Unleashing Well-Defined Gender Roles.
Shruti Menon Prof. Denise Comer English Composition 1 : Visual Analysis Project 10 July 2016
Unleashing Well-Defined Gender Roles. A Semiotic Analysis of the Axe Anarchy Print Advert
Source : Google Images
The image I have employed to read the semiotics of print advertisements, is a print advertisement for Axe Anarchy, a range of deodorants by Axe for men and women. Axe produced a series of print adverts for this range, all of them essentially conveying the same message - all the ads contained different ‘signifiers’, all leading to the same ‘signifieds’. I have selected one of these, for my visual analysis.
The image is animated, and depicts a man and a woman, both young and conventionally good looking, standing by the door of what appears to be a factory of sorts. The man is holding a burner of sorts and is facing the woman, who is holding a bag full of fireworks. They are looking at each other, transfixed, seemingly unaware of the environment around them, while the fire from the burner in his hand is dancing dangerously close to the rope to be sparked, from the firework from her bag. The tagline - “Unleash the Chaos”.
This is, indeed, a very clever advertisement, and all the signs are in check, leading to the ultimate intended meaning of Axe Anarchy ‘unleashing chaos’ by producing deodorants for both men and woman, that are bold, strong, sexually appealing and head turning. Axe is a brand that is notorious for its creative sexual suggestibility in its advertisements, and Axe Anarchy is no different. However, a closer reading of the advertisement would reveal various other denotations and connotations that Axe appears to have employed here to aid the construction of this image.
First, let us look at the objects of importance in the frame - the two people. We see that they are young, which we gauge from their strikingly glowing countenances and chiseled faces. They are good looking in the conventional manner - the man is tall, strapping and muscular, while the woman is petite and delicate, with long, curly red hair, a short dress and high heeled shoes. There is nothing
very surprising about their seeming attraction to one another, and Axe seems to have employed all the tropes of masculinity and femininity to reiterate the notion that there are two sets of deodorants for either sex, playing on all the aspects of traditional gender roles. The man radiates machismo, complete with the rolled up sleeves, tough leather boots, sweaty chiseled visage and the burner in his hand, while the woman exudes feminine sexuality, with her delicate, bare shoulders, floral dress, and high heels, holding, of course, a shopping bag full of fireworks. Taking these semiotics into consideration, it is pretty evident that the man is the active player in unleashing this “chaos”, while the woman is the passive one - he holds the burner that will spark the fireworks in her bag.
Now, moving to the background. The frame can be divided into two halves, as they are both standing by the entrance to the factory. The left half, where the man is standing, is dark, dingy and musty - we see burners, dark walls, hardened floors, and a general environment that ‘means business’, arguably no place for a woman, especially not the one in this picture. The man stands in the fore of this backdrop, and we understand that this is the intended creation of his space. Now, the woman is set against the outdoors, at the entrance of the factory - it is bright outside, the roads are clean, the buildings are all shades of pinks and pastels, and we can imagine her trotting these streets in her green heels. These two environments are semiotically significant, because they are representative of two very different kinds of spaces that are in stark opposition to each other, and by the spatialization of genders in this manner, Axe Anarchy has succeeded, albeit in an arguably sexist manner, in pointing out how exactly a fusion of the sort becomes “chaotic”.
List of Resources 1. Google Images "Axe Anarchy Print Ad Image." Google Images. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 July 2016. 2. Klages, Mary. Literary Theory : A Guide For the Perplexed. Colorado: Continuum International Group, 2007. Print.
Unleashing Well-Defined Gender Roles. A Semiotic Analysis of the Axe Anarchy Print Advert
Source : Google Images
The image I have employed to read the semiotics of print advertisements, is a print advertisement for Axe Anarchy, a range of deodorants by Axe for men and women. Axe produced a series of print adverts for this range, all of them essentially conveying the same message - all the ads contained different ‘signifiers’, all leading to the same ‘signifieds’. I have selected one of these, for my visual analysis.
The image is animated, and depicts a man and a woman, both young and conventionally good looking, standing by the door of what appears to be a factory of sorts. The man is holding a burner of sorts and is facing the woman, who is holding a bag full of fireworks. They are looking at each other, transfixed, seemingly unaware of the environment around them, while the fire from the burner in his hand is dancing dangerously close to the rope to be sparked, from the firework from her bag. The tagline - “Unleash the Chaos”.
This is, indeed, a very clever advertisement, and all the signs are in check, leading to the ultimate intended meaning of Axe Anarchy ‘unleashing chaos’ by producing deodorants for both men and woman, that are bold, strong, sexually appealing and head turning. Axe is a brand that is notorious for its creative sexual suggestibility in its advertisements, and Axe Anarchy is no different. However, a closer reading of the advertisement would reveal various other denotations and connotations that Axe appears to have employed here to aid the construction of this image.
First, let us look at the objects of importance in the frame - the two people. We see that they are young, which we gauge from their strikingly glowing countenances and chiseled faces. They are good looking in the conventional manner - the man is tall, strapping and muscular, while the woman is petite and delicate, with long, curly red hair, a short dress and high heeled shoes. There is nothing
very surprising about their seeming attraction to one another, and Axe seems to have employed all the tropes of masculinity and femininity to reiterate the notion that there are two sets of deodorants for either sex, playing on all the aspects of traditional gender roles. The man radiates machismo, complete with the rolled up sleeves, tough leather boots, sweaty chiseled visage and the burner in his hand, while the woman exudes feminine sexuality, with her delicate, bare shoulders, floral dress, and high heels, holding, of course, a shopping bag full of fireworks. Taking these semiotics into consideration, it is pretty evident that the man is the active player in unleashing this “chaos”, while the woman is the passive one - he holds the burner that will spark the fireworks in her bag.
Now, moving to the background. The frame can be divided into two halves, as they are both standing by the entrance to the factory. The left half, where the man is standing, is dark, dingy and musty - we see burners, dark walls, hardened floors, and a general environment that ‘means business’, arguably no place for a woman, especially not the one in this picture. The man stands in the fore of this backdrop, and we understand that this is the intended creation of his space. Now, the woman is set against the outdoors, at the entrance of the factory - it is bright outside, the roads are clean, the buildings are all shades of pinks and pastels, and we can imagine her trotting these streets in her green heels. These two environments are semiotically significant, because they are representative of two very different kinds of spaces that are in stark opposition to each other, and by the spatialization of genders in this manner, Axe Anarchy has succeeded, albeit in an arguably sexist manner, in pointing out how exactly a fusion of the sort becomes “chaotic”.
List of Resources 1. Google Images "Axe Anarchy Print Ad Image." Google Images. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 July 2016. 2. Klages, Mary. Literary Theory : A Guide For the Perplexed. Colorado: Continuum International Group, 2007. Print.
