~

Two Approaches to the Study ofAdvertisements

Private companies who wish to know how the fornines of specific prod-ucts are, or might be, affected by the advertising lavished on their behalfhave condúcted rnany quantitatíve srudies dell ing with the effects ofadvertising on market behaviour, consurner choice, and social artirudes.Unfortunately for independent comrnenrators who are interested pri-marily in advertising's more general social and cultural role in the rnod-ern world, most ofthese voluminous reports are kept confidential and areihus not a resource upon which they can draw.

Were this proprietary information available, our understanding ofadvertising would doubtless be greatty enhanced. However, its inac-ccssihility is not necessarily adamaging blow because, while the datanonnaily assembled in such studies may be of great value to peoplewhose happiness fluctuates with the rnovernents of lines on sales charts,Ihey are less gennane to our own atrernpes to fathom the "systerníc"p('Ilt'lration of our society and culture by advertising. Proprietary re-~('archnecessarily is focused on very specific, pragmatic concerns, and solill' t!:lta collected are fragrnentary and bound by the impetus to discoverc-it lu-r how to spark once more the interest of jaded consumers or how to('lIhalln' brand loyalty. Since these piecemeal studíes are guided by suchspt'cilk ohjectives, and although the researchérs are usually well aware(ll what others are doing, the process as a whole certainly has no overallglI idalH'l' and the patterns of their actlviries maybecome apparent only toi Iio:«: who observe thern from a distance. Examining this immense.uuount lll' COIISlIlI1erresearch in derai 1,therefore , is likely to be of limitedlit i 1ity ill II Ilcll'rSland i!lg how advertising works its magic on the meaningtil pr()dll('IS ill g('II('ral, lll' for appreciating its powerful communicationsIlllwt j( lll. III (lt lur wordx, wlu-n wt' wish to study advertising asasystem of'.(11'1;111'111111111111il ·:Ition , t ln: .';(·11illi ('n ·.~I(·dand confl icting actions of man-1II.IIIllJ'l·rs Ill'('(llll(' jllst (ll\(' p:1I1(l!;l I:!rg('r totul iry.

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198 / The Tbeatre of Consumption

ing into questions about communication formats, messages, and mean-ings. By regarding the "texts" the advertising industry produces as asystematic expression of strategies and meanings, they have sought touncover the commonalities in form and content and the points of depar-ture occurring in this material over time that are not apparent at firstglance-and that may never have been consciously intended by theircreators. For su ch purposes, one must focus on messages themselvesrather than on the reactions of consumers to them.

Two major methodologies have been employed in the study ofadvertising messages: semiology and content analysis. In this chapter, weevaluate their strengths and weaknesses in contributing to an under-standing of advertising's place in modern society and culture. In thefollowing chapter we describe our own approach, which atternpts tocombine the best features of the other two, and apply it to a sample ofadvertising material that spans the period from 1900 to the present. Wethen interpret this material against the background of the rise of medi-ated communication and the consumer culture.

SEMIOLOGY AND THE STIJDY OF ADVERTISING

Semiology (or semiotics) is a method for examining rextual material thatemerged from linguistics and from literary and cultural analysis, ratherthan from the tradition of social science research. It can be used to studymany kinds of social phenornena, anything in which meaning is thoughtto inhere can be investigated from this standpoint. The Swiss linguistFerdinand De Saussure (1966), who was especially interested in theinternal structures of Iínguístíc systems, applied the term "semiology" towhat he described as "the science of sígns." From the outset, semi-ologists have concentrated on relationships among the parts of a messageor communication system, for, they contend, it is only through=theinteraction of component parts that meaning is formed. The Frenehthe ori st Roland Barthes (1973) was one of the first to study advertisingfrom this perspective, applying semiotic tools to all aspects of popularculture, from Citroens and wrestling matches to toys and soap powdercommercials. Another precursor of the semiological study of advertisingwas the Canadian literary critic Marshall McLuhan. In The MechanicalBride (1951), McLuhan anticipated mu ch of the later interest in advertis-ing from the perspective of its relationships to the media system andpopular culture.

There are already many fine and detailed exposition~of the rneth-odology of semiology, for example, Barthes (1973), Guírarid (1971), andDyer (1982), and we need not duplicate them here. We shall confineourselves to outlining the reasons why semiology is especially appropri-ate to the study of contemporary advertising and some of the basic

Two Approacbes to the Study of Aduertisements / 199

concepts of the method (describing how, aceording to semiology, wederive meaning from advertising), and reviewing some of the majorstudíes of advertising from this perspective.

