The portrayal of women in Coca Cola advertisements and analysing the representation of feminalities from different era's.
The male gaze is the idea of men being in power over women. Men stare at women in the streets, Women find this aggravating but in order not to anger the men they turn away and ignore them whereas women used to advertise on billboards give men the impression and the fantasy that they want the men to look at them. “Women, in the flesh, often feel embarrassed, irritated or downright angered by men's persistent gaze. But not wanting to risk male attention turning into male aggression, women avert their eyes and hurry on their way. Those women on the billboards, though; they look back. Those fantasy women stare off the walls with the look of urgent availability.” (Coward, R. 2000, p33) These women are often seen in Coca Cola advertising. “The idea of the women in the billboard is to flatter the men. “Women are depicted in a quite different way from men- not because the feminine is different from masculine- but because the ‘Ideal’ spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the women is designed to flatter him.” (Berger, 1972, p64)
Scopophilia, heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, is the objectification of women as sexual objects to be looked at by men. Scopophilia is sexist in that it represents 'The Gaze' as being male and powerful; men are also always the Heroes in Hollywood film and always drive the plot.
A recent advert for Coke zero shows Cheryl Cole promoting the soft drink. She is known as the nations sweetheart. Men want her, women want to be her, and therefore the promotion is for everyone. For men it is a fantasy, “Voyeurism is a way of taking sexual pleasure by looking at rather than being close to a particular object of desire, like a peeping Tom, and peeping Toms can always stay in control.” (Thomas, 2000, p34)
This is a fantasy and is best that way as actual contact will ruin it. This way the men can stay in control. “At the extreme Scopophilia can become fixated into a perversion, producing obsessive voyeurs and Peeping Toms whose only sexual satisfaction can come from watching, in an active, controlling sense an objectified other” (Mulvey, 1975, p162)
The psychoanalytic theory of Scopophilia would show Cheryl Cole as 'Passive' and the spectator, the men who have the male gaze, as the 'Active'. “The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact. They can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (Mulvey, 1975)
In this particular advertisement Cheryl Cole is used to advertise the new Coke zero, made to be perceived as “Bloke Coke” She is therefore dressed as a man wearing a suit and hat. The men in the background of the image are not looking at her but looking away, this shows feminism. In Mulvey’s book 'Visual pleasure and narrative cinema' (1975), it is unclear whether she thinks that if men were visually sexualised women would be interested and be the ones doing the gazing.
Two more examples are the television adverts, one showing women acting like men whilst drinking Coke and another showing women working in an office and pretending the elevator is broken so a 'hunky' maintenance man comes to fix it. These adverts are extremely different to the adverts used in the 1910-1940's where Coca Cola targeted housewives, showing Coke as a refreshing drink whilst doing the shopping or having lunch. Using taglines such as 'Lunch refreshed' and 'Shop refreshed'. www.smashingshare.com The modern adverts show strong women who can do everything a man can do and how the roles of men and women have changed. Laura Mulvey talks about how men can not stand to be objectified, “According to the principles of the ruling ideology and the psychical structures that back it up, the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification” (Mulvey, 1975)
Last year Coca Cola brought out a T.V advert showing young, beautiful, well dressed women as airhead puppets dancing around on strings. This makes me think that this is Coca Cola's company opinion of woman, they are there to look good for men to look at. This is contradicting to the other television adverts which show men as the objects and they're for women to do the gazing.
Only after America entered World War 2, did Coca Cola start to become very patriotic. The company started off well but due to Dr Pemperton, the creator of Coca Cola, becoming ill, sales dropped. It wasn't until 1887 that the company became well known as it was advertised poorly. In 1906, William D'Arcy was hired to do the advertising, he made scenes of everyday life, scenes such as shopping and having lunch. In 1910, Coca Cola ran an advert of an attractive 'American' woman, that said, “Nothing is so suggestive of Coca Colas own pure deliciousness as the picture of a beautiful, sweet, wholesome, womanly woman.” www.xroads.virginia.edu (Jones and Ritzmann) This is where the use of women to promote and advertise the company began, and to provide an ideal vision of America.
The spectator, male ego, looks through the eyes of the actors in the film or in this case television adverts. The spectator is able to follow their gaze without feeling any guilt. If the actor from the film or advert speaks out to us then the suture is broken. The audience is then aware of their own gaze and therefore feeling the guilt.
In the 1950's and 60's Coca Cola moved on from using just print advertisement and started using photography showing men and women happily smiling as they drank their Coke. As the company became more well known the women used in the adverts started to become more sexualised, their dresses started to become shorter and some adverts even showed women wearing bathing suits. www.xroads.virginia.edu (Jones and Ritzmann)
In 1929 America saw the crash of the stock market, said to last ten years, which affected sales enormously. In 1941, The Saturday Evening Post showed a picture of a young woman wearing a bathing suit. As readers saw this as an ideal vision of America, the newspaper was saying that the country is in financial crisis but if you drink Coca Cola you can be as happy as this girl and not care.
