Week 10-Semiotic Analysis

Introduction

Most advertising we see have powerful messages incorporated within them, which lead to some impact upon our society. Of course, in every message, there are always some hidden ones in them.

In this advertisement of Benson’s Hedge Cigarette, it portrays the attraction between a man and a woman, with the small input of the boxes of cigarettes of the associated brand within the picture. On the surface, it innocently told the mass audience of the pleasure and fulfillment of smoking such cigarette will earn you a woman for your pleasure. But within the picture itself, hides another hidden message that the mass audience easily overlooked and ignored. The advertisement itself reflected two types of sign and its message, which those with keen sight and have the knowledge on signs can truly understand.

Semiotic Analysis

This advertisement was produce in April 1976 inside the famous Time Magazine. It shows a handsome man smug gleefully while embracing a girl, apparently ready to kiss him. This advertisement, on the surface expressed the sign of male dominance and as the one in charge, as his hand wrapped around the girl’s body more dominantly and suggested he is the sign of the ‘leader’, as his face is shown more in comparison to the girl that he was hugging.

Before we talk deeper into the hidden signs of the advertisement itself, let us provide the message on the advertisement’s surface. The advertisement’s intended target audience was always the dominant force of the sexes, men as the advertisement shows the sign of male dominance in the picture. The advertisement itself provided the signs of smoking such cigarette’s represents as a sign of male sexuality and attraction, and that smoke such cigarette will help you to gain a love of your life. It is said that a sign represent as a capacity (Peirce 1931-58, 2.228) and the advertisement represented the capacity of a male dominant force capability of giving an overpowering state of mind within the content of the advertisement. And that icon represented the sign within the signifier that imitate or representing the sign (Peirce 1931-58, 2.306), the significance of the man gleefully smug is an icon represented the male as a sexually dominant position within the advertisement itself.

The message “If you got crushed in the clinch with your soft pack, try our hard pack” was intended to encourage the male consumers to purchase their cigarette, as if their brand was stronger, more potent and better than others. The text itself denote of any distracting color, only the white color behind the character and the darken background, given the emphasis of its importance to send such messages to the mass. In the content of “Semiotic for Beginners”, it is said that a great proportion of the shots has an oblique relationship to the text; they stand for the subject matter indexical or symbolically (Davis & Walton 1983b, 45), as the advertisement message covers a good proportion of the advertisement, it was able to send a message to the mess while not overpowering the other sign of the context as well.

However, there is another side of message within the advertisement itself. Although on the surface it advertised the dominance of man, if you make a careful observation to the poster itself, you will notice something unusual within the content of the advertisement itself. Pay attention to the man’s left arm, though a simple glance shows him hugging the girl, a closer look reveals another story. A close inspection reveals that there is something between his four fingers and thumb, which actually resemble an erected male phallus. Another point of view is that the artist who enhanced the picture used the airbrush to paint out the male organ or make it harder to notice. It is said that sign connected with its object by virtue of the idea (ibid., 2.299), the male organ as a sign suddenly changes the view of the entire picture of the advertisement itself.

The man in the picture, before we see the organ appeared to be confident and smug gleefully, and now we can see there is an expression of uncertainty and nervousness in his looks. He appears to be nervous, as there is something clearly wrong on what he appears to be holding. This is the other side of the advertisement, where the advertiser shows hidden signs to give a hidden message to those who truly understand what the advertisement on the other side meant. The male character appear to be nervous, which show the sign that a majority of the men in our society are not as dominant as we might have think, it also secretly reflects the shift of changes of status of man being rightful, dominant to a person of lust and felt guilty of it. Sign itself cannot represent the entire picture of content, a sign is symbolic, iconic or indexical depends primarily on the way in which the sign is used (Grayson 1998, 35). In here, the advertiser was actually showing two similar yet entirely contrasted signs, one is a dominance of one sex over another, and another is the uncertainty of one sex over another.

In the advertisement, the man might not be comfortable of hugging the girl as we might think after we seen clearly he have done something of guilt. With the picture comes with the text that supports the hidden message even further. The message “If you got crushed in the clinch with your soft pack, try our hard pack”, the actual sign unconsciously define of soft and hard is as followed, defined as “If you are nervous about sexual intimacy, smoke Benson and Hedges to compensate”, the hidden sign of the advertisement itself was intended to defined two kind of signifier, one stance for the mass to socially acceptance on the product, another is a hidden secret motivation to be hidden from the everyday viewer. However, there is a wide debate on the actual means of the hidden signs itself, as it can have another meaning, which largely dependent on those who interpret it and defined its hidden signs.

The advertiser seems intended to have such hidden signs as a hidden signature for their advertisement, while the hidden signs are actually offensive and socially unacceptable to the mass, it is very hard to be interpreted even to this day without close observation and firsthand knowledge on the interpretation of sign itself. Signs such as these can be use as a tool to spread powerful hidden code and codec while having a surface to prevent the mass from immediately see through at first glance.

Conclusion

From the advertisement itself, we’ve learn that there are hidden signs within a medium can be spread while keeping the audience entertained, like radio announcement, television shows, movies, etc, and hidden signs can be either offensive towards the public yet they unable to actually see it due to the lack of knowledge or logic to actually interpret the hidden signs and messages within the content itself and thus make such messages or signs acceptable to the mass.

To us, this advertisement show us that we can actually give two kinds of message, one are for those who see only the sign on the surface, another are for those who can interpreted the hidden signs within a content itself, and that we can send both messages to the mass. Not only have we able to make the mass socially accept us, but also send a powerful hidden message whilst keeping us from being offensive to the mass.