Old Spice | The Man Your Man Could Smell Like - Analysis of 'Othering'

I would argue that this is an example of post-modern 'othering.'
It contrasts the modern ideal that we can be a perfect human by buying a certain product but still uses that as a selling point. The adverts shows an advertising stereotype of the 'ideal man,' (buff, deep voice, rides horses.. owns a boat..?) who is in fact bigotted and ignorant to the advertising stereotype of womens needs (material possessions, expensive romantic gestures etc. etc.) We think 'I dont want to be like him, but i appreciate that women would at least find him physically attractive.' He then suggests that we can smell like him and so the thought process continues.

A part of physical attractiveness is the way we smell, we know that pheromones play an important part in the chemistry of attraction. The man we are presented with in this advert is unoriginal, boring, a typical physically strong male specimen who is presented as a ladies man. This is where the postmodern 'othering' starts, we think 'yeah we don't want to be anything like him, but unfortunately basic attraction is fact of life. So maybe smelling like him wouldn't be a bad thing. Another element to this advert is that it is definitely funny, so in associating old spice with humour (a quality I'd argue is desirable) we can bring the advert as an idea (although not the man as we are laughing at him,) into the 'us' realm and adopt it as something good.

'Yeah. Old Spice is funny. I'll buy that. Maybe I'll get laid because it'll be funny, nothing like the guy in the advert who has no idea.'

Seminar: Identity

According to Jacques Lacan the creation of identity happens at the "mirror stage."

A child reaches a stage between 6 and 18 months old when it has a moment of realisation (albeit in illusion) that it is a whole and complete person and recognises its own reflection in the mirror as confirmation.

According to Lacan we strive to experience this moment again for the rest of out life.
So then we can say that the mirror stage is characterised as "an illusion of wholeness" and "receiving views from others" which means our subjectivity is fragile and easily exploited by the advertising industry.

"Otherness" is a concept that relies on the assumption of opposition, "us and them" and gaining security in out subjectivity by distancing ourselves from people who do things we dislike for one reason or another.
If we create our identities this way, we can assume that so does a society.

"this question of difference and otherness has come to play an increasingly significant role... difference is ambivalent. It can be both positive and negative. It is both necessary for the production of meaning, the formation of language and culture, for social identities and a subjective sense of the self as a sexed object - and at the same time, it is threatening, a site of danger, of negative feelings, of splitting, hostility and agression towards the Other."
- Stuart Hall 1997, Representation: Cultural Representation and signifying practices. London P.238

Culture is the framework within which our identities are formed, expressed and regulated.


Historical Phases of Identity:

Douglas Kellner - Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and politics between the Modern and the Post Modern, 1992

Pre Modern Identity: personal identity is unstable - defined by long standing roles

Modern Identity: modern societies begin to offer a wider range of social roles. Possibility to start choosing your identity rather than simple being born into it. Perople start to worry about who they are.

Postmodern Identity: accepts a fragmented self. Identity is constructed.


Pre modern identity:

institutions that determined identity were marriage, the church, monarchy, government, the state and work.

Fixed social roles defined at birth.

Modern Identity:

Baudelaire introduces the concept of the "Flaneur" or the "Stroller." A leisurely figure that strolls around in a modern culture. Like loitering about, enjoying the culture.

The "Trickle Down" theory is that the lower classes take fashion from the upper classes, although now it could be argued that there is a trickle up effect where street fashion is reaching the upper classes.

Simmel

'The feeling of isolation is rarely as decisive and intense when one actually finds oneself physically alone, as when one is a stranger without relations, among many physically close persons at a party, on a train, or in the traffic of a large city." - 1908

- because of the speed and mutability of modernity, individuals immerse themselves in a personal world to find peace

- the seperation of the subjective from the objective life

Essentialism - Our biological make up makes us who were are. Nature over Nurture.

Post modern theorists are anti-essentialist - Nurture over Nature.
Read social constructionism - building our own world.

Goffman - "the self is a series of facades"

Zygmunt Bauman - Identity is revealed to us only as something to be invented rather than discovered; as a target of an effort, "an objective."

"Introspection is a dissapearing act. Faced with moments alone in their cars, on the street or at supermarket checkouts. More and more people do not collect their thoughts, but scan their mobile phones for some shred of evidence that someone somewhere may need or want them."
- Andy Hargreaves

To live in a state of post modernity is to be a cultural spectator. Increasingly solitary. Revelling in a domesticated world at a distance through telemediation.

Postmodern identity...

Identity is constructed out of the discourses culturally available to us.

Age
Class
Gender
Nationality
Race / Ethnicity
Sexual Orientation
Education
Income

Etc Etc

Identities are established by the construction of "Others." Also through associating ourselves with groups to strengthen the opposition to "them."