“Image and Text in Advertising – An Intermedial Study of Figures of Speech and Ekphrasis” Thesis by Bojana Momirovic Acknowledgments Special thanks to my tutor, Prof. Peter Paul Schnierer, for his enlightening insights and guidance in the course of my work and to Prof. Dietmar Schloss for making critical points. I also wish to thank Vishal Chouhan and Holly Dentz for their technical support and Dr. Dragan Momirovic for the inspiration. The University of Heidelberg has my gratitude for accepting and publishing the thesis. 2 To my dear parents 3 Contents Page Introduction 5 Chapter I Studies & Research 8 Chapter II Ekphrasis 38 2.1. Ekphrasis by Peter Wagner and Haiko Wandhoff 39 2.2. Ekphrasis in… 2.2.1. … Comics 51 2.2.2. … Art 2.2.2.1 Monet – Wilde 57 2.2.2.2. Pop Art 59 2.2.2.3. Surrealism 62 2.2.2.4. Dadaism 64 2.2.3. …Figures of Speech 65 2.2.4. …Advertising 68 Chapter III Prosopopoeia 77 3.1. Prosopopoeia in… 3.1.1. …Theatre 78 3.1.2. …Comics 94 3.1.3 …Advertising 103 Chapter IV Ekphrasis in Prosopopoeia and Prosopopoeia in Ekphrasis 115 Conclusion 129 Appendix 130 German Summary – Deutsche Zusammenfassung 136 Bibliography 150 4 Introduction A perceptible text-image plane has attracted various studies on intermediality ranging from comparison of literary texts with painting to linguistic analysis of puns and neologisms in advertising. The different media and means of communication indeed seem to share certain aspects that create the crossroad between the two poles so that they are treated more and more as an inseparable whole. This study will concentrate on the common ground of literature and advertising. In literature it is the text that generates a strong visual allusion and in advertising it is mostly the visual aspect that guides the viewer’s ‘reading’. The intrinsic message of these two media is encoded on a plane where the visual and the textual elements meet. This plane can be analysed in various ways. The focus here will be on two literary phenomena that will prove to be widely exploited in new media: figures of speech and ekphrasis. Figures of speech are foremost known as textual entities with a strong visual character in poetry, prose and other forms of literary texts. For example, metaphor, perhaps the best- known of figures, is a change of word sense achieved by rendering one thing in terms of another, normally incompatible things. Irony is a change of discourse sense (meaning the opposite of what is said); prosopopoeia – an absent person presented as speaking or a dead person as alive. Figures are able to establish an intimate link between objects or phenomena that could not be brought together otherwise. They enable the user to express with strong and sometimes exaggerated imagery ideas and experiences that might seem blunt in simple literal speech. The intrinsic function of figures is, as a matter of fact, to evoke notions and ideas that go beyond the factual denotation or description. Advertising has little space for communication of the respective message and needs to work with means that enable it to express and achieve the wanted effect in several seconds or on merely one page of a magazine. The density of the encoded meaning is what makes this medium extraordinary. It works with carefully chosen colours, well designed graphical structure and meticulous text. The latter is often brought down to an efficient and influential essence. One of the particularities of advertising is the visual encoding. Analysis has shown that the medium employs several visually presented literary features in order to guide the viewer to the core of the message. The viewer seems 5 to be able to recognise and verbalise these features in his imagination in the form of e.g. a metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole and other figures. The knot between the textual and the visual element can be analysed with the help of ekphrasis. The definition of this literary phenomenon – textual presentation of visual presentation – brings forth a plane where the two features meet and interact. Ekphrasis establishes the link between, e.g. a title and a painting or the text in a comic and the respective panels. In works of art that encompass both a textual and visual dimension ekphrasis is ‘automatically’ at work. The features might complement one another, or one of them might be dominant. Whatever the case may be, ekphrasis is active at their very intersection and reveals their simultaneous and dynamic interaction. The first part of the study will portray the visual encoding of figures of speech in advertising and daily communication with examples from Charles Forceville’s Pictorial Metaphor, and Gibbs’ Poetics of Mind. The second part will be dedicated to ekphrasis and additionally to the analysis of advertising a parallel will be drawn to other media, such as art, comics, as well as theatre, all of which rely on a textual and visual component. The attention will then turn to a figure of speech that has drawn little attention among literary scholars – prosopopoeia. Its straightforward definition – presentation of an absent or dead person as alive and present – has hardly incited any research. The particularity of this figure, however, is its need for a tangible visual reference. That is probably the reason why it is most common to media where it can take up concrete visual forms. Furthermore, the different media use the figure in diverse ways: apart from the presentation of an absent person, it is applied to objects and even abstract phenomena, as e.g. desire. The figure is able to reveal spheres that lie outside the presented foreground image. The third part of the study will thus suggest an extension of its basic definition in contexts of theatre, comics and advertising and show how far it can get in the presentation of the absent. The final chapter will work with both ekphrasis and prosopopoeia and show in what way the two phenomena interact with one another. A unifying theory will be suggested that reveals their dynamic interaction on the text-image plane. The study will rely on recent magazine advertising. The medium has indeed existed for more than a century. However, its primary forms were characterised by long descriptive texts of the advertised product. As of the 1950s and 1960s