The growing preponderance of vísuals in ads has enhanced theambiguity of meaning embedded in message structures. Earlier advertis-ing usually states its message quite explicitly through the medium ofwritten text (even if the most outrageous claims were made in theprocess), but starting in the mid-I920s visual representation becamemore common, and the relationship between text and visual imagebecame complementary-that is, the text explained the visual. In thepostwar period, and especially since the early 1960s, the functtons of textmoved away from explaining the visual and toward a more cryptic form, inwhich text appeared as a kind of "key" to the visual.

In all, the effect was to make the commercial message more ambigu-ous, a "reading" of it depended on rela.1ing~e.ments in the ad's internalstructure to each other, as welL~ing in references fr.om the.externalworla."Decoding" what is happening in these more complicated mes-sage structures requires the use of a method-such as semiology-sen-sitive to these nuances. (Later we will return to these historicai shifts intextual materials and imagery, and to the way consumers "read" them.)

Advertising design and content have also changed in tandem withthe theory of market segmentation, which is rooted in the fragmentationof audiences and the specificity of messages. Daniel Pope (1982), as wehave noted, dates the beginnings of this orientation in the 1920s. Marketand audience research gives advertisers a vast amount of demographicand, later, "psychographíc" data about the characterístícs of the targetaudience. Advertising designed with this orientation in mind began tofocus on the benefits accruing to the .consumer in using the product,rather than on the characterístics of the product itself. This new emphasisled to an increase in narrative and dramatic forms that tell stories aboutconsumers and their uses of products and a steady decline in the amountof textual information presented about products in national advertisingcampaigns. User-centred advertising draws upon the shared experiences,perceptions, and attitudes of the segmented audience, while product-centred advertising can rely only on product claims in its attempt toappeal to an undífferentíated mass market.

A.gvertising ,l:reator Tony Schwa!:,tz isolates the key point in thistransition in his "resonance" theory of communication; at the core.oradvertising's"p_urpose~Qw is not the message itself as a communicator ofmeaning, but rather its relaUo;;'ship to the_aucÍie~e: "The meaning of our

mmunication is what a listener or viewer ge ts outof his experíencewíththe comrnunícator's stímulí. The Iístener's or víewer's brain is an indls-pensable componeur of the total communication system. His life experi-l'nCt's, as weil as his l'xpt'clations of the stimuli he is receíving, interact

200 / The Theatre of Consumption

with the communicator's output in determining the meaning of thecommunication" (Schwartz 1974, 25). The job of the advertiser is to knowthe world of the segmented audiences intimately, so that the stimulicreated can evoke associations with whatever is "stored" in their merno-ries and imaginations.

This means more than seeking to "reflect" the materials of everydaylife. Advertising executive jerry Goodis says. "Advertising doesn't alwaysmirror how people are acting, but how they're dreaming .... In a sense,what we're doing is wrapping up your emotions and selling them back toyou" (in Nelson 1983, 10).

Advertising indeed draws deeply from the predispositions, hopes.,and concerns ofTtSaudlences, bm it reformulates them to suit its ownQu~poses, not reflecting_m~aning but rarher reconstituting it. Locking atadvertisements today is a bit like walking through a carnival hall ofmirrors, where the elements of our ordinary lives are magnified andexaggerated but are still recognizable.

And ~his is wh): semiology is so appropriate, for it is about trying ~answer some very basic questions concerning meaning. "How is meaningrecöllstituted both by advertisers and viewers of messages?" More símply:""How do ads work?" Semtology is the study of signs. Signs are things thath.gyea meaning, that communicate messages to people.. As such, almostanything can perform as a sign-an object, book, film, person, building,song, or ad. In other words, anything that has a meaning is asign. Herewewill confine our remarks to the advertisement as sign, and, more par-ticularly, to the pro du ct in the ad. The question we wish to pose is: "Howdoesrhe.product come to have meaning?' ,This is not all advertising seeksto do, for it obviously seeks to give meaning to persons as weil as toproducts, but the constitution of the meanings of persons in ads is part ofthe constitution of the meaning of products, and, in "strategic" terms, issubordinate. Even if one argu es that advertising's most important socialimpact is on the way that people come to regard themselves, one mustacknowledge that, from the standpoint of the advertisers, this takessecond place behind the marketing of products.

