Julia Baranova

I find it very creepy seeing young girls looking like they are mini versions of 25 year old women. I thought the whole point of childhood was to have a chance to do innocent things, like playing outside with your girlfriends with holes in your tights, not having a care in the world. And now all girls think about is how to impress boy, everything revolves around looking sexy for the boys. Surely those kinds of thoughts shouldn’t even be going through a 14 year olds head? All I cared about at that age, was having birthday picnics and building huge sandcastles in a sand box, not how many boys will turn up to my party and how I can get them to kiss me... Media has such a huge impact on the way women feel about themselves, at least when we are older we can separate the negative from a positive and try to ignore what TV and Magazines are trying to pressure us in to. How do we explain to young girls that looking like a plastic doll will not get her very far in life? And why are females being targeted so harshly by media in this day?

I have started to read Introducing Semiotics (a graphic guide) by Paul Cobley and Litza Jansz. Even though the text is not difficult to understand, I am still trying to get my head around semiotics and this is my first attempt at analysing an advert in such a way.


LIVE [NIKE] from SomeofmyWork™ on Vimeo.

According to Barthes theory an ad can be separated into three different messages, linguistic, coded iconic and non-coded iconic.
In this case the linguistic message is a Nike logo appearing on the screen for a split second at the very beginning, this informs the viewer straight away about what type of product it is. The logo also appears at the very end of the video where a word Live is replacing Nike, giving a message that we no longer use trainers for running, we use them for living. This ad also uses song lyrics to push the message, "livin the dream...".
A coded iconic message runs through out the whole video. At first we see a recognizable box and a pair of Nike shoes in the background, we know its a Nike box because of the orange colour which is very well recognized due to being one of the most used colours for the logo. Another quick indication, informing that its a Nike ad is a small logo on the sock on a persons foot who is putting on the shoes.
Once the trainers are on his feet, video skips to the running track. This particular advertisement is meant to show how Nike brand and their products have evolved from being a sports wear suppliers to being a part of all types of life styles and fashion. Running track shows the start of their journey, followed by shots of the same pair of trainers travelling through cities, fields, basketball courts, mountains, etc.
A non-coded iconic message is an advert about trainers that has been based around the world, "recognition of identifiable objects".

In the history of art appropriation is a term for taking possession of something and making it your own.

Few days ago I went to see a John Stezaker exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, so I am going to talk about a few particular pieces and the way he appropriates already existing works of photography. Stezaker composes collages by mainly using film stills combined with vintage postcards, the work is simply constructed but is very complex to the viewers eye. For example the Untitled series of collages, various film star images have been cut diagonally in half and thoughtfully balanced together to create a distorted portrait. By doing that Stezaker is appropriating someone else's work of photography and turning it in to his own unique works of art. Another example would be the Mask series, where he again uses film stills only this time placing postcards of  very impressive nature imagery on top of the portrait. I see it as a comparison of beauty, a subliminal message of natural beauty in women.