THE OBJECT OF DESIRE

We see a painter holding up his brush to gauge perspective while eying the subject or object of his portrait. The canvas reveals a portrait of Crown Royal Scotch, the body -- I mean bottle -- is scantily draping its velvet wrapping. I am reminded of the woman who wears a sheet flung around her, formed to her body because of her sitting position; staring out into an unknown space of gleaming, beaming, radiant light which illuminates the studio.

The scene suggests some correspondence between the woman and the bottle. The woman is framed by a frame lying against the wall; she is no less "framed" than the bottle of scotch framed by the artist's canvas. Even the artist's brush conspires to confuse us, pointing to the woman as the inspiration for what he has painted. If he is painting an object...I don't know. Maybe he has made his choice...he can't resist painting exquisite things...she lost out.

I looked at the ad, and immediately began, in my Williamson-induced semiotic mindset, to figure out the relations between the signified and signifier. So the woman and the bottle are one and the same, I thought, still blind to the actual bottle of scotch in the corner. The woman is the crown royal, and/or vice versa. This all flashed thru my mind . . . until Arjan pointed out the bottle of Crown Royal sitting on the table in the corner, glistening with illumination (just like the woman). So I don't get it . . . I was all set to "uncode" this ad by looking at the relationship between what's on the canvas, and what appears to be the model. So what happens now that that relationship is not longer a two-way thing? The bottle on the corner of the table becomes the third element in what is supposed to be a two part game between signifier and signified. But which is signifier and which is signified here?

It is the bottle of scotch, the one on the canvas that lures me into the scenario. Is it that the bottle of scotch is the recipient of "The Gaze"? The nude attracting me, is not quite naked, but its robe is slipping off- the bottle of scotch or the woman?

And how about FRAMING. This is becoming a piece of art, this Crown Royal, and has been painted into a frame of its own on the page. It reminds me of an elaborate mortise more than anything else, except that it is so large. The white background of the canvass frames the bottle, highlighting it against a plain background. The bottle is literally floating in the picture, not attached to any surface but the canvass. It is the signifier, the bottle, of the signified, fine art. But like the Bill Blass ad, this can be reversed so that the art signifies the Crown Royal. Also, our eyes are drawn to the woman, who (looking away from the male gaze) also becomes a second signifier of the sexiness of the bottle. The Crown Royal becomes her as she becomes the Crown Royal. The little bottle on the table is almost insignificant. It's only in there to make it not such an obvious leap to take to believe the Crown Royal is sensuality and the object of woman and sexiness. The mortise-iness of the bottle in the frame is a reflection of the whole picture of fine creation and artwork. The window even shines in the sun as though it were God shining radiance and love for Crown Royal. And all but the bottle is grainy (could be the scanning), emphasizing the bottle as brilliance in the haze.

Perhaps.. Perhaps..... Something I see in this one is a trick played on the viewer. Perhaps there is the angst from the other sex narrative in here, but I don't read it that way. I see her as being almost a worshiped figure, on a pedestal even, the sunlight shining on her. And the viewer's mind might, at least mine did, assume a connection to be made between her-as-beauty-sex-object and the framed image of the bottle on the artist's canvas. The commodity's value is to be expanded by associating it with the admiration of ideal beauty, or at least pleasures of ownership and sex that that ideal is a euphemism for. But then, the viewer, I notice that other bottle, an actual one to the image of one on the artist's canvas, and I say whoa! The artist is actually looking at the bottle? and that's what he's painting? And not the woman? In a split-second of suspension, before I catch up, the ad gets beneath my radar, and does its dirty work. The crown royal is now a thing that we are to know as being more admirable than a beautiful woman, or sex, and thus is to be seen as even more sought after, or even more pleasurable. The ad constructs for us this reading, I think, and leads us on through.

Jennifer Colman; K. Riley; J Fry; kkeith; Plywood Ed né Sexy Ed

For Men	Mannequin	Narrative Twist	Absent Spectator	Gaze on Men