The Semiotics of Fiat

Reading Sandoval’s piece on semiotics, I was reminded of the many, many awful Superbowl ads I’ve had the misfortune to watch over the years. There were many I could have chosen to look at in detail, but I ended up going with a Fiat 500 commercial from 2012. The opening shot of the ad establishes […]

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Married to the Eiffel Tower and Cohen

In the film Married to the Eiffel Tower, the sexual identities of the main subjects are represented in an interesting and sometimes troubling way. One thing the film did was view the sexuality of the subjects in a way that was in conversation with the more heteronormative ideas of love and how it was different. […]

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Semiotics of Coca Cola’s Christmas

In light of the recent backlash of Kendal Jenner’s Pepsi campaign, I wondered if other companies had created something similar in the past. Turns out Coca Cola had their share of ads that had good intentions but raised controversy instead. This Coca Cola ad featured a group of young white people traveling bright red planks […]

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Queering the Inanimate

Married to the Eiffel Tower forces the viewer to re-examine their definition of queerness. The film follows several women who identify as object-sexual, attracted to inanimate objects. They speak to, snuggle with, and sleep with their inanimate partners. Used to conversations of sexuality, I found myself at a loss with this documentary. Though I would […]

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Spivak & Married to the Eiffel Tower

The documentaries we watched, (A)Sexuality and Married to the Eiffel Tower, has definitely been different and an eye-opening experience overall. Although not widely spoken about, asexuality is something that is more heard of and is acknowledged as being a part of the queer spectrum. Object sexuals, on the other hand, is something that I have […]

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hooks and 50 Shades of Grey

Many of the ideas in Living by a Love Ethic by bell hooks seem like they would only be possible in a utopian society where everyone agrees to live fully in a way that only promotes love and peace, and even though that seems unlikely and impossible, I think that was part of the point […]

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Love

While reading bell hooks’ article about love ethic, I found myself highlighting a lot of excerpts: “awakening to love can happen only as we let go of our obsession with power and domination”; “living by a love ethic we learn to value loyalty and a commitment to sustained bonds over material advancement”; “many prophets of […]

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Change

http://www.today.com/parents/boy-wants-haircut-look-his-friend-trick-teacher-t108795 The article posted above is a viral story that I saw frequently across my Facebook feed all of last week. It is about a young boy who asked his parent if he could get the same haircut as his best friend so that his teacher could not tell them a part. The “giant” twist […]

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Semiotics and Oikos Yogurt Commercials

Yogurt commercials have a reputation of marketing their product to women for weight-loss and probiotic control, so seeing a Dannon Oikos yogurt commercial marketed toward men is a new change, although the commercial relies heavily on semiotics that make the yogurt seem more “masculine.” By using a football player as the spokesperson, instead of the […]

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