Semiology origínates in a discussion of signs, or more specifically, ofa "system of signs." A sign within a system of meaning may be scparatedinto rwo componems. "the signifier' , and' 'the signified." The signifier isthe material vehicle of meaning; the signified actually "is" the meaning.The signifier is its "concrete" dimension; the signified is its "abstract"side. While we can separate the rwo for analytical purposes, in reality theyare inseparable.

Roland Barthes gives the example of roses, which in most westerncultures signify romantic or passionate love. The "meaning" of ros es inour cultural setting is thus tied up with the idea of passion. In analytical

Two Approacbes to tbe Study ofAdvertisements / 201

terms, then, we have three elements in the communicative process: (1)the signifier-roses; (2) the signified-e passion, (3) the sign-their unityas "passionified roses. " One of semiülogy's mo,st important points is thedistinetien between the ggnifier and the sig.E; they _a~E;.not the sarne,although they appea!.l0_ be tbe_same. Nothjag inherentin !2.s<;;slímitstheir meaning t~assion ~lone.}n another culture, or in another systemof meaning, ros es could signify somethíng totaljy different, perhaps eventhe Qp.I2.Q§ileof~ion-:-The rose-as signifier without the sígnlfíed isernpty of meaning. The rose as sign is full of meaning. ~ advertising, theqeators of messages try to turn signifiers (goods), with which audiencesmay haVe1Tttle or nü farníliariry, into meaningfui signs that, they hope,will prompt cünsumers torespünd with appropriaie behaviour.--- Many aspects of our da ily lives have a long and com pl ex history

within specific cultural processes, and it is often difficult to show howsigns have arisen as meaningfui constructions. For example, just how didroses come to have the meaning they do? It turns out to be easier to posethese questions about things that are explicitly designed to supply Uswith meanings, such as advertisements. Tony Schwartz identifies theexplicit purpose of advertising as making products "resonate" withmeaning for audiences. How, then, do ads communicate the meaningsassociated with products?

One of the best semiological analyses is Judith Williamson's Decod-ing Advertisements (1978). She uses ads from the Freneh perfume man-ufacturer Chanel to illustrate her arguments. Her point of reference isseemingly a very simple ad: the face of a woman (the Freneh fashionmodel/actress Catherine Deneuve) is shown with a picture of the pred-uct (a bettle of Chanel No. 5) in the corner of the image. To the question,What is the meaning of this ad? we míght answer: It telis us that ChanelNo. 5 is chic, sophisticated, and elegant; that by wearing it we would beadding something to our character which is the epitome of."Frenchness," specifically, glarnour and flawless beaury,

Breaking this down in semiological terms, we have the signifier-the actual bottle of perfume, the signified-French chic, glamour,hcauty, and sophístication (represented by Catherine Deneuve): theiruniry in the sign-"Chanel No. 5" is Freneh chic, glamour, beauty, andsophtstlcatíon.

Assuruing that this is the meaning of the ad to us, the questionlx-comes: How did we arrive at this conclusion? Nothing in the adt'xpl ículy states this. The semiological approach, however, suggests that1IIt' meaning of an ad does not float onrhe surface just waiting to belnu-rnallzed by the viewer, but ísbuili up o'utaf the ways that differenr,iXIls art' organízed and related to each other, both within the- adandIhrnllgh extcrnal references to wider beliefsystems. More specificaIly,

202 / The Theatre of Consumption

for adv<::!!isingto create meaning~~eader or the viewer has to do some"work." Because the meaning is not lying there on the page, GDehas tom~neffOrúo grasp it. There are three' steps to the process.- Fiis~ the me~rÍing of one sign is transferred to another. In William-son's example, the meanigg of "Catherine Deneuve" (herself a signmeaning Freneh chic) is transferred to the product. No line of argumentlinks the rwo, and the transferral depends on their juxtaposition withinthe structure of the ad. There are manyways this transfer can take place:berween persons and objects as here; between social situations andobjects, between objects and objects, and, finally, berween feelings andobjeCls._ ~

Second, this transfer of significance is not completed within the ad:we must make the connection ourselves. For instance, nowhere is itstated that "Chanel No. 5" is like " Catherine Deneuve." This meaningdoes not exist until we complete the transfer. Beginning in the 1960s,advertisers started to see viewers explicitly as participants in the mean-ing- generation functions of ads. Marty Myers explains:

Doyle Dane did things that other agencies said couldn't work. They workedbecause they treated people as if they had some brain and as though they hada sense of humour. They realized that people wouldn't mind a tickle, beingchallenged and being made to perform what the psychologists call closure-that is, give them "a" and "c" and they'Il put the "b" in. Leave some holes init. (Interview)

Williamson stresses that a sign is only capable of be ing transferred orof replacing something if it has a meaning in the first place for the readerorvtewer. The transference requires our active participation: "There is aspace; a gap left where the speaker should be; and one-;;-f the peculiarfeatures of advertising is that we are drawn in to fill that gap, so that webe come both listener and speaker, subject and object" (Williamsoh-t978,13-14).

