Referencing "The Photographic Message," the pictured FedEx advertisement has both “denotative" and "connotative" meanings as referred to by Roland Barthes. The public is generally bombarded by “in-your-face” commercial art like “Buy these shoes!” Or “This could be You!” Other ads hide social and historical connotations that lay just beneath the surface of ads that play into our ideological tendencies. This distinction of what is actually known and what is implied is the struggle for every advertisement. Can this be construed the wrong way? Can we get away with this subject matter and it still be edgy and cool? These are questions advertising agencies face daily. At first glance, this is a seemingly harmless photo of one man's hands handing off a trumpet to another man through a FedEx box. Innocent right? One can assume that this simply implies that their mailing service provides an important day to day roll in one's life by delivering what is near and dear to the heart. This is only the facade that you are responsible to take from this image and is placed there by the advertisers' themselves.
The ad uses our connotative preconceptions of racial class simply by telling the audience who is giving and who is receiving the trumpet. Both the man's hands in the picture are ambiguously placed where one could not decipher who is actually receiving the trumpet, but they imply that the lower gentleman is receiving the trumpet by using our stubborn ideologies of racial social class. The hands from above are that of a seemingly naked white man, giving us no further details about who this mystery man is, was, or could be, this lack of identity and the iconic image of hands from the sky connotes a holy being. This deity happens to be a white male, giving whites superior power in the photo. In contrast, the hands receiving the trumpet are that of an African American man in a business suit. Whether this is alluding to the jazz culture of America or to the business class, compared to a god, he is shown as the weaker man. Even the mere fact that he is the one at the bottom symbolizes struggle and having to look up for answers. Whether it be to a white Man or to a white God, if multiple arguments can be made that an advertisement portrays the African American people in a negative light, should it be condemned or should it be allowed to prove generations of racial conditioning.
Even this conceptually simple advertisement, maybe without even realizing it, is perpetuating the idea of racial class and instilling prejudice in today’s society. Mass media utilizing stereotypes is only a trap for the weak willed who choose to conform to being “the audience.” If a generation of advertising agencies carefully constructed all their ads with the intention of not furthering negative social ideological beliefs, America could take the power from negative aspects of life and eventually eliminate them from society. To function today an advertisement must look beyond their strategy and realize the social ramifications of such an image. By doing this, future generations will not be subjected to the ignorance of the past.
-James Battle
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