Out of the two images provided, I decided to choose the Duncan Quinn advertisement as in comparison to the American Apparel ad I felt it supplied more substance to analysis issuing multiple ethical issues to scrutinise and inspect in-depth. ‘Duncan Quinn’ is a menswear fashion designer mainly focused on designing unique ties and accessories for men – in which the advertisement he produced appears quite contradictive ’as it contains a women model (no relevance to his branding) as well as the male model not even wearing anything which slightly resembles ‘Quinn’s renowned designs. Adding on from this, the infamous magazine brand GQ stated that the brand is like “Saville row meets rock’n’roll (GQ Magazine, 2008)” in which I feel doesn’t correlate with the 2008 ad purely because rock’n’roll is all about conveying imagery of edginess and hard aesthetics but the advertisement displays quite sensual and incendiary (in terms of being quite provoking and stirring conflict).

Duncan Quinn 2008 Ad Campaign:

Focusing more on the male model himself, I feel he creates a perturbing and distressing aura by giving the customers viewing the ad direct eye-contact seeming quite off-putting and quite frankly disturbing – as well as appearing quite dark and sinister due to the environment and his actions in the advertisement itself. As well as this, the male model’s smug, sexist and provocative and violent actions exudes dominance and gives the appearance of him being superior to women which causes controversy as this doesn’t display acts of equal rights and denotes women as less of importance and unwanted. The un-comforting and unsettling aesthetics of the female model is caused by the fact she is “…strangled and bloody half-naked…(Winn 2008)” which depicts an image of women being sexually objectified and enslaved; dominated as sexual objects due to, the model in the ad, being faceless and the main subject of her in focus is her body. Furthermore, the female model is wearing very little clothing (just in her lingerie) therefore exposing her naked body in which I feel is unfair as in comparison the male model is fully clothed which appears to give him a sense of pride and in control – but in fact it is unfair and unrighteous as states the message that women are of less importance and unequal to men.

Online, I found a quote which relates well with the whole ethical issue of subjectifying women as sexual objects and displaying them in a provoking, unequal and sensual way – which can be seen as dehumanising and inhumane. For example, the quote states “Yet sexualised images can dehumanise women, leaving an unresolved paradox (Bongiorno et al. 2013)” which backs up the argument on the basis that they agree in terms of that women shouldn’t be portrayed in this kind of way as it is seen as dehumanising which can cause some disturbance and distressing imagery for some viewers. Lastly, I found that this quote also worked well as it’s talking subjectively about the ethical issue of women’s rights and being sexually objectified due to the fact that the ad was issued in 2008 and this quote was stated in 2013 which shows how this ethical issue hasn’t progressed and is still an “unresolved paradox (Bongiorno et al. 2013)”.

References:

1. Duncan Quinn. 2017. Bespoke Atelier and Lifestyle Destination for Discerning Gentleman. [ONLINE] Available at: http://duncanquinn.com [Accessed 28th Nov. 2017].
2. Wikipedia. 2017. Rock and Roll. [ONLINE] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_roll [Accessed 28th Nov. 2017].
3. Winn, S. 2008.Trend Hunter: Disturbing Sexist Ads, Duncan Quinn Suit Campaign Depicts Strangled Woman. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/duncan-quinn-suit-ad-depicting-strangled-woman [Accessed 28th Nov. 2017].
4. Bongiorno, R., Bain P. and Haslam, N. (2013). When Sex Doesn’t Sell: Using Sexualised Images of Women Reduces Support for Ethical Campaigns. [ONLINE] NCBI. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3867429/ [Accessed 28th Nov. 2017].