Meaning is not "received" in a unidirectional flow from elsewhere:the audience-c~ re-creates it. It works not at us but through us.The ad isa mediator between.crearor and reader, standing at the con-fluence of the double symbolic process in the marketplace, where pro-ducers of goods attempt to construct one set of meanings, and whereconsumers use these meanings (along with meanings drawn from othersources) in the construction of their own lifestyles. This is the process ofinternal transference:

We are giverr rwo signifiers and required to make a "slgnified" byexchangingthem. The fact that we have to make this exchange, to do the linking workwhich is not done in the ad, but which is only made possible by íts form,draws us ínto the transformational space berween the units of the ad. Ilsmeaning only exists in this space: the field of transaction. and it is here thatwe operate-we are this space. (Williamsol1 197R, 44)

Two Approacbes to the Study ofAdvertisements / 203-....,

(!hirdl in order for the transfer to take place, the first object mustalready have a llLeaning to be transferred - it rnust already be significant~ the audience. we~~ a1seady know what Catherine Deneuve "standsor," what she means within the world of glamour, or there would be no

significance to transfer.In the same way, in Figure 8.1 we need to know the meaning of the

persons and activities being represented and being transferred to theproduct. In this case the important value transfer is between the model,Margaux Hemingway, and the product. In the early 1970s, Hemingwaywas a fresh face in thé world of fashion, representing a modern andflamboyant style. The transfers of meaning here work similarly to thosejust described, but their concrete value is different because MargauxHemingway's meaning is "in opposition" to that of Catherine Deneuve.Even if we can not identifythe individual models in ads, however, we areusually ab le to deduce the reason for their presence by their "look,"which indicates their position within the iconography of fashion.

Williamson calluhese-s:yste-ms of meaníng.from whích we draw thematerials to complete the transfe[."referent systernsi" They constitute thebody of knowledge from which both advertisers and audiences drawtheirinspiration. In this context. mass-media advertising plays the role ofmediator. If the audience is to "decode" the message adequately-thatis, to make the transfer of meaning-advertisers have to tap the reservoirsof social and cultural knowledge maintained by audiences, and transformthis material into the message ("encode" it), developing an appropriateform at and shaping the content in order that the cycle of communicationthat runs from the audience's experiences and back agaín can be com-pleted (Hall 1980).

In the era of market segmentation and the thirry- or fifteen-secondcommercial, this reliance on shared knowledge becomes even moreimportant. The thirty-second ad allows little time to gíve informationabout anything. Advertisers pretty much have to use what already exists inthe imaginations of the target audience:

First, you work out who you are talking to-say men ages x to y, macho inattitude-demographic and psychographic information. We get this fromresearch people and from the marketing people just digging around in themarket. Then you know you are talking to these psychographics, attitudesabout themselves-anything. I'Il take anything 1 can get on that. The idealtarget market is one person-tell me everything about thern, their dreams,how they feel about the meals they eat, how they save, where they went toschool. Tell me everything about them and 1 can sell them Hitler. So couldyou. But ifwe said to one person it wouldn't be worthwhile so you have tofind sornething that has a collective set of appeals. (Interview)

111 (11<.' rnove from mass to segmented marker, advertising strategycllallHl'cI dramatically. Today, advertisers can draw upon the specialized

FIGURE8.1Referent Systerns:Adrift in a sea ofbeautifuI faces, the celcbrtry helps to fix thespecific associations of the object.

Source: Courresy of Fabergé, Inc.

Two Approacbes to the Study of Advertisements / 205

knowledge of fragmented audiences, so that the same product can beso ld in different ways to different groups. 1Codes 9.5

~~\2-1J J.

