Barthes

Barthes' article "Rhetoric of the Image" discusses the many meanings an image can provide to someone looking at it. An image is like looking at a re-presentation or resurrection of an image, and has a certain process of signification for the viewer. Barthes decided to look at significations of the image in advertising because of the intentional messages meant for an audience. Most advertisements have a single typical sign, a linguistic message, which is counted as one message. Written messages interpret the image for whoever is consuming it, but there are also other subtle signs in the message. Advertisers conduct studies to find out small details like what color attracts people to their product.

The concentration on detail in advertising can be seen in every magazine, especially with perfume and cologne ads. Women are usually placed as vulnerable and "feminine", while men are always in a strong stance to represent masculinity. While these ads seem natural to us because of our cultural knowledge, someone unfamiliar with our culture may wonder why women are always touching their faces and standing in suggestive positions in perfume ads. Advertisers are trying to make women think that using a certain scent will make them feminine or more attractive to men. The body language of the women are highly suggestive, and the text directs the women to want to be desirable with tag lines like "Be Delicious" for DKNY's scent. The message does not have a code, but we interpret it through our knowledge bound up with our perception. These advertisements mask the constructed meaning under the appearance of the given meaning. The meaning of the image to the viewer depends on the practical, national, cultural and aesthetic kinds of knowledge that he or she has.

BARTHES

Roland Barthes in his article, “Rhetoric of an Image” speaks about the depth and various meaning that can be found inside an image. Barthes asks the questions, “How does a meaning get into the image? Where does it end? And if it ends, what is there beyond”? Using advertisement as an example he shows how this type of image is frank and direct. He never talked about subliminal messaging that is found often in advertising. Advertisements that have a cleaver way of making you want their product or service, feeling like you somehow are not complete without it, for example sexual activity drawn into liquor ads or Coca Cola’s ‘cool’ factor.

Barthes discusses the use of text, how it creates a message and becomes the creator over the image. I find this to be true as captions attached to photographs tell you how to feel and interpreter the scene you are looking at. However I believe the same can be done by a photographer as they choose to focus or blur certain images or parts of images drawing your attention to a certain part of the photograph possibly making you look at the image in a different way.

Barthes compares the pureness of a photograph with the less pure drawing saying that, “The denotation of the drawing is less pure than that of the photograph, for there is no drawing without style.” There is no art form that is without style because all artists but into their artwork a piece of themselves which makes it unique and individualized. Is there any photo taken without a photographer’s style? Isn’t photography an art form as well?

Barthes

Barthes article was very interesting because it forced me to think about advertising and the strategies that they use to reach their audience. The most surprising thing to me was when he pointed out the color scheme and the use of fresh flood in conjunction with the product, which is more packaged or processed than those to help sell the product. I would have never thought twice as to why they did this because it just made sense. However, now thinking about it, I realized this understanding an outside culture from within your own culture is in fact a cultural understanding that one has. As Barthes states, the linguistic and the connoted and denoted messages within all work with one another to give off this Italianicity that is understood to an outside culture based on stereotypes that we see.

When one thinks of Italian culture, one thinks of pasta and natural tomatoes to make the tomato sauce and how our definition of a supermarket in the United States is different from that in Italy. A Wawa convenient store is really equivalent to the size of a supermarket there, even in the large cities. Italians still go to various specialized stores to buy everything—the fruttivendolo to buy the fruits and vegetables, the macellaio to buy the meat, the panificio to get the bread. It isn’t a one stop shop for your convenience like in the U.S. or as Barthes describes as a mechanical society. We know this to be true as a stereotype of Italian culture and cooking habits. This reminds me of Geertz when he states that common sense should be studied because it essentially something that is understood and not really perceived to be cultural within that society. This understanding only proves that these advertisements are in fact cultural.

He also points out the use of an Italian sounding name for the product to outsiders to make it seem more authentic, marketable, and thus appealing to the audience. He argues that French would only understand that word “pates” which is in French but understand that name of the Pasta company “Panzani” to be an Italian sounding name. However, not being able to speak French and knowing what Italian names sound-like, I can still understand that the company itself is Italian and that this is probably sold in France. This only further emphasizes Barthes point that when we look at an advertisement of a photograph, one picks and chooses and still gets the message from it and even though I cannot read French and ignore “pates,” I still understand the pasta to be Italian.

The color palette also is used to prove its authenticity also by sticking to the colors of the Italian flag. The objects evoke a literal and metaphorical symbolic message, a two-for-one deal if you will, which is what advertisements love to do. This is the most shocking thing that I would have never noticed myself because the staging, light, objects themselves, and the text are all obvious things I would have looked at. I would have thought about color versus black and white, however, I would have never thought of the actual colors used and how they work off of one another and as a purposeful choice to show a symbolic meaning besides the literal and evident meaning. The lighting in this photograph is also very warm and yellow creating a feeling of nostalgia as well to a more quaint of more simple life that maybe the outside might see as something to be longed for.

The thing I did not agree with or maybe follow correctly was Barthes argument of the photographic medium and when he compared it to film. Photographs will never be able to objectively show something or make a copy of something. Yes, he acknowledges the ‘”tricks” as he calls them that can manipulate the photograph and its ability to copy what was in front of the camera as it was, however, a photograph even when not specifically using these “tricks” cannot and will not ever be able to make a copy of the thing in front of it. As John Szarkowski points out in The Photographer’s Eye, the photograph is different from the thing itself. The subject of the photograph and the actual thing in real life are not one in the same or even similar and the photograph is never able to represent it. Therefore, when he argues that unlike drawing which is selective and does not reproduce everything, a photograph is not able to intervene within the object even though it can pick the point of view and its angle. This argument to me is nonsensical and weak because these two things as well as other independent variables will always intervene and change how it appears. As I said before the two are not one in the same, but also because the lighting for example or the vantage point can make something look much larger or infinitesimal in comparison to other things in the frame. This is never possible. As drawings pick and choose, so does a photographer so this is not possible. In this case he says that it can change the connotation, but not the denotation. These two in my opinion are inseparable when looking at a photograph and shouldn’t be looked at separately because they work together. Therefore, I see his point to some extent but his argument is weak and I do not agree with it at all.

Barthes response

"Rhetoric of the Image" discusses the motif of the image, and the representations and symbols can be told through the image itself, and how the meaning gets into the image. With the example of the Panzani advertisement, there are somewhat hidden signs which give the viewer a sense of nostalgia or familiar feeling, which evokes the good memories connected to the market place, and eventually is connected to the sudden desire to purchase the pasta. The scene of the advertisement gives a sense of "euphoric value" (Barthes 270). Barthes discusses the signs in an image which can include linguistic messages, coded iconic messages, and non-coded iconic messages. Based on the signs which one can apparently receive and decode upon viewing the advertisement in the example, different cultures would view the meaning behind the photograph differently, and many, in fact would not be able to identify with the linguistic messages behind it. Barthes brings up the question "Does the image duplicate certain of the informations given in the text by a phenomenon of redundancy or does the text add a fresh information to the photo" (273)? In regards to the denoted image, it works in giving the viewer a sense of "being-there" creating a new space-time relationship, and how the "absence of a code clearly reinforces the myth of photogenic 'naturalness' " (278).