Analysis byLucy Bannerman, The Times, October 13 2012
“Pierce used to say that it’s like being responsible for a small country,” Daniel Craig tells Vanity Fair
in this month’s issue. “It’s like you have to look after it
diplomatically.” Three films into his tenure, however, and Blond Bond
seems more like CEO of the most powerful company in ad-land. The franchise has amassed more than £3.1 billion at the box office worldwide over the past 50 years. Quantum of Solace made UK box office revenues of £50.3 million. Casino Royale took £65.9 million. Skyfall
is predicted to beat them both — no small thanks to the onslaught of
luxury brands rushing to bask in Bond’s glory through product placement.
Heineken, which has paid $45million to make Bond a lager drinker, has
covered nearly a third of the movie’s $150 million budget.
While
Dom Pérignon, Rolex, Aston Martin and Walther PPK have been serving
Brand Bond for years, other new tie-ins include Sony’s new flagship
smartphone, the Xperia T, also known as “The Bond Phone”.The phone is
apparently pre-loaded with Skyfall content including the 007 ringtone. Coca-Cola’s
Coke Zero tie-in is also predictably Bond-themed, while Sky TV has been
running ad nauseam its advert featuring a car chase with all the men
who have played Bond, to build up a following for its all-Bond channel. Procter
& Gamble has launched a 007 scent for men to celebrate the 23rd
film and VisitBritain has launched its first international movie ad,
which encourages foreigners to “Live Like Bond”. But product placement is nothing new — Red Stripe was the first lager in a Bond film, in Dr. No in 1962 when Sean Connery punched an adversary into a pile of Red Stripe boxes in a bar in Jamaica. Kentucky Fried Chicken made a sneak appearance in Goldfinger in 1964, while a BP petrol station had the honour of playing backdrop to an assassination in A View to a Kill.And in Tomorrow Never Dies, Q intercepted Pierce Brosnan’s Bond at an airport disguised as an employee of Avis car hire.
RECEPTION THEORY focuses on the scope in textual analysis for 'negotiation' and 'opposition' on the part of the audience. This means that a text ( a book, film, advert, poster or other creative work) is not passively accepted by the audience but that the reader / viewer interprets the meanings of the texts based on their individual cultural background and life experiences. Stuart Hall’s encoding decoding model; dominant, negotiated and
oppositional readings; why Hall says he studies culture instead of media
specifically, and media hegemony
Summary: The mass media function to maintain
the ideology of those already in power. Corporate controlled media
provide the dominant discourse of the day that frames interpretation of
events. Critics should seek not only to interpret culture, but to change
it. Media audiences do have the capacity to resist hegemonic influence. The mass media impose the dominant ideology on the rest of
society, and the connotations of words and images are fragments of
ideology that perform an unwitting service for the ruling elite. Simply put: The media only speaks for those who have power—mass media
shapes our perceptions in society. Corporations control media and thus,
they can interpret things the way they wish. They do this by encoding
messages in, for example, an advertisement. But, Stuart Hall says we can
reject these messages, which is why he doesn’t really study media, but
rather studies cultures. Meanings come from discourse (social interactions with one another) and so he’d rather study how these meanings develop from discourse. Encoding: the process in which the media puts messages into an advertisement. Decoding: the process in which we, the audience, formulate meaning. Meaning can be formed in 3 ways. 1) Dominant reading: this is what the media wants us to have, also called a preferred reading. 2) Negotiated reading: this is when I’d accept the advertisement, but not in the way it’s shown. 3) Oppositional reading: this is when I reject it completely.
