Woman Front cover (August 1964) /Adbusters question

 Woman Front cover (August 1964)

Front cover - Encourages audience to purchase the magazine.

Woman's Realm, Woman's Own,  Woman --> All ran by the publisher, IPC. --> Monopoly on that market. 

Competitor to Vogue magazine, both sold to female target audiences but are binary opposites --> Middle class women. 

What makes the cover for 'Woman' overtly conventional?

The masthead ->  sans-serif font, -> large and eye-catching.

Cheap cover price -> Appeals to working class target audience.

Main image -> Large, takes up two thirds of the page.

Brand identity -> Very particular, you know what you're getting. -> Working class, middle-aged, conventional women ->  Reinforces patriarchal hegemony. 

Selling a lifestyle to the target audience

Aspirational image -> You could be her, 'Are you an a-level beauty?' -> anchorage to the photo directly addresses viewer.

Alfred Hitchcock -> intertextual reference to famous celebrity -> highly conventional to sell a product.

Strapline -> Cover lines -> 

MES: Background is stereotypically feminine, classical gentle pink/ purple colour.  

Friendly mode of address -> Direct address+ smile ->  encoded to look happy to see you.

Hegemonically attractive model used for the cover  -> Idealised. 

Conforms to gender performativity -> make-up, hair done nicely, flowery dress, girly/modest attire.

Shaped by economic factors -> Conventional for mundane target audience's lifestyle.

Adbusters is an exception to all of the above, it inherently seems to not want you to buy it.

Explore the extent to which regulatory factors have influenced the magazines that you have studied. Make reference to Woman and Adbusters.

Woman's regulatory factors are conventional, Adbusters' are unconventional. 

Livingstone and Lunt - Regulation in the media industries.

Regulations are the rules and restrictions that every media product must follow, the UK having some of the harshest of such in the world.  ->

Newsagent can sell any age rated magazine to someone underage for profit, easily ignore morality/ self-regulation of the publisher. 

Magazines in the UK are largely unregulated. 

What cant be said in the UK, racial hate speech -> Neither Woman and Adbusters have any inherent issue with regulation. 

KJR: Regulatory factors has had very little effect upon either of the magazines that we have studied. However, there are some elements of Adbusters which push into legal grey areas. 

Woman magazine is not controversial for a magazine in 1964, but may be considered as such today by modern audiences.

Patriarchal hegemony -> not as widely respected as the main ideology of today. 

REGULATON

Adbusters:

No advertisements

No conventional brand identity

No representations of gender performativity.

Anti-Consumerist ideology

Uncomfortable, harsh mode of address

lack thereof conventional anchorage

Taboo topics,  -> 'Red soles are always in season -> Mocks it's audience.

Dark humour -> 'edgy' for target audiences

PLAN:

Livingstone and Lunt - Regulation, supports argument of media product regulation as impossible due to digitally convergent technology.

Self regulation -> Woman magazine doesn't include explicit content -> Conservative ideology cultivated. -> Appeals to their target audience.

Reinforces potentially harmful patriarchal ideology of idealised female body image to target audience -> Though acceptable at the time. 

Society creates its own regulation via hegemony. -> Woman lives up to the hegemonic conventions of the time. -> Chooses to disregard representations of particular socio-political context. -> Feminist movements, the pill, boost in drug usage, etc. 

Adbusters picks controversial topics -> actively criticizes brands directly (Lou Boutin - Red soles)

Constructs Lou Boutin products as unethical, brutal.

Detournement/ culture jamming -> re-appropriates and changes the context of pre-existing consumerist advertisements by anchoring them beside their own content. 

Adbusters -> Big independent magazine, but small enough to go under radar. (120 thousand copies) -> Allows Adbusters to get away with things larger magazines could never get away with.

Curran and Seaton - Power in Media Industries -> Media controlled by growingly small number of companies motivated by power/profit. -> Adbusters subverts this convention, by remaining an not-for-profit independent magazine with controversial topics.