On image and intentionality
A quick look at Super Bowl ads and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
Images (moving or still) can be read as a text. We encode and decode the message of the image, of what it means, through camera angles (e.g., camera looking up denotes power), jump cuts, colors, framing, etc.
We establish our understanding of an event, a moment in time, as it occurs. But we also establish a broader meaning, of both what the image presents and what it represents, to help us build our understanding of the world.
It’s why Canon’s 1990s slogan, “Image is everything” was so brilliant, playing off the fact that it’s a camera company (a device used to take pictures) and celebrating celebrity (recall Andre Agassi’s flowing main).
With this as the backdrop, let’s look at the world’s largest advertising stage on Sunday and the current fixation on Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and how these two current events are shaping our reality through images.
As Aristotle reminds us, we think in images. If I were to ask you “what immediately comes to mind when you think of Abe Lincoln” odds are you’re literally picturing the tall, lanky, bearded, stove-pipe hat-wearing man and not, say, his Emancipation Proclamation or Gettysburg Address.
Back in June, I wrote about the power of social video; how Neil Postman
laid out how the Age of Television ushered in an era where “discourse is conducted largely through visual imagery,” to the point where we not only converse, but think in images.
“The emergence of the image-manager in the political arena and the concomitant decline of the speech writer attest to the fact that television demands a different kind of content from other media,” he wrote. “You cannot do political philosophy on television. Its form works against the content.”
And yet. Every time Rep. Greene is photographed, every time she’s on camera, what do we see?
Here’s my Google search result. Notice the thumbnails of her mask.
Clicking through articles, seeing her pictures spread on social platforms, we’re greeted with her messages:
Free Speech:
Censored:
Stop the Steal:
We see several messages at once. First, the signification of wearing a mask; it’s become a symbol of many things—of health, of conscientiousness, of liberty and freedom. Greene wears one because she has to, not because she wants to. Much like other pieces of clothing, the mask can symbolize who’s behind it.
(Aram has a great thread on this.)
For instance, I wear a Phish mask. While I wear a mask for the purpose of preventing the spread of a virus, I also wear a mask to show who I am. When I walk down the street and another Phish fan understands, I get the knowing nod, or in some cases actually talk to another human being.
Greene signals the same thing: this is her message (of course an irony here is that she is constantly saying how she’s being censored. And yet.) And that message gets spread much faster today across social media.
What happens when, however, the absence of a mask is a message?
In Image-Music-Text, Roland Barthes writes:
“In advertising the signification of the image is undoubtedly intentions; the signifies of the advertising message are formed a priori by certain attributes of the product and these signifieds have to be transmitted as clearly as possible. If the image contains signs, we can be sure that in advertising these signs are full, formed with a view to the optimum reading: the advertising image is frank, or at least emphatic.”
In a wonderful piece today by my friend and former colleague Robert Klara, we learn that Super Bowl ads will have few images of masks. There are several reasons, he reports.
For starters, there’s timing. America is only 30 days along from a Capitol insurrection that proved, if nothing else, how politically divided the country is. And while wearing masks may have started out as a public health measure, they morphed rapidly into a signal for one’s political affiliation.
“There’s no question that brands are working so hard to avoid any appearance of partisanship on the Super Bowl,” said Tim Calkins, clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “All of these ads have been designed very carefully to not offend either side, the Democrats or Republicans.”
The AP explains that there are 20 new Super Bowl advertisers this year, including this DoorDash spot starring Daveed Diggs and Super Grover. Yes, the Sesame Street resident. Notice how none of the stars of the spot are wearing a mask.
For a company that took in $2 billion in revenue for the first nine months of 2020, per Wired, clearly the pandemic was a boon. But is it irresponsible of both the company and Sesame Street, a show beloved by kids, to impart an intentional message of not wearing a mask during a pandemic?
Klara also writes:
Not only are masks not shown or mentioned in most ads, [Calkins] continued, “there’s no mention of any of the big issues facing this country,” he said. A contested election? Black Lives Matter? The 6.7% unemployment rate? Not in this year’s ads. “All of those issues, which are major issues, they’re not directly discussed,” he said.
But Calkins also pointed out that while masks may be absent in these spots, Covid-19 is not. The pandemic receives subtle nods in the form of the messaging (Bud Light Seltzer reminding us that “2020 handed us all those lemons”) and, more noticeably, the settings.
Those settings: backyards, homes, front stoops, inside cars, etc. Generally places inhabited by one person or nuclear families.
“We were careful not to have any big, large crowds,” said PepsiCo Beverages North America CMO Greg Lyons. “That was part of the creative process this year.” Owing to set restrictions, big groups “would have been very difficult to shoot anyway. We wanted to be sensitive.”
When you put all of these ads together, interspersed through a football game where, presumably, athletes and coaches will be seen wearing masks, messages get muddied.
But what’s clear, as Barthes notes, the intentionality of the images and the messages create a perception in the receiver. Whether it’s a political stance from a conspiracy theorist-turned-Congresswoman to ads, the impression an image leaves with us can stay for a long time.
As they say, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
Thank you for allowing me in your inbox, today and every day. If you have tips, or thoughts on the newsletter, drop me a line. Or you can follow me on Twitter. If you arrived here via social or through a colleague, please consider signing up. If you appreciated this edition, please consider sharing. Thanks for reading! Have a great and relaxing weekend; enjoy the Super Bowl and the ads, and I’ll see you on Monday.
Paul Simon, “Kodachrome”
Some interesting links:
For wowsa lawsuits:
Fox News Is Sued by Election Technology Company for Over $2.7 Billion (NYT)
For the pipes working way too well:
They Stormed the Capitol. Their Apps Tracked Them. (NYT)
For curious management decisions:
G/O Media Told Staff It Fired Editor for Activism, Union Says (Bloomberg)
For wondering if print ads work:
AT&T customer since 1960 buys WSJ print ad to complain of slow speeds (Ars Technica)
For ad tech M&A:
Magnite acquires Spotx (Magnite)
For agency life:
Ogilvy’s new global CEO Andy Main is leading a big turnaround (Insider)
For student journalism:
Student journalists at an HBCU campus newspaper took on racist local media—and won (Scalawag)
For ruh-ohs:
Universal Music Pulls Song Catalog From Triller, Saying TikTok Copycat ‘Shamefully’ Withheld Artist Payments (Variety)