Compare the ways in which viewpoints and ideologies are encoded in Woman magazine and Adbusters.
Adbusters is a controversial magazine which is deliberately subversive, aggressive and confusing; costing £11 with the release of it being bi-monthly. The contents of it are alarming to most audiences and have strong ideologies consisting of: anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist, and anti-profit as it doesn't include a single advert throughout any of their magazines. the copy of Woman from 1964, costing 80p in today's money which shows the target audience would have been the working class female, on the other hand is practically the opposite in the sense that is warm, welcoming and seen as a friendly magazine for women to read for entertainment purposes. it's a women's lifestyle magazine so the contents are all aimed primarily towards women. The sole purpose of Woman magazine is to make as much profit as possible like the majority of most magazines available to buy. Woman magazine sets the expectations for women about what they should look like, smell like and be like in general, reinforcing hegemonic norms about women.
One article we can see Adbusters' ideologies in is the double page spread with the Zucchetti advert and the page promoting awareness of the exclusiveness of water in the poverty stricken areas around the world, creating a powerful binary position between wealth and poverty which is designed to make the audience feel guilty. This is one of Adbusters' main ideologies, being anti-commodity fetishism, the belief that we as consumers buy products for the name and Zucchetti is a great example of people buying something for the name as in itself it gives us water, something we as humans require in order to survive so why does it matter what it comes out of as long as it's clean, it'll be the same quality water regardless of what tap you have. The other page has a close up shot of a naked woman in the bath, the mise-en-scene of the model's wrinkly hands are a symbolic code of poverty and misfortune. However what is unique for the page is that the woman in the bath isn't being sexualised in order to sell a product or anything, and has deliberately been de-sexualised which goes against Van-Zoonen's theory of feminism. Furthermore, Adbusters could be seen as hypocritical as Zucchetti is a luxurious brand and only those in the middle class and above will know about the brand, meaning in order to understand some of the contents in the magazine you will need to have a knowledge of high end brands like Zucchetti and Louboutin, brands you wouldn't buy unless you had a considerably large expendable income. And as Adbusters try to encode their anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideologies you start to understand that the majority of readers of Adbusters are those who buy such products. It could be seen as hypocritical how Adbusters charge £11 per magazine even though they try to remain as controversial and subversive as possible through encoding their anti-consumerist ideology, yet they charge a considerate amount for a magazine in today's market. They also have an online shop in which you can buy merchandise as well as copy of the 'meme-wars' which would set you back £189 for the same contents as the original with the only difference being it's made using sand paper instead; this hugely contradicts their anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideologies as you're just paying that much in order to say you have the special copy, linking to commodity fetishism.
Woman on the other hand can be seen to encode completely different ideologies into their magazine, for example the breeze advert through which uses a mid shot of a naked woman in the bath or so we assume because of how the bath has been removed from the image so the audience can see more of the model, showing how she has been sexualised to become an aspirational figure to women as we know sex sells. It promotes an unrealistic idea of what beauty is as she's in the bath with a full face of makeup and her hair looking amazing even though it has been put up to look effortless; reinforcing hegemonic norms of what women should look like. Furthemore, the lexis "Because you're a woman" strengthens the idea that this is an aspiration through the direct mode of address, making it relatable to the audience which has been assumed to be all made up of women.
Another way Woman magazine encodes their consumerist and stereotypical ideologies is through the front cover of the magazine. The mise-en-scene of the front cover uses a physically appealing female model in which covers the majority of the page, which to the primary target audience of women could be seen as an aspirational figure, with the conservative haircut and perfect white smile. The background colour is a purple pastel colour is soft and gentle reinforcing the expectations of women through the connotations of purple being flowers and elegance, being a stereotypical feminine colour all together. The large serif title "Woman" would instantly encourage the female target audience to buy the magazine as they would be able to relate to it through being a female, making them feel special in a time where the focus was mainly on men being the superior gender, with the women's liberation movement emerging towards the late 1960's.
In conclusion, viewpoints and ideologies are encoded in Adbusters and Woman magazine through the images used throughout both of the magazines, with each image having a symbolic code for something else, reinforcing the producer's ideologies. For example in Adbusters puttin the Zucchetti advert directly next to the page talking about the lack of water some areas of the world have, with 3 hours of flowing water a day, with people having to wake up at 3:30 in the morning daily to collect water; which clearly could have a opposed reading of being offensive and controversial, with the preferred reading being the reader feeling guilty about spending money on branded products like Zucchetti, with their anti-consumerist ideology. Woman magazine on the other hand encodes very different ideologies, to the point you could say there's a binary opposition between the two magazines through what they aim to promote. Woman magazine pretty much tells their readers that in order to be the perfect housewife or be beautiful then they need to buy into capitalism.
