military, former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and low.
low. Two admirals who broke ranks and testified in favor
his deputy William Howard Taft opposed it and carried of the bill in 1985 are now out on the street. out their share of its reforms halfheartedly. It is not known whether Defense Secretary Frank Calucci will support ef- ARTHUR T.HADLEY forts to weaken the reforms. Former Navy Secretary John Lehman continues to aim his tin cannon at the legislation Arthur T. Hadley is the author of The Straw Giant: Triumph from retirement's shore, and others in the military just lay & Failure: America's Armed Forces (Avon).
The new raunchiness of American advertising.
FLOGGING UNDERWEAR BY AisfDREW SULLIVAN
C OLGATE-PALMOLIVE'S TV commercial for New
Fab detergent opens with a frame of a naked man on the edge of a bed, squeezing into a pair of jeans. In a parody present the male body—almost always implicitly young, unmarried, and available—as a selling point to wives and mothers. Take a similar but less innocuous TV ad for Levi's of a stripper sequence, the camera follows the belt-line up jeans. Here, there's an excuse for the raunchiness—jeans are the legs, moves round to the back as he buckles his crotch, legitimately sold on the basis of increasing your attractive- and then circles toward the abdomen as he pulls on a snug ness to the opposite (or increasingly to the same) sex. Nev- white T-shirt. The stripper music heats up until, suddenly, ertheless, the ad reveals the new parameters of public taste. a cascade of liquid softener gushes into a Fab detergent An attractive man wanders into a laundromat and slowly container. The guy finishes his routine with a quick pelvic takes off all his clothes. This isn't a striptease, you under- thrust to the music. A companion commercial for Fab liq- stand, despite the assembled throng of transfixed women. uid shows two bare male legs getting out of bed in the He just has to wash all his clothes and, poor guy, forgot to morning, and being clothed with a pair of yellow sweat- bring any spares. Twenty-five seconds into the act, we get pants. The climax is a strong, silent pull on the groin-level to the jeans. He throws them in with a couple of rocks: drawstring, and a shot of the man's grinning face. stone-washing '80s-style. It's both an erotic and self-con- Of all the new ads focusing on sexuality, Fab's is one of sciously witty statement. According to Barbara Lippert, ad- the most innocent. The mood is coy and amiable. Still, a vertising critic ioiAdweek, women are wreaking their sexual male stripper, even in reverse (the ad's message is that the revenge: "They want to see men reduced to the bimbos that clothes are so soft you can't wait to put them on), is a long women are always portrayed as. It's post-feminist fallout." way from conventional detergent ads showing "kids with Male eroticism is the most unprecedented aspect of the crap on their T-shirts," as Daniel O'Hearn put it. O'Hearn new advertising culture. Nude or seminude men are now is the account director at FCB/Leber Katz, the agency that part of the advertising campaigns of, among others, BMW, developed the Fab campaign. Saks Fifth Avenue, Calvin Klein, and the French Socialist While public concern has focused on movies and rock Party. Until now, only women were portrayed as passive lyrics, and despite the widespread impression that the peak sex objects. What's interesting is not so much the sudden of permissiveness has passed, the art form that probably objectification—even feminization—of male sexuality, affects and reflects our culture more than any other— but the question why men are buying products sold with advertising—has become amazingly raunchy. Fashion ad- male sex. Previous campaigns for men's clothes, perfume, vertising has been infected with a brazen new elitism, aftershave, underwear, all emphasized women, usually in sexism, and objectification of the flesh. Abuse of women, suggestive or submissive positions. The implicit and readi- homosexual erotica, and the milder forms of sadomasoch- ly understandable sales line was that the products would ism are now commonplace marketing techniques, directed bring you greater success with the opposite sex. Today's at the average American household. Products as everyday male advertising, in contrast, is remarkably bimbo-free— as salami, chemicals, and pianos are being sold with a female bimbos, that is. sexual expHcitness once reserved for paying customers of Of course, it's hard to sell men's underwear without soft-core pornography. The ADS virus, once restricted to showing a man in his underwear. But an ad for the fashion high-risk publications such as GQ, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, isunderwear company Hom shows a subtle change. The now breaking out in the general circulation. figure is not a Jockey model, arms crossed, hair tousled, in a The Fab campaign illustrates how acceptable it now is to locker room. He's a pouting, sexually ambiguous model.
