate images that tilt of the idiom 'pas susunya'. So the only single meaning, that is a mixture of coffee and milk with the proper comparison.
The survey of women in the media suggests a consistent global depiction of women as commodified and stereotyped into the binary images of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. For example, that affirmation and denial were the two main themes evident in the study of the representation of women on Torabika coffee commercial. The affirmation described as of a limited definition of womanhood as passive and subordinate, that is, being tied to house work, husbands. Nothing more than the commodities she wears: the lipstick, the tights, the clothes and slender body to satisfied men needs. Slenderness and a concern with diet and self-monitoring are preoccupations of western media culture with its interest in a ‘tighter, smoother, more constrained body profile’. Consequently adverts target bulge, fat or flab and the desirability of flat stomachs and cellulite management. As Susan Bordo argues, the slender body is a gendered body for the subject position of the slender body is female. Slenderness is a contemporary ideal for female attractiveness so that girls and women are culturally more prone to eating disorders than are men.
The denial is of the creativity, activity, and individuality of women, particularly in relation to work and the public sphere. That is, in this commercial women play a big role in demand of the product. With the emergence of woman in the advertisement it manifest that women sphere is nowadays larger. They are no longer passive and subordinate and work in domestic sphere; women also can come up in public sphere as an individual and active.

Reference
Barker, C. 2008, Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice 3rd Edition, SAGE Publications, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore.

Hagijanto, Adrian D. 2000, FIGUR WANITA SEBAGAI PENARIK PANDANG
DALAM IKLAN. Universitas Kristen Petra. Surabaya

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