Sex Sells Essay

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Advertisements are a means to selling products usually by provoking an interest, “into a materialist, consumerist lifestyle and the value system that goes with it.” (O’Shaughnessy & Stadler, 2012:152). The ideology accompanying advertisements can be defined through a system of norms, values and beliefs, which usually present various positive and negative associations (Noth, 1990: 377). These social issues and differences that remain adjunct to advertisements can be identified in the acronym SEARCH, where each initial letter stands for, sex, environment, age, race, class and handicap. The truism “Sex sells” is seen as an effective strategy to attract attention as sexual appeal provokes an interest that can conclude in “strong feelings” about the advertisement …show more content…

This advertisement has a high modality as it is a photograph and reveals a realistic representation of these the models, objects and settings in comparison to a sketch, which has a low modality. However advertisements are constructed, “[they] [do] not reproduce its object: it 'abstracts from, and mediates, the actual” (Burgin 1982: 61). This ideology of realism persuades the viewer to accept these images with truth and yet “the cinematic apparatus always operates selectively, limiting, filtering and transforming the images that are its raw material” (Rodowick 1994, 77). This advert is deceptive as it has a high modality of 3-dimension, detail, high-saturation and color yet because this advertisement has been constructed it somewhat opposes this apparent ‘truthfulness’. The advertisement is edited, posed and the connotations around this image are somewhat unattainable and unfamiliar. This lifelike reproduction of two individuals having sexual intercourse is realistic but by the way the magazine has been used to cover the woman’s face it reveals this somewhat fallacy that has been

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