Monthly Archives: February 2018

Culture Jam Assignment

Original Ad:

The sexually appealing images in advertisements have been a problem for many years. My choice of advertisement is from Burger King when they released a new advertising campaign in 2009 to promote their new product, “Super Seven Incher.” There is a surprised blonde white female on the left side with her mouth open with the burger right in front of her mouth. She looks ready to take a bite of the burger. Her bright red lips and blushed cheeks immediately catch the viewers’ attention. The caption at the centre, “It’ll blow your mind away” is printed in bold capital letters to emphasize its meaning. This ad is extremely controversial with sexual connotations of oral sex. The burger is placed in front of her mouth to evoke the image of a penis, and the name of the burger, “Super Seven Incher” also refers to the penis size. The caption in the centre, especially the word “blow” references to the slang term of fellatio, ‘blowjob.’ Another caption on the top right,“It just tastes better” also alludes the oral sex and means ‘our burger just tastes better than penis.’ The image of a woman is included to finalize this sexual theme. Moreover, the description at the bottom in the yellow box, emphasizing the act of performing oral sex on male again by saying “fill your desire for something long, juicy…yearn for more after you taste the mind-blowing burger…” All these images and words try to promote the idea that eating this burger can give the consumer same pleasure as fellatio. This is an extremely disgusting and problematic poster that targets only male consumers. Even though it is supposed to be an advertisement for a food, it is portraying woman as an object of sexual pleasure to serve men. The aim of the ad should be selling their new burger with larger size and better taste, not degrading women and put them in an offensive position. The sexual image of the female is not necessary for this product at all. As a woman myself, I don’t want to eat BK’s burger ever again which would remind me of the male genitalia while eating the burger.

Jammed Version of the Ad:

For my culture jam of the advertisement, I removed the original image of a white woman and a burger which alludes the oral sex. The imagery of blowjob is absolutely not necessary for this type of advertisement. I was offended by the image of the female as I was humiliating in the advertisement. Also, when I was doing a research on this poster, I found that the model of this poster posted a YouTube video saying that she did not know that the company used her photo without her permission. She said that the use of her image on this kind of sexual image was a  sexual assault. Therefore, instead of keeping that sexual image of her, I cropped the image of “Super Seven Incher” from the original poster and put the burger at the centre of different background, and put the pop and french fries beside the burger to emphasize only the product itself without any sexual connotations. Also, I put the name of the burger and the price of the meal above the image of the burger. Since it is an advertisement for a burger, addressing the cheap price for the meal of longer burger with medium size pop and fries would be much appealing to the consumers. I added the text saying “Larger size, Cheaper Price” on the top right to emphasize the newly added feature of the burger. Furthermore, I put the original description of a burger in the yellow section into the small wood panel and removed some texts of it which evoked the oral sex before. I put the original quote, “It just tastes better” with the company logo at the very top, which now has a simple meaning that literally means it tastes better. Also, I put some texts on the bottom right, “No Hormones, No Steroids, No Antibiotics”, to emphasize its believable nutrient without any antibiotics, thus it can give a positive impression to the consumer. It is important to note that the way of portraying women in a sexually appealing way in advertising is unnecessary and offensive.

References:

Nudd, Tim. “Unwitting Star of Burger King’s ‘Blow Job Ad’ Finally Lashes out at the Company”: Likens treatment of her image to rape. Adweek Network, 2014. http://www.adweek.com/creativity/unwitting-star-burger-kings-blow-job-ad-finally-lashes-out-company-159347/

Time. A Seven Inch Cheeseburger. Top 10 Tasteless Ads. http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1907218_1907236_1907377,00.html

used images of jammed ad from
: http://www.burgerking.co.kr/#
: http://www.newstomato.com/ReadNews.aspx?no=695892