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).

Q2 is strong and good ideas throughout

Revise/practise unseen analysis 

revise postcolonial terminology

question focus

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.

1)• Facial expressions – female models’ open mouths suggest lust, desire. Male model makes

eye-contact with audience.

• 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).

2)• Traditional representation of masculinity more in keeping with 1960s or 1970s; Reinforces

glamorous James Bond style of masculinity.

• Armani advert arguably reflects the ‘crisis of masculinity’ some refer to – assertively

heterosexual, perhaps reflecting the struggle men face to find their place/role in the 21st

century. Armani captures the way men wish to see the world.

• 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.

• Representation of women in the Score advert reflects the changing role of women in the

1960s to some extent. This is no longer the stereotypical 1950s housewife but still a

reductive, exploitative, objectified representation of women.

• Representation of gender reinforces Judith Butler’s idea of gender as performance –

dominant/submissive gender roles clearly reinforced in construction of advert.

3)• ‘Othering’ or racial otherness: Paul Gilroy suggests non-white representations are

constructed as a ‘racial other’ in contrast to white Western ideals.

• Double consciousness: Paul Gilroy used the term double consciousness to reflect the Black

experience in the UK and USA. One aspect is living in a predominantly white culture and

having an aspect of identity rooted somewhere else. He describes this as a “liquidity of

culture”. He also uses it to highlight the disconnect between black representations in the

media and actual lived experience. Often, these representations are created by white

producers.

• Cultural conviviality: This refers to the real-world multiculturalism and racial harmony that

most people experience on a day-to-day basis. It is in stark contrast to the racial disharmony

and binary view often presented by the media.

• The advert explicitly gives credit to black beauty trends and innovations such as the

hairbrush, ‘cut creases’ or ‘beat faces’. Again, this challenges postcolonial ideas such as

social and ethnic hierarchies and places black creators in the mainstream.

• 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.

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. 

Action codes

Intertextuality

Gill - female gaze

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?

The fall of the British empire and how it might have affected men more

The changing role of what it means to be a woman

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.  

Othering

Double consciousness

Social and ethnic hierarchies