Complex Images

(image is from http://www.historybyzim.com)

 All images can be complex and have deeper meaning depending on the audience and the depths at which they go to in order to decode an image. Complex images usually have many meanings depending on how far one can go in the process of decoding and their societal or cultural background.

For example, this 1950’s advertisement for cellophane displaying a stalk carrying a baby wrapped in cellophane and a young boy also wrapped in cellophane can be seen in many different ways and have a variety of different responses both good and bad. This company had many other advertisements involving small children wrapped in the cellophane which raised questioning as to why they were wrapping children in such a dangerous way in something they were trying to sell. The quote above the first image “everything’s at its best in cellophane” and the second image “the best things in life are wrapped in cellophane” to me seems like they’re trying to say that the best thing in life is a child? And children are at their best when wrapped in cellophane? Yeah children are great but so are cakes, why not have an assortment of cakes on a nice little platter and wrap them up in cellophane? To me putting children in there seems a little morbid and quite abominable. Makes me wonder who came up with the idea for DuPont back in the day thinking “lets show how great this cellophane is by showing it can suffocate children yay!” No but seriously I’m sure there could have been other ways the advertisers could promote their product without probably causing people to think they were nearing killing children for the sole purpose of advertising.

All jokes aside this is a complex image that would definitely raise a lot of questioning and a lot of complex conflict within todays society especially now because people go really deep into things (we all know this), but then again a lot of controversial and even non controversial advertisements get released in the media everyday and always have second meanings for different individuals, but some are always more shocking than others. How I would love to get into the minds of some of the people that come up with advertising ideas.