Wells, The Commodification of Human Relations

In the case study in Wells, which we read for this week, discussed the commodification of human relations and advertising.  She begins by explaining that photographs contain two messages, a denoted message and a connoted message. A denoted message is “the literal reality which the photo portrayed”. While a connoted message is one that is “making use of social and cultural references. It  is an inferred message, it is symbolic.” In Advertisement photograph we carry no illusions about the denoted image, we know it is highly structured and do not read it as documenting real life. We are “unconsciously aware when reading the image that the connoted message is the crucial one.”

            In Advertising the image is usually meant to visualize dreams, aspirations and narratives within which we can put ourselves and create a meaning. This type of advertising can be found virtually anywhere in the world, but especially in fashion and lifestyle advertising. These messages are read through the images first level signifiers and second level signifiers. “The signs which were produced in an image are further mystified by a second level of signification in advertising messages”, but it is the second level of signification that the production of ideology is important.  Advertising messages is all about the transfer of the existing meaning(s) that we have of one image to the product and services represented in the advertisement as a whole. Commodity advertising uses a widely adopted convention of juxtaposing the image of the product and the “mood image”.  Our role as active viewers and interpreters in important in the creation of these meanings, we are involved and implicated in the production of ideology.

            Once we recognize the influence of the social and cultural on how we interpret these images, we can see that not everyone interprets them in the same way, the production of meaning is “fluid and often ambiguous”.

-Emily Walsh