Mariner Watches and Power
This is an ad posted on the Mariner Watches Instagram page in 2019, although it was quickly removed after public backlash.
In the ad, a man’s wrist is resting on a woman’s throat. This is a position of power, where the man has control over the woman. The power difference between them is subtle, as the man is not strangling the woman and it could be seen as a gentle (if strange) caress, but there is an implicit threat in his actions: he is not harming her right now, but her life is literally in his hands. This relates to traditional gender roles, where the man is usually the one in control over the woman. It is important to note that the woman is not resisting the man, and is leaning back, exposing her throat—the message in the ad is that a conventionally beautiful, white woman has submitted to a man and accepted her traditional gender role. There is a degree of objectification in the ad, as the woman is portrayed as an item to be conquered (with the help of the watch). This also reveals the subtle racial component to this ad: by portraying a white woman as an object of desire, the ad is both adhering to white standards of beauty and marginalizing women of colour, as they are not even considered desirable.
Another interesting thing about this ad is that it is in black and white, and there is no text, save for the brand name and logo. According to their Instagram, Mariner Watches sells “luxury watches for men”, so I believe they are going with the simplistic, monochrome style to match the ‘Instagram aesthetic’, and are trying to portray the watch as something classy and modern. In the ad, both the woman and the watch are status symbols—this is the social class component to the advertisement. As the appearance of the man is purposefully kept unknown, the ad is implying that if you buy the watch, you can be like the rich, dominating man in the picture loved by beautiful women.
The Jammed Ad:
In my jammed ad, I decided to take all the subtle messages in the original ad and make them glaringly obvious. I removed the Mariner Watches brand name and logo because I think that, even in the original ad, the brand was not the focus of the ad. The focus of the ad was the unbalanced power dynamic between the woman and the man, and I highlighted this by replacing the Mariner brand logo with the word ‘Dominance’. With this ad, Mariner Watches is trying to sell the idea of dominance, by suggesting the watch will give the man power over the woman. Additionally, I chose to outline the wrist in white and placed the male sex symbol over the watch to make it undeniable that this watch is targeted towards men, and is about male dominance.
I also spoke to the class and objectification components in the original ad with the subtitle “money speaks…she’ll listen”. I wanted to make it very obvious that the original ad was implying that women are objects to be conquered by powerful men, and that women will listen to a wealthy and successful man. The audience is supposed to realize how foolish it is to suggest that women will submit to a man just because he is wealthy and wears a fancy watch.
I decided to keep the monochrome colour scheme, so it matches the simplistic Instagram aesthetic of the original ad, but I made the word ‘Dominance’ red and added a splatter of red paint behind it. By doing so, I am drawing the audience’s attention to the word ‘Dominance’, as it is the core theme of the ad. The colour red also makes the audience think of violence, and the splatter of paint is supposed to look like blood. Along with the tear tracks on the woman’s face, this emphasizes the violent undertones of the original ad, by making it very obvious that the woman is being threatened into submission. I hoped to invoke a sense of horror in the audience, forcing them to realize that this ad, and the message it conveys, is very dangerous to women and women’s rights.