Lady Gaga ‘Fame’
perfume advert
In media, images in adverts are often used to represent and
portray different feelings, themes and ideologies by using different techniques
from camera work, colours, poses and what the image actually shows. In Lady
Gaga’s ‘Fame’ perfume advert, there can be many different interpretations of
what the techniques used in the image might be trying to represent and connote.
In this image, Lady Gaga is posing in a way which underlines
her sexuality and elegance, leaning nude on her side whilst willingly allowing
dozens of miniature male figures to climb and touch her body and more commonly
in places which would be considered to carry sexual desire such as her breasts,
crotch and buttock areas, where numerous figures of men are stationed. This may
go against what McRobbie’s and Gauntlett’s views of female representation are
in the media, as Lady Gaga can be interpreted as – despite being casted in an
advert for woman’s perfume – a sexual object for the many male figures in the image,
as she is passively allowing them to climb her body in a way which connotes
that she is a subject of the male gaze, posing in a way that strives maximize visual
and erotic sexual impact, supported by the various male figures looking at,
admiring and climbing her body.
However, Guantlett and McRobbie’s ideas discuss ideologies
that can be found within magazines targeted towards females such as More and Cosmo, whilst Lady Gaga’s advert would also probably mainly be
found outside of those magazines, so perhaps it is not fair to say that her
advert goes against their views of female representation within such magazines.
Also, Lady Gaga may easily fit in to Freud’s Madonna/ Whore
complex as a ‘whore’ as she passively allows the men to climb her body and linger
around her most sexually appealing areas with no complaints or protestation,
even stretching her arm back which might be interpreted as to allow the many
figures to mount her body more easily, clearly showing that she is unashamed of
her sexual prowess – and wilfully allows men to admire it. However, she might
also be seen as a ‘Madonna’ by some, as is posed with such perfect elegance
whilst holding a bottle of perfume (perhaps representing elegance, cleanliness
and well looked after for some of the audience), which goes against his
complex, as the woman is both Madonna and
a Whore.
However, there is room for interpretation that Lady Gaga is
actually shown to be controlling, full of confidence and self-aware in a way
that may perhaps agree with McRobbie’s and Gauntlett’s and even possibly
Mulvey’s male gaze ideas as this text could show dominant ‘girl power’. By
observing the way in which the men in the image are blackened and very small
compared to Lady Gaga’s much brighter body, the blackness could signify that
the men are wrongdoers or sinners as they are tempted by lust for Lady Gaga’s
body, showing that rather than the men controlling Lady Gaga with her wilfully
playing passive for them, she is instead dooming the men into darkness with
temptation in the same way that Greek mythology would use mermaids to tempt
heroes and men to the water. This represents an ideology that fits with
McRobbie’s and Gauntlett’s because it shows that women can be controlling and
hold the power to control men.
Also, the way in which Lady Gaga is so much larger than the
male figures in this image could suggest that she holds a goddess-like state to them, and that rather than in some texts
whereby the male has clear dominance and is either shown to by taller/ larger
than any woman that could be in the image, such as in this Twilight poster https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhehcEbE4A1BJkTLObWZYuHMjwJOIytl9-oNHM-FKf-ZMJ0jfnpkf8_10v1wo63vdxdI0FQsBHYUMCLfbwx7s20BmyAoDd9QFd_NO4VlVhhIB_8_CLXvH0nj4vfnsp_5yNN1MzZRS5VJUs/s1600/twilight+poster_4.jpg,
the woman is instead the clear protagonist. This also supports McRobbie’s and
Gauntlett’s ideals about feminism representation in the media.
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