Floral Delight
Veggies for Growth At
the same time as Delight was offering its semi-subliminal wares to
the unsuspecting public Flora was delighted to offer to the public
various phallic offerings. Probably the
The
intriguing element about the manikin is his genital region. The Confirmation
that the manikins notable feature was not accidental is obtained by
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Arousing Works of Art Just
as Delight ads moved from making use of models and moved towards the
use of cartoon figures so Flora moved into artistic drawings. Each
ad, taken in isolation, again seems rather innocuous. And I doubt
that many people noticed that a sexual element still managed to permeate
what seems like simple pieces of artwork. Take the ad with the
However, if you take a closer look at the wine glass you will see a rather nubile female figure with a 'punkish' hairdo and a figure rather reminiscent of many pagan goddesses. The rollover helps identify the figure by adding in an 'eye' Similarly,
the Healthier in the long run ad does more than present a basic
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Heartless
Flora's
manipulative content did not fade away when it began to make use of
models
The
same ploy is evident in the other ad depicted below. The quality of
the imagery is once again such that even in the original ad it is
difficult to perceive the lettering. And one could quite reasonably
argue that perceiving them is a matter of projection. That may well
be the case, however, it seems on the weight of
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This takes the biscuit
Here Flora reverts to the
traditional incorporation of sex in the background,
or rather the foreground of this ad, with 'lettering'
that is clearer than in the hearts in the previous
section. Liberally sprinkled along the foot of this
ad are the letters s
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Family Values? So where do we go next. Once upon a time the Tory party emphasized family values, more recently it has been New Labour. With such a deep current of public trends to underpin their promotion it seemed appropriate for Flora to follow suit and emphasise the virtues of family members. In a series of ads Flora depicted the members of the average family. All appeared to have developed normally despite having been associated with Flora. However it is noticeable that embedded in amongst the body hair of the male members of the family there are once again shapes indicative of the letters s e and x. One wonders why.
On the hair swinging adolescent one can detect 'lettering' embedded in his hair. The rollover indicates where to look. The S shaped piece of hair and other 'letter' components in this area of the extract do not even seem to be attached to his head. His 'elder brother' bares his armpit and a few 'letters'. His 'father' has his arm wrapped around his 'wife', demonstrating his physical charms on his arm. Note once again that the aspects identified on the illustrations below are debatable and can only be judged in the light of the other more obvious examples at manipulation demonstrated above. Any judgement of elements that are ambiguous and on the borderline of perceptual ability are problematic. However, in the context of the more obvious manipulative ads above, would you be willing to give the ad agency the benefit of the doubt? Additionally, bear in mind that there are other aspects of these ads, not discussed here, that add 'sexual' emphasis to at least two of these ads. Can you identify them?
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Last Revised: 3rd January, 2003 |