Denotative Analysis Essay

Advertisements are often a way of reinforcing of existing power structures within our society. They portray our hegemonic society in way that makes it look desirable to the audiences that are viewing it and attempt to convince those audiences what is “natural”. All advertisements have both denotative meanings and connotative meanings, which this essay will delve into. The original version of this advertisement, by Axe Body Spray, portrays several different myths about both gender and the hegemony of our current society, including the myth that women weaker than men, and that whiteness exists outside of race, therefore making it the default.
1. Denotative Analysis
The concept of denotation is known to be the basic meaning surrounding a particular

This second level of interpretation has a close communication with culture, knowledge, and history (qtd. In Hall et al 24) and therefore requires some prior cultural understanding in order to get the most out of the interpretation. This advertisement has many different connotations behind the images within it, one of which is the idea that women are physically weaker than men. This idea is created through the use of imagery to enforce a hegemonic ideal that femininity is lesser than masculinity. This ideal is seen as hegemonic because it is what the majority of society believes to be true (Engstrom, 61), whether it be consciously or unconsciously. The concepts of the male gaze, coined by Laura Mulvey, and the concept of gender as a performance, coined by Judith Butler, will be used to further support this argument. In the advertisement, there are three women who are stretching in ways that engage the targeted male viewer, employing the concept of the Male Gaze (Mulvey,). Their poses are fairly normal stretch poses, but are construed as provocative by the targeted male audience as well as the creator of the image, who is likely to be male. This is also seen through the workout gear the women are wearing, as it is quite revealing and meant to be sexualized by the audiences. The advertisement also incorporates the concept of gender as a performance in order to encapsulate the myth of femininity being lesser than masculinity. Within the image, the three women are styled to be hegemonic ideals of what the female gender should look like. All of the women have long hair, are slim, white and appeal to the conventions of white feminine beauty, they are also wearing typically feminine outfits that are form-fitting and two out of the three of the outfits feature pink, a typically feminine colour. The only exclusion to