Blog Post #2
Steven Wolters
15 February 2012
“When bondage is used to sell [various products], we can say that pornography has become mainstream.”
I Agree.
Declare Yourself's "Only You Can Silence Yourself" American Voting Campaign (Ft Jessica Alba)
In a culture where "sex sells" is distinguished as an effective advertising strategy, I believe the bondage theme is one less preferred. However, the lone fact that such marketing exists is enough to convince me that pornography has indeed become mainstream. Of course not in it's rawest display, but more of a "softcore" version. Nonetheless, pornography is pornography in it's overall explicity.
American Apparel's "Burnout: Meet Jennifer" Fashion Advertisment
Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" Album Photography
Aside from the music industry, advertising pornagraphy in a milder form can be viewed as a harmless attempt to simply have more appeal on it's audience. Most of these ads come in suggestive themes coupled with condoms and sexual enhancement pills. Increasingly, the participating marketing campaigns reveal less clothes in hotter situations that clearly illustrate a sex scene.
Weetabix's "Alpen Cereal - Sweet. But not too sweet." Advertisement
(Unknown Source)
Cereal Bondage Bears?
Black Coffee Erotica?
What's next?
3 comments:
Your imagery was very powerful, you didn't even have to write a lot to prove that this is a problem in our society. I agree how you said its "soft-core" pornography but porn is porn and its not ok how its deliberately feed to us in ads
Thanks for the constructive feedback.
Well, I'm late to the party -- clearly -- but I agree with Helen. I do have a different opinion of the Jessica Alba ad; it does draw the eye, it does provoke, it does perhaps make people feel uncomfortable. That said, the "silenced" woman here is the one who doesn't vote -- by NOT voting, she's effectively putting herself in bondage and perhaps contributing to the silencing of women in general. I suppose I didn't at all think "pornography" when I saw this one. Never seen the Black Coffee ad before -- I'm actually sort of surprised that this one exists. I'm really curious as to what publication accepted these ads -- I'm sure some niche, perhaps fetish publications may have run it; my guess is that's it's probably an ad available only online -- there are simply far more places where something like this might appear -- and sites can target such highly specific audiences (even niche magazines can't do this).
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