Race and diversity have and will always be something humans long for, however, when it is given to us the result is usually catastrophic.
For the duration of the above Dove advertisement, women are shown taking off their shirt to reveal another of a different race as a way to demonstrate Dove’s company motives to appeal to a greater audience and to eliminate racism. As expected, the ad. caused a lot of controversy regarding the topic of racism and was regarded by CNN as, “racially insensitive advert on social media” (1). This blog post will address and analyze this ad. using the three different types of readings present in chapter 6 of The Cultural Studies Reader by Stuart Hall (2). The three different types being: Dominant-hegemonic (“when the reader fully accepts the media put in front of them and interprets it in the exact way that the author of the text intended them to”), negotiated (“when the audience believe the information partially but believe that certain parts of the text are inaccurate or biased”), and oppositional readings (“the readers social position and moral values influence their belief of the content and causes them to disregard the information and reject the reading”) (3).
I believe that the dominant reading of the advertisement would pertain to Dove showing variety within their brand. They demonstrate diversity by including women from many different ethnicities and bringing them together within the ad. As well, Dove is most known for creating commercials or advertisements that are well received by their audiences due to their use of diversity.
A Negotiated reading of Dove’s ad. can be seen as their company creating the ad. with the idea of respectable intentions, however, it was just executed poorly. Because Dove is dealing with the extremely sensitive topic of race and diversity, it is difficult to have the audience correctly decode what they have encoded. At the same time, the showcased intentions by Dove can be clearly seen within the commercial, where many women of different cultures and races are represented and equality was Dove’s prominent message.
Lastly, the oppositional reading turns out to be the most popular within Dove’s audience. The reason being is obvious when one views the commercial. Society is simply provoked by issues regarding race, particularly when the issue is concerning people of colour in the United States during the modern day. For example, there is a scene within the ad. where a black woman takes off her T-shirt to reveal a pale, caucasian woman in her place. As expected, this moment has caused the most outcry in the audience to retaliate and confront Dove’s company as being racist only based on this one-second scene. Dove being so open with using race as a marketing strategy is a venturesome one and it surely will cause problems within the audience members no matter what. It is just the outcome of using a diverse race in the ad.
In this case of Dove’s ad. and with any other ad. that pertain to any controversial topic, there will be three main types readings that will arise, dominant-hegemonic, negotiated, and oppositional readings. Audience members will often be in disagreement regarding the encoded message of the sender therefore, three different readings will be fabricated.
Citations:
(1) “Outcry over Dove’s Controversial Ad – CNN Video.” CNN, Cable News Network, 9 Oct. 2017, www.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2017/10/09/dove-advert-race-controversy-sje-lon-orig.cnnmoney.
(2) Hall, Stuart. “Chapter 6: Encoding, Decoding.” The Cultural Studies Reader , Routledge , 1993, pp. 90–103.
(3) White, Danielle. “Danielle White A2 Media Studies.” Stuart Hall’s Preferred Reading Theory, 1 Jan. 1970, daniellewhitemedia.blogspot.com/2015/06/stuart-hall-preferred-reading-theory.html.