Hot Doggin'

What do freezing snow, a board strapped to one's feet, careening almost headlong down a mountain, a neon-colored, one-piece snow suit which covers all exposed and potentially provocative skin, and sex have in common? Well, apparently according to Carter-Wallace, Inc., the makers of Trojans, they all have something to do with the condoms they are attempting to sell. This advertisement (GQ, October 1992) illustrates beautifully Berger's concept of a photograph breaking the continuity of the lived moment and its decisive and manipulative framing used in advertising.

In this ad the viewer is presented with two incongruous images, one of a buffed, blond-haired, beau snowboarder in mid jump on a steep incline and a smaller much more intimate close-up of the blue Trojan with the word "lubricated" tastefully removed. Without text, the sound of the begging for interpretation would be a cacophony loud enough to reach the deaf and long since dead ears of Beethoven. In the image, the snowboarder caught, suspended in mid jump. It is strikingly apparent that the photograph isolates a lived moment for gravity's weighty influence is stopped for a fraction of a second. The viewer easily recognizes this second. Yet the photo freezes and removes it from its original context in space and time. It therefore strips it of its original meaning and frames it anew with a completely modified meaning.

According to Berger "the meaning of an image is changed according to what one sees immediately beside it or what comes immediately after it." Part of that meaning, as created by the ad wiz who came up with this doozy of a concept, is thus intended to be supplied by the condom. However, given these two images alone I might surmise they were suggesting a man should wear a condom while skiing, possibly to keep his penis from freezing off. What is the relationship between shredding and sex? Does chilling physical exertion and intercourse go together? Are skiers inherently lucky or promiscuous? Is there a snow bunny waiting for him at the bottom of the slope? Is Trojan the preferred condom of shredders? What, what, what? I'd like to know. Seeing their proximity and knowing the intentionality of the framing of an advertisement, I assume there is a significance to this juxtaposition of images. There must be coherence. I'm begging to know.

Lo and behold, those devils at the ad firm didn't leave me hanging like the snow boarder. They supplied me with the narrative closure of text. They gave me what Berger would call a vague, generalized statement to the specifics quoted in the photographs. This statement generalizes the risk of snow sports to the risk of contracting a Sexually Transmitted Disease. It is worth mentioning that within the framing of the ad and its text there is no direct reference to sexual preference or AIDS. The company carefully avoids linking the product with homosexuality the disease or the disease. In all forms of sports and play (i.e. snowboarding and sexual intercourse) they imply a measure of control is needed for one "trying to stay in good health". This of course depends on the choices one makes. This choice is not to get regular checkups, to question partners about their history, to be monogamous or heaven forbid to abstain (negating condom use and its sales) -- all options which are conspicuously absent from the ad. The right choice is about which condom to purchase when exercising the right and freedom granted to every red hot blooded American with a libido.

Julia Reid