advertising started to work 6 with more concise elements and in the past 20 to 30 years the latter were particularly reduced to a condensed story-telling-image and little text (mostly one sentence or merely the brand name). These new forms gave way to highly creative and inventive means of communication of the respective message. Our analysis will furthermore encompass 20th century theatre. Its realistic portrayal of political and social contexts, on the one hand, and existentialist, on the verge of surrealist, presentation of real-life situations on the other, show its ability to juggle with familiar literary features. We will especially see in what way the figure prosopopoeia is used and that it indeed goes beyond the mere presentation of an absent person. The medium encodes the figure in such a way that it reveals spheres that go beyond the staged reality and reach the plane of either collective sub- consciousness or that of a particular character. Comics will be another art form analysed here. The particularity of the medium is that it works simultaneously with text and image. A specific dynamics is created between the two elements that exist as an inseparable whole. Moreover, a parallel will be drawn to art forms, such as Pop Art, Surrealism and Dadaism. The means used to encode reality have given way to new perceptions and redefinitions of familiar patterns, whether a language system (see Magritte) or daily life situations (see Segal). All of the media analysed here share the common ground of being text-image entities. Throughout the study the emphasis will, however, be on advertising. Analysis should reveal that literary theory has found its way to the new media where literary elements have been given a new way of encoding. The shared features seem to create a new joint sphere for a dynamic interaction of probably the most important means of communication – text and image. 7 Chapter I Studies & Research The topic of visio-textual communication has attracted theoreticians from interdisciplinary fields. The intersection between the visual and textual elements in communication can indeed be treated in various ways. The focus here is on figures of speech that are widely exploited in the new media. Figures are known as foremost textual literary features. In the new media however they are for the most part given a visual form. Several studies have already dealt with the visual encoding of figures. Charles Forceville, for example, focuses on metaphor and shows to what extent it is used in advertising. Raymond Gibbs treats several figures of speech and points to their use in daily communication. Guy Cook covers the linguistic and literary features and shows how widely exploited theses are in advertisements. The visually encoded figures can be verbalised, and the textually presented ones have a strong visual character. This kind of text-image plane evokes de Saussure’s theory of signifier and signified. An analysis of the linguistic formula will follow in order to reveal its possible intersection with some of the figures. This first chapter should lead to the upcoming research on the very knot between the visual and the textual elements in works of art that rely on both features. The focus here will be on recent advertisements. * * * Charles Forceville has widely exploited metaphor in his study Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising1. He concentrates on the visual aspect of advertisements, and especially on what he calls ‘pictorial metaphors’. According to Forceville pictorial metaphor can be divided into two distinctive parts: “[…] one the primary subject or tenor, the 1 Charles Forceville, Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising, (London: Routledge, 1996) 8 other the secondary subject or vehicle […]. [The] transfer or mapping of features is from secondary subject (on)to primary subject […]”2. Figure 1.1 shows one of his first examples for pictorial metaphor: a shoe is presented in a place where the viewer would normally expect a tie. However, it is immediately understood that the advertisement is indeed one for shoes. The ‘mapping of features’ in this case is from ‘tie’ as the secondary subject to ‘shoe’ as the primary subject. The concept of ‘tie’ implies certain aesthetics, elegance and seriousness (e.g. in a business man’s outfit); these are thus projected onto the advertised product. Forceville qualifies this case as a MP1 – metaphor with one pictorially present term3. Figure 1.1: Forceville, 1996:110 Forceville continues with metaphors with two pictorially present terms – MP2. These are advertisements that present both the primary and secondary subject visually. In figure 1.2 these would be ‘earth’ and ‘candle’. “The heading […] (‘We extract energy from the earth as if it were inexhaustible’) and the information (in small print at the bottom) that the […] advertisement [was released by] the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs suggest not only EARTH is the primary subject of the metaphor, 2 Forceville, Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising, 65. 3 Forceville, Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising, 109 – 113. 9 but also supplies the feature mapped from the secondary subject CANDLE onto the primary subject EARTH: ‘providing an exhaustible amount of energy’”4. Figure 1.2: Forceville, 1996: 128. Forceville furthermore introduces pictorial similes which have to be distinguished from MP1s and MP2s. In the latter the primary and secondary subjects were in a way visually integrated in one another; in pictorial similes the two are clearly separated entities. Figure 1.3 shows a Lassale watch advertisement. The primary subject of this advertisement is obviously the watch and the secondary the butterfly. On first sight this juxtaposition might seem strange, but the visual image brings forth strong similarities between the two. The form of the wings, e.g. - a slightly inclined oval form - corresponds to the form of the straps. The viewer can furthermore assume that the wings of the butterfly are smooth and soft – characteristics implying that the watch is not rigid but adapts easily to the form of the wrist. The whole image 4 Forceville, Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising, 126. 10