The picture I will be analysing in this advertisement is the one on the right, Gluttony.
Author: Lily Jewels
Date: 2005
Place of Publication: New York City
Denotative Examination
Upon first examination, we find a woman with jewels coming from her mouth. We can infer that it is a woman based on her bone structure and her long hair. On the right side we see the word Gluttony in all caps and we assume she is gluttonous for jewelry.We also see that there is a 30% off sale on all diamond necklaces.
Connotative Examination
Through a psychoanalytic lens, we can perceive the jewels as food, almost like spaghetti, and because this is an advertisement, the jewels are in the center, which is where our eyes travel to first. In our society, because she is a woman, she automatically will like jewelry, while a man may not care for it as much, which is why there is not a man in the advertisement. This perpetuates the idea that "diamonds are a girls best friend" therefore she wants an abundance of them. Also, there is nothing particularly special about this girl. Her hair, her skin, and her lips and overtly plain; nothing else is supposed to grab your attention other than the jewels hanging from her mouth. She has pale skin and pale lips and dark hair which may make her more relatable to the intended audience. This plays into the stereotype that all rich people are white and can afford jewelry of this sort. There is also an absence of her eyes and she has no facial expression which makes her seem very mysterious. The idea is to take away as much of her personality and to make the audience completely focus on the jewelry and the sale. When we think of someone who is gluttonous, we associate them with wanting more and more of one thing and we don't think about their personality or why they want so much of one thing, which may be another reason why her personality is removed from this piece.The placement of the sale sign is almost secondary to the advertisement as a whole. Like in most advertisements, the amount of sale price is the largest and the small details and exclusions are in finer print. But what is almost peculiar about this advertisement is that the sale sign is in the far left corner where the audience is less likely to pay a lot of attention to it-- they will see the word "Gluttony" before they'll see the sale sign. I think that the reasoning for this is that they advertisers just want you to come and buy the product regardless of the fact that a sale is going on. Although, since the words "sale" and "all diamonds and necklaces" are in green and are the only things with bright coloring in this advertisement, it makes it seem as though the sale is the only "good" thing to come out of being gluttonous. It's almost like it's saying hey, even though you're being really gluttonous by buying a whole shelf worth of diamond necklaces, at least they're on sale!
Audience
The audience for this advertisement includes both men and women. The socioeconomic background of these people are going to be upper middle class and upper class people who drive fancy cars and live in large houses in nice neighborhoods.The cultural knowledge that they will most likely have is that jewels are important to defining your class and status and that in order to "fit in" you must have certain types of jewelry or other luxuries.
Men
Men would assume that all woman want (and are gluttonous for) are jewels because, to them, it seems as though the advertisement is directed at women. This would make the man think that just by buying jewelry he can make a woman happy because that's all women need to be happy, right?
Women
Women who see the ad will want all the jewels they can get because it is on sale. This would allow for women who were not before gluttonous for jewelry to become gluttonous for jewelry thus increasing the sales of the company. That would be an example of deliberate manipulation of the audience.
