Raheam's Advertising Essay

Positive Repesentation of Women

This commercial is used to advertise a new range of clothing at Marks and Spencer’s for women. There is a positive representation of women flowing constantly throughout this advert. Females are presented as happy; the vibrant parallel music played in the background creates a happy-go-lucky atmosphere.
The mise en scene includes natural environments such as lakes, beaches and forests to connote natural beauty reflected in the women. This advert is constructed to mirror the fact that who matter who you are you are beautiful. The target audience for this commercial is women aged between 25-50, an older audience can relate to the older females displayed. Women are not portrayed in their stereotypical roles in the kitchen; instead this advertisement illustrates the alternative representation of females. The happy-go-lucky successful type.
Famous successful women such as Danni Minogue and Lisa Snowdon are used to model the clothes. This is also a positive representation because the females are portrayed as totally feminine, the seductive dresses they wear, the handbags hanging of their shoulder and the open cut shirts all add to their femininity.
Androgyny is not presented in this commercial, enforcing the fact it is not socially acceptable for women to dress like men. Although there is not a lot of flesh on show and explicit revealing of body parts on show, the women still look sexually gratifying with clothes on, this helps to establish a positive representation for women in general.


Negative Representation of Women

In this advert for Fairy washing up liquid, it is evident that females are being represented in a negative manner. To show that Fairy liquid will last a very long time, the narrative constructed is based in the kitchen where the product is used. The advert tracks through the decades placing women in the kitchen. The change in decade is created through improvements in the mise en scene.
The medium shots of the women present them all in non kitchen clothing. The fact the women have been in the kitchen since approximately the 1940’s and still are to this day is considered degrading and isolating them into these stereotypically roles. The stereotype that is reinforced is the concept of women being housewives; they are only good in the kitchen. The mise en scene in all the shots shown is of a kitchen environment, further cementing a woman’s rightful place.
Men are not shown in this advert, suggesting that there role is not in the kitchen and that the patriarchal society is still in perfect order, that they are the breadwinner and can go home to have their food on clean plates. The advert is a bit ironic, because the feministic waves for equality strived to get women out of these designated stereotypical roles, but this advert throws them back into their delegated positions. Also the aurora that the females are giving off, revealed through the facial expressions makes it appear that the females are happy to be in the kitchen.
In every shot the woman of the house is accompanied by a young girl supposedly her daughter. This further gives of a negative representation of females because she seems eager to wash up and stay in the kitchen. In conclusion this advert contains a strong moral; that women belong in the kitchen.

WWW- Good analysis of the representation of women in the 'Marks and Spencers Advertisement'. good use of media terminology, when talking about the music and mise-en-scene.

EBI- More media terminology could of been used in you analysis of the negetive representation of women, e.g when talking about the narrative structure you could have mention a 'Linear narrative stucture'. When talking about the 'degrading of women', you could have mention 'subordinating'. When talking about th 'strong moral', you could have mentioned 'ideology.