Sex Sells Activism?
A Visual Analysis of PETA's Advertising

Since their establishment in 1980, PETA has been producing eye catching controversial, and almost always, sexualized print advertisements, commercials, and protests. The project focuses on three recent campaigns: "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur," "Ink Not Mink" and "All Animals Gave the Same Parts." I will analyze how PETA represents bodies in a way that tends to reaffirm dominant ideologies about race, gender, and heterosexuality. This conflicts with the supposedly progressive message of animal rights that PETA is advocating for in their advertisements that they consider to be public service announcements according to their website. To illustrate the social implications of the ad campaigns on a macro level, I will critically engage discourse analysis and psychoanalysis of individual advertisements within these campaigns as well as photographic and print documentation of corresponding public protests.

In my discussion of discourse analysis, I am referring to discourse analysis I one as categorized by Gillian Rose (146-148). The idea of discourse analysis I is heavily based on the concept of intertextuality which is how a set of discursive texts depend on meaning found in other related texts (Rose 142). Because the meanings and discursive effects of PETA's ad campaigns are so based in intertexuality with other ads, this site presents multiple images for each of the three campaigns even though I'm only able to analyze a few in depth. Then within each campaign I present images of how the campaigns are brought into the physical space to further the message while still referencing and interacting with the printed advertisements.

Much of the meaning of the ads is based in a sexual discourse that lends itself well to psychoanalysis. The study of psychoanalysis draws heavily from Sigmund Freud's theories of sexuality and the unconscious. A foundation of psychoanalysis is the concept of scopophilia, which is "pleasure in looking," something Freud described as one of the basic human drives (Rose 107). PETA ads are based on the pretense that people like looking at bodies, a common advertising tool of employing sexuality. Well we can make the obvious generalization that PETA ads use sexuality and nudity to sell their message, or "public service announcement," I will use psychoanalysis with discourse analysis to illustrate the ideologies of gender, race, and heterosexuality that the ads reinforce and advantage.


Works Cited

Rose, Gillian. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials. 2nd ed. London: SAGE Publications, 2007. Print.

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