France, April 1999. Moet Hennessy
An Unintentional "Deadly Sin"
By: Kayla Steward
Deadly Sin: Gluttony
Imagine you are flipping through a magazine and you happen to come across this advertisement. You see the young woman eating what seems to be a handful of cherries. You then look down at the purse that is next to her and see it is also filled with cherries that have rolled out onto the table she is resting on. You don't think twice about what's in the picture, but you do wonder what the picture is advertising. Louis Voutton. Most likely, you will think for a second about how the product of the ad and the ad relate, but then you'll continue to flip through the magazine.
Now go through the whole analysis process of the ad just like you did in the first scenario, except take a longer moment to think more about what is indirect, rather than what is directly seen within the picture. Not only take a moment to go into deeper thought, but think through a religious perspective. You then realize that this ad is revealing something most people won't catch on their first glimpse- a sin. A deadly sin. Gluttony, to be more specific.
Gluttony is the sin of over eating. In the picture, the woman is clearly eating more than enough of the cherries. The author is most likely trying to appeal to an audience who will think more about the ad just like you did in the second scenario. They show a woman over eating out of a nice purse to most likely get viewers to want to over-buy their products. They want them to constantly want their products, just like the woman wants the fruit within the picture. The author is most likely trying to appeal to an audience of women that fall in the higher middle class to upper class, just because the company of the ad is an expensive company and they are advertising a woman's purse. This audience of women most likely includes women who wear expensive clothing and are going to want to buy the purse to keep their reputation of being able to afford and wear expensive clothing. The downside to this ad, keeping the audience in mind, is that it can come off as a bit stereotypical. Men can have gluttony and can have the desire to be stylish and buy expensive things, but since it is your typical women's purse, they choose to have a woman wearing nice clothing. This can also be stereotypical towards women as well, making them seem greedy, or avarice in the fact that they want people to notice they are able to buy and pull off such expensive brand items. The ad is meant to make the audience want to buy their product, without even thinking about the effects it will have on it's audience, nor the image they are sending to the viewers of the ad, which in my opinion, is not a very good image. But my opinion is my opinion. I personally would not buy a purse that expensive, especially for a company that is possibly biased towards other social classes that are not within their intentions.
