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Advertising is about imagining: Imagining yourself as the person in the ad. You identify, you desire, you covet, you buy. This is the way it works. A successful seduction makes for a successful ad.
McLuhan explains that the ad pictured in his article uses the same technique as Picasso used.
Picasso experimented with photography as an artistic medium for a time. He developed and printed; he also experimented with mirror images, double exposure, and photographic negatives, inverting and reversing images much as the lens of the camera and the human visual pathway do.
It's the imagery that's important in this article's advertising photograph. The relationship between the woman and the poster she's standing next to is intended to help us as viewers place meaning and draw the appropriate conclusions (or so the advertising agency hopes).
The painter Georges Braques said, "I do not believe in things; I believe in relationships."
Given the right images, the mind will make its own connections. This can be used to the advantage of anyone trying to sway you in a certain direction.
When we look at this picture, we place meaning, judgment, and authority in a split second. When there seems to be no connection within the image, we "make" the connection subconsciously. This is how it's supposed to work. It's all calculated to plant a secret seed of motivation. Like looking at Medusa, we are changed forever after gazing upon it.
In this article, the focus is on the advertisement photograph. Although the photo itself offers opportunity for critique, I dont believe this is McLuhan's point. The importance of the image here is the intended perception. It's not just the way the viewer places meaning, but it's the idea that the "image maker" is aware of how the viewer will place meaning.
With this one photograph, the viewer understands through agreement that the woman in the picture holds the desired qualities of the horse: she is sleek, powerful, fiercely independent, yet at the same time soft, classy, mute, submissive, unapologetically feminine, and no doubt sweet. She is self-contained, loyal, healthy, and wild, yet tamable. She may be claimed and "stabled," but never possessed.
The implication is that this is what men desire and women want. This is what makes women valuable. In order to achieve this value, women must dress this way and wear these stockings. She is the quintessential female version of a male: the perfect woman. The implied message is: this image is what all women should strive for.
The complete image is sublime. The distracted faces of beauty (both horse and woman) hint at the danger lurking beneath the surface of both. The viewer may feel a secret voyeur experience as his or her gaze is allowed access to the forms without acknowledgment from the two images: which would pose a potentially dangerous encounter.
Human beings process information and place meaning in fractions of seconds each moment of their lives. This is all done with and without our conscious participation. We decipher words from groupings of individual letters, and gather meaning from strings of words that form sentences. When reading, our consciousness focuses on the images and meaning gathered from the words, and becomes oblivious to all else.
As we process information, our inner senses maintain connection to the physical world using our outer senses: smells, sounds, taste, the sensation of gravity and feel of clothes on our skin, etc. It's just not possible to be consciously focused on the assault of raw data we are exposed to daily.
Most advertising affects us on the subconscious level, waiting for the right moment to surface into awareness. Visual information seems to hold more "authority" for us than any other form of communication. If we are not focusing our attention on what we are doing in the world, we allow this "authority" to become a stronger influence on us. (For example, a document printed on a dot matrix printer holds less "authority" than one printed on a laser printer.) Advertisers know this and use it to their advantage.
When we are offered two images such as the two images in the article, we seek to place meaning on the relationship. We look for unity. We place meaning not only on each individual image, but on the relationship between the two.
This ability probably relates back to a time when our survival depended on our ability to quickly determine dangerous situations. At some point in the history of our species, drawing certain conclusions about visual information was required of us constantly. Our ability to do this was so relegated to subconscious processes to free our attention for other things (like figuring out the best way out of or into the situation that presented itself to us).
The trick is to use images in terms of agreement rather than manipulation. If we can devise a standard for meaning in images, the result is more of an awareness of the message involved and our response to that message.Agreement offers us, as viewers, an active, conscious participation in the exchange of meaning rather than an unconscious or passive absorption of programming.Advertising would become an exchange of messaging and communication instead of a subliminal manipulation of culture.
Today the same product (hosiery) is marketed using a different focus and technique. Today's consumer is less open to the manipulative style that sold nylon stockings in 1947. The focus now is not so much on style as it is on economy. The appeal now is on texture and comfort, stockings that will wear longer and offer better economic value rather than simply color variety and stylish coordination with the seasonal fashion trend.
As we become more technologically advanced and sophisticated, our use of imagery will reflect the change in how we perceive our world. A change in society and culture is the result of our individual change in the meaning we place in imagery.