Adbusters is a controversial magazine which is deliberately subversive, aggressive and confusing; costing £11 with the release of it being bi-monthly. The contents of it are alarming to most audiences and have strong ideologies consisting of: anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist, and anti-profit as it doesn't include a single advert throughout any of their magazines. the copy of Woman from 1964, costing 80p in today's money which shows the target audience would have been the working class female, on the other hand is practically the opposite in the sense that is warm, welcoming and seen as a friendly magazine for women to read for entertainment purposes. it's a women's lifestyle magazine so the contents are all aimed primarily towards women. The sole purpose of Woman magazine is to make as much profit as possible like the majority of most magazines available to buy. Woman magazine sets the expectations for women about what they should look like, smell like and be like in general, reinforcing hegemonic norms about women.
One article we can see Adbusters' ideologies in is the double page spread with the Zucchetti advert and the page promoting awareness of the exclusiveness of water in the poverty stricken areas around the world, creating a powerful binary position between wealth and poverty which is designed to make the audience feel guilty. This is one of Adbusters' main ideologies, being anti-commodity fetishism, the belief that we as consumers buy products for the name and Zucchetti is a great example of people buying something for the name as in itself it gives us water, something we as humans require in order to survive so why does it matter what it comes out of as long as it's clean, it'll be the same quality water regardless of what tap you have. The other page has a close up shot of a naked woman in the bath, the mise-en-scene of the model's wrinkly hands are a symbolic code of poverty and misfortune. However what is unique for the page is that the woman in the bath isn't being sexualised in order to sell a product or anything, and has deliberately been de-sexualised which goes against Van-Zoonen's theory of feminism. Furthermore, Adbusters could be seen as hypocritical as Zucchetti is a luxurious brand and only those in the middle class and above will know about the brand, meaning in order to understand some of the contents in the magazine you will need to have a knowledge of high end brands like Zucchetti and Louboutin, brands you wouldn't buy unless you had a considerably large expendable income. And as Adbusters try to encode their anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideologies you start to understand that the majority of readers of Adbusters are those who buy such products. It could be seen as hypocritical how Adbusters charge £11 per magazine even though they try to remain as controversial and subversive as possible through encoding their anti-consumerist ideology, yet they charge a considerate amount for a magazine in today's market. They also have an online shop in which you can buy merchandise as well as copy of the 'meme-wars' which would set you back £189 for the same contents as the original with the only difference being it's made using sand paper instead; this hugely contradicts their anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideologies as you're just paying that much in order to say you have the special copy, linking to commodity fetishism.
Woman on the other hand can be seen to encode completely different ideologies into their magazine, for example the breeze advert through which uses a mid shot of a naked woman in the bath or so we assume because of how the bath has been removed from the image so the audience can see more of the model, showing how she has been sexualised to become an aspirational figure to women as we know sex sells. It promotes an unrealistic idea of what beauty is as she's in the bath with a full face of makeup and her hair looking amazing even though it has been put up to look effortless; reinforcing hegemonic norms of what women should look like. Furthemore, the lexis "Because you're a woman" strengthens the idea that this is an aspiration through the direct mode of address, making it relatable to the audience which has been assumed to be all made up of women.
Another way Woman magazine encodes their consumerist and stereotypical ideologies is through the front cover of the magazine. The mise-en-scene of the front cover uses a physically appealing female model in which covers the majority of the page, which to the primary target audience of women could be seen as an aspirational figure, with the conservative haircut and perfect white smile. The background colour is a purple pastel colour is soft and gentle reinforcing the expectations of women through the connotations of purple being flowers and elegance, being a stereotypical feminine colour all together. The large serif title "Woman" would instantly encourage the female target audience to buy the magazine as they would be able to relate to it through being a female, making them feel special in a time where the focus was mainly on men being the superior gender, with the women's liberation movement emerging towards the late 1960's.
In conclusion, viewpoints and ideologies are encoded in Adbusters and Woman magazine through the images used throughout both of the magazines, with each image having a symbolic code for something else, reinforcing the producer's ideologies. For example in Adbusters puttin the Zucchetti advert directly next to the page talking about the lack of water some areas of the world have, with 3 hours of flowing water a day, with people having to wake up at 3:30 in the morning daily to collect water; which clearly could have a opposed reading of being offensive and controversial, with the preferred reading being the reader feeling guilty about spending money on branded products like Zucchetti, with their anti-consumerist ideology. Woman magazine on the other hand encodes very different ideologies, to the point you could say there's a binary opposition between the two magazines through what they aim to promote. Woman magazine pretty much tells their readers that in order to be the perfect housewife or be beautiful then they need to buy into capitalism.
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