Lecture Three Decoding Advertising,

Race, Racism and Empire

MC52066A Understanding Advertising

Introduction: Decolonising Advertising

Judith Williamson On Advertising 1978

• advertising works work

through us - not 'at us’;
• Althusser’s theory of
interpellation; Loading…
• Ideology hails us as
individuals – hey you there;
• We actively creating
meanings by responding to
this hailing and finding
ourselves within it

Stuart Hall Encoding Decoding 1980

• circuit of communication – production, circulation and

consumption

• Encoding: the creation of a source message

• Denotation and Connotation: denotation = literal meaning;

connotation = associated meaning

Roland Barthes Mythologies 1957

• Myth: Helps to naturalise
particular world views and
make them seem natural

• Paris Match July 1955

Loading…
• Denotation – a soldier
saluting
• Connotation - Frenchness,
militariness, speaks to ethnic
difference in a manner that
hides the violence of French
imperialism and naturalises it

Stuart Hall cont.

• Decoding: no intelligible communication without a shared code

• Need a shared recognition of codes at the point of source, or
equivalence
• A lack of equivalence leads to a variety of meaning effects

Les Back and Vibeke Quaade (1993) Dream Utopias,

Nightmare Realities: Imaging race and culture in the
world of Benetton advertising.
•Objectification and Fragmentation
• The diversity of a national culture is reduced to stylised
individuals. And objectification is process of
commodifying cultural difference.

•Racialisation and Ambiguity

• ‘stark presentation of racial oppositions’

•Pseudo-journalism
• broke with standard advertising conventions and instead
embraced the conventions of photo-journalism

Objectification and Fragmentation

• human difference are fixed;

• race and ethnicity are
presented as unchanging and
eternal;
• ads use the image of
boundaries between
commodified cultures and
races to build their brand
image.

Racialisation and Ambiguity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=mSyFa9n9d_Y

Pseudo-journalism and documentary codes

• Pseudo-journalism and
Hyperreality;
• Hyperreality: blurring
distinction between realityLoading…
and simulations of reality
• Broke with standard
advertising conventions and
embraced the conventions of
photo-journalism;
• turning abject human
suffering into a fashion
statement

Photo-journalism disease and violence

Photo-journalism – disasters and catastrophes

Photo-journalism – hyperreality?

• All that is visible is the torso;

• A dehumanising effect;
• draws on deep cultural codes
which present Africans as
barbaric and uncivilised;
• given no voice, no history, no
specificity

That Pepsi Ad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=AfCiV6ysngU