In another advertisement from 1956, both a male and a female are used to promote the product, the male is gazing at the beautiful woman who is in a swimsuit passing her the Coca Cola bottle. Men can follow the Males gaze in the advertisement and not feel guilty, this type of gaze is Suture. If the male in the advertisement was looking at the audience this suture could be broken and the spectator would feel the guilt. It differs a lot from the Cheryl Cole advert firstly because it seems to be a painting and secondly because the image shows the male and female as a happy couple. Whereas in the more recent advert, the woman is shown as highly sexualised. The older ads seem to be more classy in the way the use to women to promote the product. It also seems that now days women are used less to promote the product, perhaps because it is such a massively known product and company, and also because its audience is so wide it doesn't need to just promote to men.
Extra-diegetic gaze is the direct address to the viewer of the television advert, the gaze of the actor in the advert looking out at us. This is often avoided in cinema but used a lot in advertising.
In an older Coca Cola advertisement, a woman wearing a revealing red dress is used to promote the product. The beautiful woman makes the product seem more alluring and desirable, in the advert she gazes upon us, therefore using the extra diegetic gaze, the most common gaze used especially in advertising.
Another example of an extra diegetic advert is the 1970 Coca Cola Raquel Welch vintage advertisement, advertising the 'New look' of coke. It is of a woman, dressed all in white with Coca Cola red accessories, sitting in a slightly enticing way, gazing at the viewer. It is supposed to be advertising Coca Colas fashion squares, showing the attractive woman wearing them gives the impression that if you but the fashion squares you will look like she does. I think therefore it is women doing the gazing in this instance.
Whilst scopophilia is the gaze of objectifying women as sexual objects narcissistic identification identifies with them. “The cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking but it also goes further, developing scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect” (Mulvey,1975) The sexual stimulation by sight of the woman is contradicted by the narcissistic identification with the image. Women become obsessed with the way they are seen and are therefore forced to be narcissistic. “Women's relation to these cultural ideals, and therefore to their own images, is more accurately described as a relation of narcissistic damage. Even women's relation to their own mirror image is retrospectively damaged by that critical glance of the cultural ideal.” (Thomas, 2000, p38)
The advertisement in which an attractive woman is holding a massive Coca Cola bottle could link to Freud's Castration theory. Castration meaning fear, the fear of the removal of his penis and would therefore be of the same level as a girl. In this theory, he believed that from a young age a boy having a penis is normal but a girl lacking in one is a defect. In the advert the woman's lack of a penis is a defect and not normal, and its as if the massive Coca Cola bottle is making up for this.
After looking at different forms of the Gaze I have seen how they evoke different structures of power. I have looked at Scopophilia, men having the power and objectifying woman as sexual objects, and how it is strongly used in advertising and has been for decades now.
I have also looked at Suture, the male ego identifying with the male actor in the adverts and relating to him without feeling any guilt. This has been evident in the advertisement with the male gazing upon a female in a swimsuit. These two forms of psychoanalysis, being quite different as the guilt is held in different people, therefore holding different structures of power. The male who is objectifying the woman has more power than the male who is identifying with him. The adverts such as the Cheryl Cole image shows narcissistic identification as the women looking at the advert can identify with her being that she is supposed to the one with the power. I have seen that the extra diegetic Gaze has been strongly used in Coca Cola advertising as the women in the adverts are often gazing at us. This theory along with Scopophilia works very well in advertising and has proven to increase sales for Coca Cola and make it as big as it is today. I have also seen how coca cola has changed over the years, even though they have used women to advertise, they are used now days in a different way.
Bibliography
Berger, J. (1972) Ways of seeing Harmondsworth, Penguin
Mulvey, L. (1975) Visual pleasures and other narrative cinema
Thomas, J. (2000) Reading images, NY, Palgrave McMillan
Betterton, R (ed.) (1987) Looking on: Images of femininity in the Visual Arts and Media. London, Pandora Press. (704.072)
Coward, R. (2000) 'The Look' in Thomas, J. ed. (2000) Reading images. Basingstoke, Palgrave, pp.33-39. (306.23)
Lutz, C. and Collins, J. (1993) 'The photograph as a Intersection of Gazes: The example of National Geographic' in Taylor, L. (1994) Visualizing Theory: Selected Essays from V.A.R 1990-1994. New York, Routledge, pp.363-384. (306.23)
Sturken, M. and Cartright, L. (2nd Edition, 2009) Practices of looking: an introduction to visual culture. Oxford, Oxford University Press. (306.23)
Chaudhuri, S. (2006) Feminist Film Theorists. Oxon, Routledge
Williamson, J. (2002) Decoding Advertisements, London, New York, Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd.
Wolf, N. (1991) The Beauty Myth, London. Chatton and Windus.
Websites
www.smashingshare.com/2010/11/25/the-history-of-coca-cola-print-advertising
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Jones,E and Ritzmann, F (n.d) Cocoa Cola at Home [online] Available at
[accessed 13 february 2011]
(13/2/11)
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