La constitución de la identidad narrativa de Hanta

Marx introduced the commodity fetish concept in the 19th century and his analysis of the relationship between consumer goods and the market re-mains important for understanding how fetishism works in consumer cul-ture. Indeed, “fetishism is a term Marx used to characterize the capitalist social process as a whole” (Pietz, 1993, p. 130). Marx did not fully anticipate an economy based on image, one in which the dialectic of the fetish relies less on material things than on symbolic ideas. Advertising’s use of photo-graphic technology accelerates this process in a way that seems both readily apparent and unfathomably underscrutinzed. The fetish can func-tion as a tool to understand visual consumpfunc-tion, which is at the heart of present-day life (Schroeder, 2002). Contemporary consumption is highly visual: Web sites crave eyeball capture, advertisers work to break through visual clutter, and the economy is attention focused (Willis, 1991).

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Fetish clothing interacts with visual representation in intricate ways. Ad-vertising capitalizes on the visual power of fetish objects through photo-graphic practices that support a reified relationship with things. Ads often represent fetish items devoid of context, visually emphasizing tactile quali-ties like shininess. Moreover, photography enhances the shine of fetish gar-ments with flash, studio lighting, and image tone. Although nylon hosiery doesn’t possess the natural origin of leather the way silk does, its shiny qual-ity is often enhanced via photographic techniques in advertising, and ho-siery is employed to sell many products other than itself. The fetish object is also emphasized by the use of composition, cropping, and color. In the Absolut Au Kurant ads, the fetishized bottle is given a contrasting lavender detail color to accentuate and isolate it as a graphic element. Similarly, fetish photographers such as Trevor Watson, John Carey, and Doris Kloster all highlight clothing as the subject of their work, supporting the fetish relation-ship by visually focusing on decontextualized garments over bodies, iso-lated things rather than humans (see Borgerson & Schroeder, 2002).

Absolut Kurant continues to promote a cutting-edge image via its adver-tising campaign, and the two images discussed here have been replaced by many others in the 5 years since they first appeared. The ads can be bought on the Internet, ranging in price from $2 to $16 in September 2001. Many current ad campaigns draw on fetish imagery. A quick look through a stack of recent mass market fashion and lifestyle magazines reveals Gucci loafer worship, Prada fetishism, Gap black leather jeans, Sisley pornography, a Flexform furniture ad usually featuring high-heeled black patent shoes, a Costume National ad featuring more high-heel worship (a man grasping a women’s pump-clad leg), and so on. Although most consumers do not ex-hibit classic fetishism—foot worship, for example—the relationship that many marketing campaigns promote between consumer and goods have many fetish-like qualities.

The fetish relationship—object worship, delusional belief in the power of the fetish, and substitution of human relations with fetish relations—

are invoked in the broader dimensions of consumer culture and its aggres-sive object worship (cf. Giddens, 1993). Fetish themes may attract the eye to products or services in an economy fueled by obtaining consumer at-tention. Fetishism may also serve to perpetuate sexual stereotypes and gender stereotypes—women are most often the object of the fetishistic at-tention, or women are portrayed as slaves to fashion (see Schroeder &

Borgerson, 1998). Although the advertising images discussed here might embody some transgression of sexual stereotypes, most fetish-themed ads tend to reinforce entrenched visions of human relationships: woman as object, black as exotic, out-of-the-ordinary sex as deviant. Whether or not companies like Absolut benefit from their appropriation of these themes and sell more vodka is another question. The print ads discussed

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here are only one component of a sophisticated and spectacularly success-ful marketing campaign to build the brand identity of Absolut Kurant as cutting edge, sexy, and hip.

CONCLUSIONS

Advertising routinely appropriates and harnesses the power of fetishism to sell goods, services, and ideas. In this chapter, we have focused on body im-ages to develop our arguments, but the function of the fetish need not be confined to bodies, corsets, and stockings—advertising encourages a fe-tish-like relationship with things in general. In an economy based on im-ages, information, and Internet technology, fetishism—as displacement, as dysfunction, and as deviance—contributes to a larger project of linking products with psychological fulfillment, emotional satisfaction, and sexual gratification. Moreover, advertising is able to create meaning with photo-graphic techniques, injecting new associations into the circuit of culture.

Whereas many campaigns rely on cultural stereotypes (of fetishism, for ex-ample), advertising has reached a stage where it produces novel meaning.

The power of advertising to visually fetishize objects continues this trend in a way that scholars interested in advertising, consumption, and visual com-munication cannot ignore.