20 THE NEW REPUBLIC
dressed in briefs and undershirt, his right arm lifted above In a notorious picture spread for Guess Jeans, the homo- him, his left hand drawing his undershirt away from his eroticism is lesbian. Two denim-clad girls provocatively in- crotch to reveal his abdomen, while groping languidly to- tertwine in fields, their clothes buttoned and unbuttoned in ward his (just visible) left nipple. The discreet implication various places. By last spring the campaign had moved on to is that he doesn't smoke Marlboro. violence and even sadism. Two young girls, in what is Who are these ads meant for? James Devens, president claimed to be a reference to the 1956 movie Baby Doll, are of Hom, claims no subtlety of targeting: "We don't specify joined by a man in a black coat, hat, and mustache. In sever- any particular audience . . . we'll sell to men, women, chil- al shots he seizes one girl by the chin, embraces the other at dren, and animals." Pressed, he claims his market is pri- the end of a pier, and, by his appearance and expression, is marily women, since even today women still buy most obviously pushing the girls into some sort of coerced sexual men's underwear. If women are the market, it says some- activity. The girls seem to be attracted by the prospect. Last thing interesting about the male sexuality they now want fall's Guess Jeans ad featured an elderly, balding, Mafioso- to buy: passive, in- type man, with sun- trospective, and sexu- glasses. In scenes that ally ambiguous. But are conjure up the atmo- women really the mar- sphere of an expensive ket? The only magazine hotel, he kisses and to run the Hom ad abuses young women so far is Men V Look, in various states of un- a male fashion maga- dress. One is pushed zine. Devens explains, back onto a dining table "We don't place them as her godfather mo- in women's magazines, lests her. Another is because they're too ex- thrown over a stone pensive." That's clear- fountain, with the ly disingenuous. This Mafioso's sickening is gay advertising: the power-lust grin bless- marketing that dare not ing the scene. Yet an- speak its name. other girl, wearing a But the new Madi- tight-fitting black leo- son Avenue sexuality is tard, is kneeling down not essentially gay, al- in front of the man, his though a large chunk face out of view, her of its market may be. eyes inches from his Its central characteris- groin, in a picture tics are its introspection of fearful pre-fellatial and separation from submission. social context. Fathers, Typical of this genre sons, and businessmen of ads, the product it- have not disappeared self is barely on view. from contemporary ad- In eight pages of photos vertising imagery, but featuring 11 models, they have been supple- only two are wearing mented by someone denim. One is the girl- else: the single male figure, existing in a sexually charged slave about to minister to her Mafia-master, the other is the social void with perfect. Nautilus-chiseled contours. He ex- same girl crouching in his lap, her eyes staring with indiffer- ists alone, his body a work of obvious labor in the gym, his ence toward us, his aging lips reaching for the bottom of her lifestyle apparently affluent but beyond that unspecified. neck. Do women buy jeans marketed with this message? The famous Calvin Klein underwear ad {see cover) began Guess Jeans refuses to talk about the campaign or its suc- the genre. Last year's Soloflex exercise equipment print ads cess, but industry experts say the company is thriving. Ja- captured perfectly the way in which the '80s fitness ethic cob Jacoby, a professor of business at New York University, and the new sexuality overlap. The muscleman was not explains the logic: "The aim is first to generate attention. some Charles Atlas figure but a young, gymnastic, sweaty How you do it doesn't matter. Research suggests that over boy—emanating sexuality, yet implicitly directing most of time, people separate the source of the material from the it at himself. A current ad for Calvin Klein's Obsession For content of the message so all you recall in the end is the la- Men perfume shows a young, attractive man—hair slicked bel. Guess Jeans." Sadomasochism as attention-grabber. back, suit pressed, and in love in the way only an '80s man The Guess Jeans campaign is also typical in its sim- can be: he's staring straight into a mirror. ple colors: black-and-white photography overlaid with
22 THE NEW REPUBLIC
