Representation Analysis

 Representation in media has previously been constructed to represent reality. Everything in media is a representation that someone created. Representation can affect the public’s perception of a certain group if it displayed with the same characteristics in multiple forms of media. It is important to evaluate that representations are not an accurate form of reality.

The first example is for the Axe Body Spray commercial

The concept of the commercial was that if men use Axe Body Spray, multiple woman would like him. It uses elements of nature and survival combined with attractive woman to appeal the young male audience. The commercial shows hundreds of attractive women small bikinis all running to find this man who is wearing Axe Body Spray. The woman run in the nature even like it was survival -some of them pushing each other and others even swimming in the open ocean, to find this man. This should not be taken literally since it was a joke to make the commercial more appealing to the audience, but what the advertisers want their public to think is that Axe Body Spray means dominance and attractiveness. 

The woman in the commercial are shown almost as animals surviving in the nature all looking for this man who is spraying the Axe Body Spray. The commercial highly objectifies woman, it shows them in revealing bikinis and it is very clear that the viewers are supposed to look at their bodies when they are all running. The commercial sets unrealistic expectations towards men when the man wears the Axe Body Spray and attracts every single woman. But it also sets unrealistic expectations in how a woman should look like. The commercial shows hundreds of women that meet the ideal beauty standard, all of the woman in the commercial are young, skinny and white. The commercial even ends with the slogan of “Spray more, get more” which indicates that if the man sprays more of the product, he will get more woman. 

The second example is the H&M “close the loop” commercial

The commercial covers every type of style anyone could think of, it begins with the narrator mentioning specific clothes all the way to general adjectives that describe how people feel wearing it. A typical fashion advertisement has the purpose of conveying a specific style or product to the public, but the H&M commercial purpose is to imply the importance of recycling clothes. The commercial does this by mentioning every type of style a person could wear or feal identify with to emphasize in the end that “there are no rules in fashion” and then deliver the message of the ad by saying “But one: Recycle your clothes.” The commercial is really inclusive, there is people of all races, ethnicity, genres, LGTBQ, and age. It truly shows a representation of people in real life which is not usual in other fashion advertisements where they only show a specific group of people, usually young attractive adults who are models. The ad shows the people doing all kinds of activities in different scenarios in a city, walking, working, exercising, partying and posing.

Some of the statements are “Wear a short skirt if you are a man,” “Be trashy,” “Be neat,” “Be old,” and “Be new.” The statements are trying to imply that the viewer can do whatever they want, any style any choice they make is acceptable. The message of the importance of recycling clothes is emphasized when the narrator juxtaposes clothing styles such as “trashy” and “neat” and implies it does not matter as long as people they recycle clothes.

H&M ends its commercial by saying that fashion has no rules and that the only rule that should be followed is to recycle your clothes. Then it proceeds to mention how people can leave unwanted clothes in their stores so that they can recycle them. Additionally, they add how many litters of water can be saved by recycling a single shirt. The ad really connects with environmentalism and water conservation because it emphasizes the importance of one of the biggest issues in the world at the moment, the increasing waste of clothes every year that harms the environment. Costumers who truly care for the environment might be more likely to buy in H&M since they can see in the ad this is one of the few companies who is trying to do something about the waste of clothes and the consequences it brings to the environment.