Advert, Print: Tide 1950 Flashcards
Historical Context
Post WWII consumer boom of the 50s, leads to new ‘hardware’ technologies that make housework chores easier (vacuum cleaner / washing machines)
Product Context
Launched by Proctor & Gamble
Print + Radio campaigns run together, both using the ‘housewife’ character and ideology of love - quick building of audience familiarity
Comparative Study Texts
Women’s Land Army
Rosie the Riveter
We can do it
- All challenge stereotypes of women confined to domestic sphere
Codes and Conventions
Copy - More text in 1950s adverts / Sans-serif font for headings, subheadings, slogans, which connotes an informal mode of address / Serif font for ‘technical’ details, connotes more ‘serious’, ‘factual’, info
Composition - Z-line, rule of thirds, leading to cartoon panel in the bottom right with users discussing product with informal lexis / Bright primary colours connote intended positive associations with product
Barthes Semantic Code
Connotations of love and relationships in images of hearts, connotes positivity in product
Enigma Codes - Suspense created through enigma of “what women want”
Action Codes - Anticipation created through the use of !
Symbolic Codes - Hyperbole / Superlatives / Tripling in copy connotes superior cleaning power
Representations
Dress code - Stereotypical 1950’s hairdo - glamorous but practical - connotes housework, maybe in binary opposition of full makeup
Post WWII - Reassertion of traditional gender roles / Home advertising targets women with stereotype domestic perfection and subservience to husband
Stuart Hall’s Representation Theory
Domestic images familiar as representations of audiences own lives and shared cultures
Gauntlett’s Identity Theory
Women represented in the advert, act as role models of domestic perfection that the audience may want to construct their own sense of identity against
Van Zoonen’s Feminist Theory
May contradict her theory that media contributes to social change by non-traditional representations using non-sexist language
Advert could be a response to cultural challenges brought about WWII
bell hook’s Feminist Theory
By only using young white women, may reinforce bell hook’s theory that lighter skinned women are more desirable and conform to western ideology of beauty
Levi-Strauss’ Binary Oppositions
Tide and its commercial rivals, which connotes that other, inferior products do not offer what Tide does
Target Audience
Increasingly affluent lower middle class women - need for innovative domestic technologies
Good housekeeping endorsement (opinion leader) reinforces market leading assertion
Gilroy’s Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Theory
May reinforce his theory that media texts reinforce colonial power, through the image of a white woman in Tide, reflecting lighter skinned women are more desirable and conform to western ideology
Audience Demographic
Constructed through the use of women to personally identify with (uses & gratifications)
Newly married with young families
Connotations of mens / children’s clothes on washing line
Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory
Indirect mode of address made by woman in main image connotes importance of her relationship of Tide - the dominant encoding of adverts primary message for “you women”
Direct mode of address of the figures in top right and bottom left reinforces personal pronouns “your wash” and imperative “remember”
