Annie washerchops and the effects of the punctum

After being briefly introduced to Annie Leibovitz in class a few weeks back, I can openly admit I wasn’t overly impressed by her work shown. Yet surprisingly enough today, whilst casually browsing through the daily Metro paper, I stumbled across three images which caught my eye. I was hit with a punctum - an interaction to an image on an emotional level.




‘A photographs punctum is that accident which pricks me’ Roland Barthes.



The very thing that had caught my eye in the first place was that the images were of Disney films. As a bit of a fan of the old classic Disney films as child and admittedly still to this day, I was amazed to find these images were by Leibovitz. I instantly found a new liking for her work whilst dreamily gazing at Penelope Cruz as Belle from Beauty and the Beast which is titled ‘Tale as old as Time’. What struck me most was how much they look like paintings. The attention to light hitting the material in Belles golden dress could almost reflect something by some master. Belle is being lifted up by the Beast who is now back to his princely self and couldn’t look more happier.



Of course I have to admit that Belle is by far my favourite character from any Disney film as is Beauty and the Beast the best Disney film so my punctum is of nostalgia and remember wanting to be the girl who was never a princess and didn’t share the same selfishness and vain ideals as the other Disney princesses! There is a beast in us all we just need to find our beauties!



http://www.metro.co.uk/showbiz/857184-beauty-penelope-cruz-gets-a-disney-makeover?ITO=crossref

Subliminally Sublime

Welcome to the world of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Two of these things make products highly saleable and more desirable to the consumers. This advert from Hello magazine shows how sexuality and the fame and glamour associated with such things as the music industry can sell just about anything you can think of, ranging from perfumes and watches to mobile phones and much more.




People who buy this phone may be fooled into thinking that they will become more popular and stylish by the imagery used. The girl, ‘crowd surfing’ whilst singing is wearing some ‘in fashion’ torn leggings and sporting short hair associated with many of the beauties of the celebrity world past and present, such as Emma Watson and Scarlet Johansson, has no link to the phone that Samsung are trying to sell. It is the imagery that tricks the mind in a way we do not always notice, such is the world of advertising. Subliminal messages like these will fool even the most antidisestablishmentarist (if that is even a word) of us all, whether or not the phone is any good.



‘The new, beautifully designed Samsung Wave II’ is a questionable statement. It is hard to recognise how we can connect beauty with mobile phones, yet it is easy to see where they were going when connecting the text and the image. The woman is riding the wave, literally and metaphorically. She may be crowd surfing, but how happily will she be riding the wave of false popularity when another third version of this phone comes along and she is no longer stylish and is no longer in line with the Joneses. You can easily recognise the Samsung logo yet you can barely relate to the imagery, unless you are rich, famous and successful in the art of crowd surfing.



As many of us are aware, it is not only Samsung who are guilty of sexing up their adverts to sell their products, yet I can admit, if I needed a new phone, and this one had good reviews yet was reasonably priced, I too would fool for this gimmic.



Enjoy your consumerisms people!