Since advertising works by aJ2peal to "referentEJ't~rn~'J! generates~ning throug~s !Ji ffi~!Q.Q as wel! as denoranon. ~message containsCtw2-levels of.m.eaníngs ~iJ says explicítly on thesurface and what it says implicitly below. In Figure 8.2, at the denotative(.5UiTa"ce)level, the VlSüals teH us that "Sferoflex" eyewear is strong,reliable, and longlasting as actor and bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno atternptswíthout success to break a pair of glasses. But at the connotative level, thead tells us mu ch more, for Lou Ferrigno is no ordinary bodybuilder. heplayed "The lncredible Hulk" in a popular TV series (al!uded to in thetext in the phrase "years of 'incredible' strength, comfort and beaury").F~goo means more than just strength to his audieEJ-ce;he means extra-orQinary stren~h and thJs strength is transferred to the eyewear. At thesame time, the positioning of the woman's hands and the pursing of herlips suggest the sexual attraction that Ferrigno and his strength carry.

At the connotative level, then, the ad implies that the use o"Sferoflex" glasses may make the wearer sexually attractíve to women.Nowhere in the ad is this stated. we interpret it this way through internaland external transfers of significance. Moreover, this is not the onlyinterpretation we could have made. If the same ad were viewed from afemale rather than a male perspective, the eyewear could be connected tothe beauty of the female model rather than to the strength of the male.

Connotation is a feature of all communication, not an invention ofadvertising. Propaganda relies heavily on it. Figure 8.3, from World WarII, consists of rwo words and two symbols. At the denotative level, thismessage has almost no meaning. "1 believe"-in what, who, or why isvery unclear. At the connotative level, however, its message is unrnistak-able and powerful. The two symbols are familiar and powerful represen-tauens of two different systerns of belief. The cross superimposed on theswastika is astrong staternerit that "1 believe" the good of Christianity cantriumph over the evil of fascism.

The connotative reading of the place of objects in particular had tohe learned over time. While it seems from this example (and generallyfrom the study of rwentieth-century progaganda) that the connotativelevel has always been an important element in the reading of publicstaternents, its transfer to product-based messages was not a natural one.Advertising had to teach an evolving consumer culture not just to enjoyvisual stimuli, but to integrate visual and textual material, using goods astht- linking mechanism to achieve an internal transfer of signficance.Frolll nhout 1925 to 1945, the text duplicated the visual and told the

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FIGURE 8.2Codes. Advertising muscles into the reservoir of popular cultural forms, oftenborrowing meaning from other idioms.

Sferoflex Eyewear Shows Its Musele !

BeodII SlrelchIt FfexII Bestol aliWedf I\! Steronex The Qrl9ln<i: spnng hngeeyewedr by BerDei Tho llf~1prootemt-eecvctJ,asse-s wrtn <In In\iISlb:c spm~9-h'nge.rrechamsm bu.u m to every neme. WhyProcremFree? For startcrs Sk~fOI~t:J(~,pfll'\g-llInqe action means pCI!(;CI ba!encc pertect hr 1;.:-VCr''NGi{;nl a,c,lt;bu-hoo. YOU! cyc91asses ~tav (.om!Oftab'y ,rptace never 6lPP~llg Or l):'Olng dOWn101htedge of '/űlll Il(JSC Gooe terever IS!h,l' tlqht.u n,comfOftdblo pressure attnc ren-orcaSfCIOI10.iC.spflng hl"oe ecbon rreans )'edi'::>and ycal~ of incrcdible' saenqlh. contort .andbcduly

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Avatlable whsrevel Ime eyowear IS sol,

FIGURE 8.3Visual Syrnbols. Imagery relies heavily on the implicit connotations associatedwith established social referents.

208 / The Tbeatre of Consumption

FIGURE 8.4In older ads, text guided the interpretation of visual imagery, connecting itwith product use.

audience that what they saw resulted from using the product. In contem-porary advertising, this ability to transfer is assumed because the au-dience is "advertising educated." For example, compare Figure 8.4,where the visual is described and its link with the product is made, toFigure 8.5.

Semiology híghlíghts the way that we curseives take.mt~Í!uhereation of meaning ínmessages, suggestíng that we are not mere by-

slande~n the advertising process; but participants in creating a codethat unites t~e designer and reader. Ilw..t..ar~nQLqdeg~ately aware of t~e.relevan~,~$J&ent sy~m we will not be..able tQ_aec~_tfie l~agt.' Asaudíences are fragmented into smaller and smaller markersegments, theoperátíve codes for each target group become more specialized. Adver-users like working wíth narrowly defined grou ps rather than with diffuse,broadly based general audiences. The more narrowly one can define anaudíence and the more specialized the knowledge one can draw from,the more certain one can be of speaking to people in a language they willrespond to.

