Page 80 - Žagar, Igor Ž. 2021. Four Critical Essays on Argumentation. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut.
P. 80
four critical essays on argumentation
Polyphony
A bit different mechanism seems to be at work in Marlboro advertisements
Asimakis Tseronis used at the Brač Argumentation Conference in 2012.
Actually, these were not advertisements but ‘subvertisements’, produced by
a group called Adbusters (a name that is rather indicative as to what they
are doing to advertisements).
Chronologically, the original Marlboro advertisements come first, of
course. The background is always the American (Wild?) West, represent-
ed in warm, yellowish and brownish colors, and in the foreground there is
always one or several cowboys. They may be smoking or not, but a pack of
Marlboro cigarettes together with the company’s logo is always highly visi-
ble and sets the frame (= we are talking cigarettes advertisement here, not,
for example, westerns, or horse breeding).
What do Adbusters do to these original ads? They can’t use the com-
pany’s logo and packs of cigarettes, of course, so they use the standard-
ized Marlboro background (warm, yellowish and brownish colors in the
background, several cowboys in the foreground) to activate the appropriate
frame with the observers (= this is (about) Marlboro). And the text with-
in this familiar ‘Marlboro country’, implicitly and indirectly, alludes to the
missing packs of cigarettes.
Like in Figure 7:
Figure 7.
Maybe even more efficient is the following parody. On the original ad-
vertisement we see cowboys on horses in a winter landscape, with Marlboro
80
Polyphony
A bit different mechanism seems to be at work in Marlboro advertisements
Asimakis Tseronis used at the Brač Argumentation Conference in 2012.
Actually, these were not advertisements but ‘subvertisements’, produced by
a group called Adbusters (a name that is rather indicative as to what they
are doing to advertisements).
Chronologically, the original Marlboro advertisements come first, of
course. The background is always the American (Wild?) West, represent-
ed in warm, yellowish and brownish colors, and in the foreground there is
always one or several cowboys. They may be smoking or not, but a pack of
Marlboro cigarettes together with the company’s logo is always highly visi-
ble and sets the frame (= we are talking cigarettes advertisement here, not,
for example, westerns, or horse breeding).
What do Adbusters do to these original ads? They can’t use the com-
pany’s logo and packs of cigarettes, of course, so they use the standard-
ized Marlboro background (warm, yellowish and brownish colors in the
background, several cowboys in the foreground) to activate the appropriate
frame with the observers (= this is (about) Marlboro). And the text with-
in this familiar ‘Marlboro country’, implicitly and indirectly, alludes to the
missing packs of cigarettes.
Like in Figure 7:
Figure 7.
Maybe even more efficient is the following parody. On the original ad-
vertisement we see cowboys on horses in a winter landscape, with Marlboro
80
