...: HEAT Beyonce's First Fragrance

Tuesday 30 November 2010

HEAT Beyonce's First Fragrance - FULL COMMERCIAL

A ’sexually provocative’ perfume advert featuring popstar Beyoncé Knowles has been criticised by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) after it received a number of complaints from the public that the commercial was running during the day when young children might be watching TV.

The advertisement for ‘Beyoncé Heat’ was commissioned by perfume company Coty UK and depicts the former Destiny’s Child singer taking a steamy bath before seductively strutting around in a revealing red dress to the song Fever.

The ASA described the commercial as ’sexually provocative’ and ‘unsuitable to be seen by young children’.

It is understood that the advert had already been classified as restricted by Clearcast, a body that vets advertisements on British television, and should therefore not have been aired close to children’s television programmes.

Coty defended the advert, saying it was ‘intended to reflect the singer Beyoncé’s personal ’sexy chic’ style’. Adding that it was ’stylised and in keeping with other ads in the genre’ and not ‘overtly graphic or explicitly sexual and at no point was Beyoncé naked.’

The Advertising Standards Authority disagreed and have advised that from now on the commercial should not be allowed to run during the day and can only be aired after 7.30pm … just in time for Corrie.

The ASA concluded ‘Beyoncé’s body movements and the camera’s prolonged focus on shots of her dress slipping away to partially expose her breasts created a sexually provocative ad that was unsuitable to be seen by young children,’

Adding: ‘We considered that the ad should not have been shown before 7.30pm due to the sexually provocative nature of the imagery'.

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Why Media Studies IS an academic subject.

Every now and then, Media Studies gets what is ironically called “a bad press”.

Even after a general election in which the media played a pivotal role (television debates, the 24-hour news feeding off the corpse of Gordon Brown after his accidental on-mic comment, the on-screen worm during the debates etc.), even after all that, Media Studies gets described as a “Mickey Mouse subject”.

It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so serious. We live in a mediated world, a reality constructed around us and constantly filtered through the media. Although you might experience some of reality directly (in an unmediated way), your response to that reality is inevitably informed by your exposure to the modern media. When you see yourself in the mirror, do you not judge yourself by the standards of beauty and style laid down by the fashion and beauty industries?

When someone is innocently taking pictures of kids playing in the park, are we suspicious that they’re up to no good? In our relationships with each other, do we take people at face value, or do we make judgements based on the way we think they should be? When we desire consumer goods, why is that exactly? Why do we want things? How does that happen?

We get soundbite politics – because of the media. We get personality politics – because of the media. We learn to act the way we do – because of the media. We learn to talk the way we do – because of the media. We get turned on, we get excited, we get angry, we laugh and we cry – because of the media. We became convinced that Gordon Brown wasn’t up to the job – because of the media. We panic about vaccines, medicines, food, drink, sunshine – because of the media.

To understand how things happen, why they happen, and why they keep happening is, for me, a fit subject of study.

None of this is to mention the skills you develop in Media Studies – skills in writing, editing, analysis, research, design, publishing, video and audio editing/mixing, project management, people skills etc. – which are incredibly useful and incredibly transferrable. One of the things you often hear from the media who give Media Studies a bad press is that, “Anyway, there are no jobs, there are too many people coming through and they won’t get jobs in the media.”

Well. Either it’s a Mickey Mouse subject, or it’s “too hard”, a demanding and impossible industry to get into. Which is it? It’s like saying you shouldn’t study Physics because you won’t get a job at CERN; or that you shouldn’t study law because you won’t get to be a “top barrister”. If you study English and you don’t do so at Oxford or Cambridge, what are your chances of getting a “top job”?

The transferrable skills you learn in Media Studies will equip you for working life, whatever you end up doing. And most of you will end up doing several jobs.

So. Next time someone scoffs at Media Studies, ask them this: when did you last go a day without being exposed to the media, in print and on screen? When did you last have an opinion of your own making?

Next time someone calls it a Mickey Mouse subject, ask them this: who owns the Mouse? What other companies do they own? What was the turnover of this company last year? Which member of the board of this company is also a member of the board of another huge company? How does one business relate to the other? How influential are they? Who are their competitors? How does this competition benefit or harm consumers? What ideology does the company who owns the mouse try to impose upon the world? Why do they do this?

Mickey Mouse subject?

View more presentations from Rob McMinn.

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Tuesday 30 November 2010