Notes on Ads and Feminist theory

Claudia sings Sunshine on a Rainy Day - Water Aid

·         Unlike other water aid adverts this one is less depressing and more enlightening

·         The overall message is sunlight

·         It opens with a rainy day (in presumably England) and cuts to a sunny day in Africa. This is ironic since we want a sunny day yet people in Africa need a rainy one. We sit down and mope about the bad weather whereas those in Africa embrace it

·         This is used to maybe show us how happy deprived children living in those conditions would be once we start donating.

·         Most adverts show children before they have access to clean water whereas this chooses to show them after they have access to clean water.

No choice Jean – Water Aid

·         Like the previous advert we have a point of view from a deprived child called jean

·         Unlike the previous advert we see jean in a gloomy manner drinking dirty water

·         This creates sympathy towards jean and every other person deprived of clean water enough to influence someone to donate a sum of money

Water Aid advert 2013

·         This once again has another point of view who is also a child.

·         This has multiple rewinds obviously symbolising the cycle these kids go through by travelling drinking water and getting ill to then when the cycle ends by death

·         This is making us aware of this never ending cycle which can end in two ways: death or by donating in order to provide water for these children

Liesbet van Zoonen

·         The idea that gender is constructed through discourse, and that its meaning varies according to cultural and historical context

·         The idea that the display of women’s bodies as objects to be looked at is a core element of western patriarchal culture

·         The idea that in mainstream culture the visual and narrative codes that are used to construct the male body as spectacle differ from those used to objectify the female body

Bell Hooks

·         The idea that feminism is a struggle to end sexist/patriarchal oppression and the ideology of domination

·         The idea that feminism is a political commitment rather than a lifestyle choice

·         The idea that race and class, as well as sex, determine the extent to which individuals are exploited, discriminated against or oppressed

Walter Lippmann, (1922): Stereotype

·         A preconceived and oversimplified idea of the characteristics which typify a person, situation, etc.

·         An attitude based on such a preconception

·         A person who appears to conform closely to the idea of a type