While the production of messages and their reception by the au-dtenre may not always be perfectly symmetrical processes, each is in-complete without the other. If there is no common understanding, therecan be no communication:

1 see advertising as su ch an imperfect way of selling things-there are somany failures. It's a cod ing process. I have a product to sell and an idea. 1decide on something succinct to get your attention, then 1encode it and putit into the medium. You see it and then decode it. 1 hope you get the sameidea from the process that r started with. r hope you will make the choice andthat the idea 1as the advertising person had ofwhat would cause you to buythat product has merit. (Interview)

While "there is no íntellígíble discourse without the operation of acode" (Hall 1980, 131), there is never just one code. In daily life, we use agreat variery and multiplicity of codes. product codes, social codes,cultural codes, personal codes, and so forth. In Figure 8.6, we can see theoperatien of a subcultural code (sport). We must know why the names.JIIll Thorpe, Bob Mathias, and Rafer Johnson signifyversatility. AlthoughII ls vaguely alluded to in the text, to obtain a "full" reading of the ad wehave to know that the se three are linked with the Olympic decathlon,which is made up of ten very different athletic aerivitles. Without theinformation that they are ali forrner Olympic champions of the decathlon,rhc transfers of significance are much diminished. This ad appeared inUfe:~ special issue on the 1984 Olympics, and thus was intended for aspeclnllzcd audíence segment.

In Flgurc 8.7, takcn from vogue, one has 10 know that, in a certaíncultural context. pickles and lee erearn arc convenuonally associatedwlrh pn-gnancy ill order for the opening. "As your family grows," to make

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~ONEIDA111~silver cubc. Our silvcrsmuhs' mark ul excellence. Made Jn America.ShO\\l1: lüujt)Uf', <poon in 'tauilc,,> and Lotu ...lx1\vl IR vrlvcrplate. Complete selecuons al fine stores.

Source: Courtesy of One ida Canada Ltd.

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IlHt'i Iht' lmpllclt relerenec ha,'! a much higher degree of relevance for a/c'mal(' audk-ncc. Slmllarly, III 1981\ two ads appeared Jn different maga-

111('11 lor lill' clgurcuc brand vantage. The one in the women's fashionllIa~:IlIIH' Bazaar Ieatured an attractive wornan holding a cigarette andIc:alllllg on a roll of fabric draped over a mannequin in an experimentaldl('ss design. The capnon read, "Vantage. The taste of success." Clearly,Ihl:-.was supposed to represent a successful fashion designer. The otherIId appcared in the male-oriented magazine Sports Illustrated and fea-tun-el a young rnan dressed neatly in leisure clothes, holding a cigaretteand lcaníng on the part ly finished hull of the boat he is building. Al-Ihough selling the same product, the rwo ads make reference to differentnottens of success and to divergent states of satisfaction or modes ofck-stre .

1n many semiological analyses, the argument be comes weak at thispolnt. While the notion of code is insightful and imaginative in its'onceptual outline, the applications to specific cases too of ten lapse into

vague generalities. For instance, Judith Williamson's Decoding Aduer-tisem ents starts promisingly by dissecting the codes of fashion that em-brace both Catherine Deneuve and Margaux Hemingway as mode ls yetclifferentiate each from the other. Later on, however, when the content ofIhese "referent systems" is presented, her discussion abandons the sen-sual codes of the fashion world for the more abstract and "deeper" codesof ancíent cultural traditions. These deeper codes are explained in terms)f complex anthropological notions, fashioned from the realm of magic

and alchemy and from broad sweeps of time, narratíve, and history.Doubtless, Williamson's purpose here is to show how ads divorce thesedeeper sources of life and culture from the material and historicai contextthat makes them truly rneaníngful, so that we are left with a hollow notionof things su ch as "nature" and "history." Such analysis and criticism isnot incorrect, but it is just too broad. All of modern culture crawls withreferences to archaic impulses concerning the animals we love or fear,the idiosyncrasies of dining and dressing, sex roles, puberty and adoles-cence, marriage and courtship, power and domination. And most ofmodern culture remains rooted in the old opposítíons. good and evil,sacred and profane, life and death. Certainly, one finds ali this ancieotbaggage dumped helter-skelter into advertisements, but one finds it justabout everywhere else, too. Although it is fascinating to unpack it, doingso do es not tell one ali that much about advertising.

Varda Leymore's Hidden My th (1975) also seeks to transpose thenotion of code into culture. Leymore tries to study modern advertisingusing the same type of structural analysis that anthropologists use tostudy the systerns of myth in primitive societies. The codes of advertisingare the same as the cod es of myth, and reveal the "essential underlyinguni ty of the symbolic function of the rnind." In advertising are found the