lipstick-red lettering. It's a technique used not only to international Italian fashion company Benetton, specialize stand out from the colorful, glossy crowd, but also be- in caricatures of YWi? Aryanism, set in Germanic land- cause the simplicity of the colors impresses itself instant- scapes. Young couples with cropped, blond hair are pic- ly on the receptive mind. Blue and red—the favorite col- tured striding into woods, carrying sheep on their shoul- ors for much of this advertising—are also used for airport ders, striding up alpine streams, or trudging through the landing strips and were common in the 1930s for totali- Schwarzwald, tarian propaganda. Professor Marshall Blonsky, the editor The Polo Ralph Lauren Autumn Collection features an of On Si^ns, chillingly describes the method as "simple arch world of pre-Amchluss aristocracy. Black-and-white color for simple ideas." tableaux depict elegant Aryan landowners at country- Perhaps the best adjective to describe the ethic house retreats, sipping champagne in faded tuxedos. The of the whole power-sex genre of advertisement is: fas- print ads for Toni Gard, a French fashion company, re- cist, Calvin Klein's create in black and Obsession For Men is white a studied orchard a fine example. The lunch party in a French leading print ad of the chateau, servants at campaign shows four hand, styling gel at naked men and two the ready. Not that naked women draped the label is exactly over a Nuremberg- foisted upon the poten- style obelisk. Each FOR MEN tial consumer. Several- looks intently, almost FOR THE BODY page spreads go by painfully, into the without the name of middle distance, as if the company or design- stricken with an acute er appearing at all, and case of hemorrhoids. those clothes that do They bask in a green- feature are obscured filtered sun, their lead- by the sepulchral soft- en muscular legs angled lens. What is important over their groins as a is the ambience, the languid, careless after- creation of a mood. In thought. The homo- this case, Nuremberg. eroticism is mild (pre- The new ad aesthetic sumably two of the would be easier to de- men will have to keep fend if it were based on themselves company), any genuine artistic in- but the complete lack novation or creativity. of emotion—let alone But the photographers passion—is the real of these images—Bruce point. None of these Weber for Lauren and models cares about Obsession print cam- anything, nor do they paigns, Wayne Maser represent anything rec- ognizably human or humane. Their bodies Calvin Klei for Guess Jeans, for example—are parasites on the genuine age of are as objectified as artistic fashion photog- the obelisk they stand on. Their minds are absent. raphy. The era of Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, work- They have no motivation, no possible reason for being ing for Harper's Bazaar and Vo^ue in the late 1940s to the there, no thought to express, no communication to con- early 1960s, established much of the lighting techniques, vey. They do not even look at one another. But they dramatic composition, and figure painting that today's sell smell. photographers imitate. Even the explicitness of today's The narcissism of these nautilized Aryans carries over eroticism is not new in the field of fashion photography, into more mundane advertising. The aesthetic of fascist- although it has never appeared in popular American publi- realist torsos photographed either in sepia, black and cations before now, Helmut Newton's work for the French white, or some color filter to give that added "It's-1934-in- Vogue in the 1970s—some of it depicting explicit sadomas- Bavaria" touch are now commonplace in fashion maga- ochism and bestiality—went much further than the soft- zines, and in the new proto-fascist magazines. University core pornography of Obsession. Man, Men's Fitness, and all the Joe Weider muscle/fitness Today's commercial photo-art is not only unoriginal, publications. Print advertisements for Sisley, a label of the it also lacks the fundamental quality of great fashion
JANUARY 18, 1988 23
