General The power of panda ad's

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General The power of panda ad's

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Foreign/exotic imagery in advertising

Of the multitude of advertising productions featured on Romanian TV I have chosen a series that is an eloquent case in point. The choice was motivated by the `actors' in the ads performing the roles of Rastas perhaps the prototypical outcomes of cultural mixing at work7 (social and racial, as well) - and for their `co-nationality' with the coiner of the term transculturation8. So far, `two episodes' have been aired of what seems to be a sequence of independent stories with slightly different plots which are variations for an identical message: Buy the new Fiat Panda. The two mini-films feature as leading characters two Rastafarians, in the first case, and in the second, four. In both cases, they seem to be far removed from their country of origin (the Caribbean/ Jamaica) and that of adoption (the UK, for most), performing in a mountainous scenery intimating a European country traversed by the Alps. In the first episode the two Rastas are riding in a Fiat Panda apparently in a prolonged joyride or drive test, get carried away with the sheer pleasure of pure driving and find themselves out of bounds and into a foreign land. They meet here a huge mountain dog with a long tangled coat resembling very much their own dreadlocks. As the dog seems to be one of their own sporting a coat that makes him the one familiar element in an otherwise alien location, one of the young men salutes him in Rasta fashion. The dog obviously makes no reply, which leads the young men to believe it is a case of mistaken identity. (Hey, let's go man, this no Rasta dog!) The second episode features four young Rastas huddled in the same Fiat Panda, this time enjoying collectively an identical snowy landscape somewhere in the Alps again (most likely). The breathtaking view seems to inspire them to howl out a Rasta salute, which will cause an avalanche. The four barely have time to leap into the car, start the engine, and roll out of danger's way. Making a narrow escape, they stop , however, not far from the snow slide and one of them mischievously invites the others to relive the experience and celebrate the Rasta `power' of stirring the unmovable majesty of the Alps. (Let's do this again!). Both exclamations are in broad Creole accent, while the message of the advertisement in Romanian translates as: For every Fiat Panda 4x4 you get 10 000 km free.

It is obvious that what invites a transcultural reading of this advertisement is, on the one hand, the combination in the storyline of symbolic images belonging to two cultures that are geographically removed from each other: dreadlocks for the non-conformist Rasta9 of tropical origins and the snowy mountains for a conservative cold (in the winter) European country (Austria or Switzerland). The element that compresses space and allows the two remote coordinates to intersect is still another symbolic image, the Fiat Panda - a metonymy for Italy as car manufacturer. On the other hand, and most importantly, the advertisement addresses a fourth party: the local audience of a formerly communist country of the Eastern European bloc the Romanian viewers. All of these details are the significant elements of a syntagm that has to be made sense of and domesticated by the local audience. The problems may arise from the fact that the syntagmatic constituents are capitalist values which have not yet been completely absorbed by a `national' community that is still in a transient stage to an authentic functional market of the western type (in terms of the former East/West divide in Europe). The members of the local culture as the intended recipients of the message are most likely to read its metaphors by selecting from the paradigmatic dimension

Erm....

Could someone explain all that to me?

(found it on the web written by a Lecturer at Babes-Bolyai University
Cluj, Romania... Does that mean I can go and get a degree in 'panda-ism'???)

Jim
 
e505jpy said:
Erm....

Could someone explain all that to me?

(found it on the web written by a Lecturer at Babes-Bolyai University
Cluj, Romania... Does that mean I can go and get a degree in 'panda-ism'???)

Jim
nah, they are just looking for Chavs...
 
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