The Absolut Au Kurant ad campaign invokes many issues central to vi-sual culture: advertising and hegemony, representation and ethics, identity and difference. These two ads invite the viewer to participate in the sexual realm, a common theme in contemporary ad culture. The Absolut bottle is graphically represented by corset lacing and a garter belt clip, both closely linked to erotic fetishism and sexuality. Absolut Vodka may also be posi-tioned as a way to enter the liminal zone—between everyday life and fan-tasy, between sobriety and inebriation, between mainstream and alternative. The visual and photographic facets of the ads point to a link be-tween Absolut Kurant and its iconic bottle shape and sexual adventure, and possibly, gender subversion or at least cross-dressing. The Absolut bot-tle’s graphic presence conjoins retro corset and stocking to contemporary lifestyles. In addition, the ads capitalize on the semiotic coding of black as cool, exotic, and sensual.

All of these meanings need not be apparent to any one viewer. Many campaigns build in diverse target markets in a single ad (see Stern &

Schroeder, 1994). Absolut Au Kurant’s leather corset is a fetish sign, an al-ternative sexuality trope, and an emblem of eroticism. In other contexts, corsets symbolize the domination of women. Given the logic of the ad, however, it is unlikely to be read as a statement about women’s oppression, except insofar as women’s oppression is fetishized.

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Alcohol manufacturers visually reinforce cultural stereotypes that alco-hol consumption makes women accessible. Moreover, advertising fetishizes goods by offering them as substitutes for human relationships.

By drawing on powerful imagery, Absolut and other advertisers harness the unique properties of visual representation to create a global communi-cation force. In the words of two sociologists, the “power to recontexualize and reframe photographic images has put advertising at the center of con-temporary redefinitions of individuality, freedom, and democracy in rela-tion to corporate symbols” (Goldman & Papson, 1996, p. 216). Advertising is not merely a vehicle to move goods. It is a central feature of visual culture, which it supports through its relationship with mass media. Furthermore, advertising imagery functions at several levels simultaneously—unlike the art world, all advertising has a clear, shared purpose to make particular as-sociations between product and image. Absolut desires the viewer to make a positive connection between black leather corsets and black stockings and its Absolut Kurant vodka.

The use of tight black leather and stylized stockings implicates the ads in the liminal zone of the fetish. The ads draw on three fetishism signifiers in visual culture: the hybrid nature of leather and other tight clothing, the exoticization of blackness, and advertising practice of formally reifying ob-jects via photographic technique. Cultural codes such as black leather, gar-ter belts, and the color lavender are bounded by history, place, and identity.

In contemporary visual culture, these codes are powerful and striking vi-sual symbols of fetishism and a kind of alternative sexuality. In addition, lavender is the adopted color of the gay and lesbian community. Thus, for many, the association between its appearance in the Absolut Au Kurant ads and gay culture is readily apparent. Paradoxically, some of these readings may conflict with others, reflecting the ad’s flexible appeal for different tar-get markets. Further work on identity in advertising is called for, drawing on theoretical frameworks of the “epidermal schema” (Fanon, 1967;

Gordon, 1995, 1997), which is how represented skin color semiotically in-scribes social, cultural, and racial identity categories and stereotypes.

Advertising no longer merely reflects culture. Nor does advertising only appropriate concepts or images after the art world has produced the origi-nal idea. Advertising is intertextual—it often refers to itself—it creates its own heroes and characters. Moreover, the logic of advertising underscores all aspects of modern visual culture. Art historians and literary scholars have been adept at tracing the history of icons, types, and characters in vi-sual representation. The tools of cultural analysis have come in handy here, for advertising borrows heavily from the iconology and teleology of photo-graphic history. However, researchers attempting to understand its mean-ing-making capabilities miss a great deal by relying solely on rhetorical forms from other cultural arenas—such as fine art, literature, and film—for

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themes and insights. Researchers in visual studies should strive to show how advertising creates new types and tropes. Further work could delin-eate how the fetish works in a wide variety of visual contexts and how fetishization has developed as a powerful advertising practice.

Advertising, the face of capitalism, is one of the key engines of visual cul-ture. Understanding advertising requires complex interdisciplinary work, informed by photographic analysis, critical race theory, and communica-tion studies. Of course, advertising is not equivalent to visual culture, nor is its power limited to the visual arena. Advertising, a realm in which photog-raphy, fetishism, and cultural values intermingle, stands as the dominant communication force today. The fetish represents a critical concept for un-derstanding visual culture—indeed, the way advertising fetishizes goods and services is basic to contemporary life.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

An early version of this paper was presented at the Power and Sensuality in Visual Culture conference at Umeå University, Sweden, organized by Raoul Granqvist and Hans Örtegren in November 2000. We thank Karin Becker, Anette Göthlund, Anders Marner, and Irit Rogoff for comments on this project.

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PART II

Consumer Responses