photography: its connection between human personality goes to convincing you that they're sexy. and clothes. Avedon and Penn were both essentially por- The sneaker campaign also reveals the importance of traitists. Few of today's photographers are. "What typi- simplicity. Mood advertising—with little information fies the new generation is their denial of individuality. about the product but plenty of apparently tangential as- You simply can't imagine a Bruce Weber portrait. It's too sociations—is increasingly regarded as the most effective human a conception" is how Adam Gopnik, a writer on way of conveying a message. This is partly an attempt to the relationship between popular culture and high art, rise above the clutter of information with something clear puts it. and visual. Written information is a disadvantage. A study He's right. The central feature of today's ads is the de- by Jacob Jacoby found that around 20 percent of all adver- humanized uniformity of the bodies they display, a re- tising copy is misconstrued. (The bad news is, that figure is lentless elitism of the flesh. Take Jovan Musk's contro- even higher for editorial material.) The solution? Cut the versial TV commercial produced by Adrian Lyne, who copy, crank up the copulation. was also responsible for the original Diet Pepsi campaign Fancy theories can't disguise the basic point, though, and ioi Fatal AitracHon. With an opening shot of the ques- which is sex. A recent glossy brochure promises "Warmth. tion "What is sexy?" it flashes 29 spots in 30 seconds, Power. Passion. Response." It is selling a piano. A TV ad hypnotically choreographed to a pulsating rhythm. We features a bare-chested man lathering himself in a shower cannot know the people involved. They clearly have no to advertise Liquid Drano. ICI Chemicals boasts about its history nor any relationship that we might have time or share of the world fibers market with a photograph shot at interest to contemplate. We see a man spraying a woman ground level looking up three women's pantyhoses. with a hose; a woman Schick's razors feature dancing frantically in a woman singing, "1 got front of a backlight; a man with a slow three hands clasping hand." each other on a bronzed The latest ad for thigh; a wet-kiss in a Round The Clock shower. They are all Pantyhose features a miniseconds of stylish tuxedo-clad man re- erotica—arousing, but turning home to open in an instant, distract- his mail. One item is a ing, almost thoughtless poster. He unpacks it, way. looks at it for a mo- The growing sophis- ment, smiles, and pins tication of American it to the wall. Never advertising (Jovan's taking his gaze away, previous campaign fea- he takes off his tie, tured the juvenile slo- drops his suspenders, gan "It may not put and falls back into bed. more women in your life but it'll put more life into your Then he switches off the light. Then we see what he's look- women") reflects increasing influence of European ing at: a rear view of a woman's legs in pantyhose. The ques- taste—and European ownership—in the American adver- tion is: What's he going to do next? It takes an effort to recall tising industry. But the calculated sexuality also reflects that this is an ad for stockings for women, not safe sex for increased desperation to break through the clutter of men. Still, preliminary figures show sales are up 30 percent. competing ads. A Swedish agency. Hall and Cederquist, Perhaps the explosion of fantasy and eroticism in adver- was hired to design a campaign for a small sneakers com- tising isn't a consequence of increasing decadence at all. pany. Travel Fox. To make an impact against competitors More likely it is a symptom of increased restraint and such as Nike and Reebok, with something like 20 to 30 monogamy in the period of safe sex. The Instant nature of times Travel Fox's budget, the campaign focused on sex. advertising, its uniquely close relationship to the market it A print ad, whose only information about its sneakers attracts, and its ubiquity in every medium make it the was that they were made of leather, featured various leading public art form of the late 20th century. Now that permutations of two intertwined nude bodies, just sexu- government has abandoned its traditional role as the cul- ally distinguishable, each sporting a pair of Travel Fox tural and moral guardian of public culture, the ad industry sneakers—and nothing else. One ad shows them in the has taken over. We no longer build statues; we mount missionary position; another has her bare buttocks firmly billboards. The result is a public culture more sensitive to placed on his shoulders. Sales in the New York area, the demands of the faceless, but hardly passionless, many where the campaign was concentrated, tripled in a year. than ever before. Unlike elite, officially sponsored art, The company spent $1 million in 1986 on the campaign, advertising has to mirror public taste—middle-class out of total sales of $5 million. In other words, 20 cents taste—or go out of business. And what the public wants, of every dollar you pay for your Travel Fox sneakers apparently, is this. a