Pornographic Material and Advertising
Revised: April 20, 2007It’s no big secret, sex sells. I have already proved this point with managing to get a ton of (partly unwanted) traffic from people searching for free porn simply because I wrote some articles which tended towards that general direction while still remaining safe for the majority of people to view. There is however a fine line between artistic nude and pornographic imagery; that line is however an utterly personal one and you could argue until the universe collapses in on itself about wether an image is artistic or just plain porn - hell even the artistic community itself finds it hard to distinguish the two. I draw the line between artistic nude and porn at sexual intercourse, it can be denoted and suggested but as soon as it becomes visible on screen its porn; plain and simple.
The advertising industries main focus is on getting people to a) look at an advert, b) be manipulated through the advert and c) eventually want to use, buy or purchase through advertisements manipulation what is being advertised; this could be an image (levies jeans advert, you don’t buy the jeans for the jeans, you buy them to become the guy in the advert), a product (car, new kitchen even baby toys) or simply a brand (to make you aware and link one thing arbitrarily to another). Using sex to sell isn’t new either as sexualy provocative imagery has been used to sell products of all types since at least the 1930’s. Of course it has come a long way since then as society becomes more liberal with what type of imagery is acceptable to be seen in advertising (still there are issues of both male and female sexism in adverts).
The photo above is surprisingly enough the porn star Lauren Phoenix, however not in her typical role of being banged on screen(as seen in “No Holes Left Unfilled” ). Here she is advertising tube socks, underwear and tops from American Apparel. Some might call it morally dubious, that a company such as American Apparel would choose to photograph bearly of age girls and boys smiling in delightfully sexy poses in order to sell socks and underwear and T-shirts; considering they publicly disagree with the use of sweat shop labor and swear on their grandmothers graves that they treat their own work force with care and respect it could be considered odd that they in this case have no moral issues as to whom they do in fact employ. For this however I agree with Glenn from net127 god bless them indeed.
This type of advertising, it’s not exactly new but I really don’t hear any complaints. Lauren makes tube socks look sexier than an all night orgy special on channel 69 and that is exactly the type of image that American Apparel is trying to push. The point I made before about how the advertising industry basically functions is as clear as day here. American Apparel are using non professional models such as Lauren to advertise an image of sexiness linked with their clothing brand, people are more likely to buy into this branding because they want to feel sexy as well; a win, win case?
However the actual question of whether porn is creeping into advertising still needs to be addressed as I for one believe that the above imagery is acceptable others for one or more reasons believe it isn’t. This opposition is thankfully the minority, a cross section of overtly religious nuts and elderly fruit cakes whom would much rather see society constrained with even more rules and laws than we had fifty years ago (as proven already not to work).
Skatersocks as another example, use sexual references in their branding to connote the same thoughts that American Apparel play with. These links are however only loosely arbitrary because female legs are biologically sexy to any heterosexual male and socks tend to be worn by sane people on their feet and legs. I would say that the Skatersocks example is absolutely not pornographic at all, the pose is completely different to the one that Lauren is showing. In fact Laurens pose is entirely sexual and thus denotes similar connotations that can be seen within all pornographic paraphernalia. Pornographic imagery is creeping into the everyday advertising arena and the American Apparel imagery shows where todays society draws the line at what is acceptable. One must question however wether the trend will continue and how promiscuous advertisemnets will be allowed to become. Will society begin to allow more and more pornographic imagery within advertisement, or will the entire trend collapse in on itself and revert back to where the line used to be drawn in the 1930’s. I for one can’t see either happening, as I feel advertising has finally found the limit and that there is a nice balance between what is acceptable and porn. There will always be those whom push that limit but I can’t see it moving anytime soon, anyway thats my two pence. What do you guys (yes you who actually made it this far down the page) think? (that means comment)
Tagged: advertising, imagery, porn, pornographic.
