"Control Tonight" Advertisements
Figure 1 is a shocking image that displays a pair of female legs from the knees down, posed dejectedly with a pair of panties stretched between the two ankles. This is a synecdochical image that reduces a female to nothing more than a pair of feminine legs and stretched panties. These legs are positioned on a dirty tile floor, which can be assumed to be a bathroom, and are inhabiting a wholly solitary space. The legs are being held together at the knees, suggesting shame and vulnerability. Viewers can assume when looking at the woman's positioning that they are looking at the aftereffects of some kind of unwelcome violation.
A large white set of text is positioned directly to the right of the legs like a warning sign that reads, "She didn't want to do it, but she couldn't say no." Beneath this larger text is a set of smaller text: "When your friends drink, they can end up making bad decisions, like going home with someone they don't know very well. Decisions like that leave them vulnerable to dangers like date rape. Help your friends stay in control and stay safe."

The placement of the larger text as it starts at the top of the page and ends right beneath the pair of underwear takes the viewer's eyes down slowly through the scene. As the viewer reads each word, there is a new part of the scene to be experienced directly to the left. The large text ends in a line of text that could stand alone in this advertisement: "say no." The text also has underlying rhetorical enthymemes to it, or meanings/messages that are communicated without the explicit use of the words that normally communicate them. For example, the advertisement can be better read as this: "She didn't want to do it (SEX), but she couldn't say no (because she was DRUNK), and who got her drunk? She did. Where were her friends (you)? The current situation is both yours and her fault.


The scene of the advertisement makes itself very clear as a nondescript bathroom. The lack of adornments in the space (such as decoration or knickknacks) allows the bathroom to be seen by the viewer as any bathroom in the world. The majority of bathrooms have tile floors and one can assume that the shadow in the upper right hand corner is from the toilet inhabiting the space. That this bathroom could be any bathroom in the world operates to further draw the viewer in and place themselves within the advertisement.

The tile floor also serves the purpose of reminding the reader that this environment is cold, hard and uncomfortable. Any sexual act to have taken place here would have been impersonal and quick, which according to dominant cultural ideology, is not how sex is supposed to be.The woman pictured here is caucasian and acts as a signifier of the target audience of the advertisement. This ad is aiming to interpolate young, caucasian women to warn them against the potential dangers of their actions, namely, the consumption of alcohol.



The ad also calls attention to the role of the woman's friends in this situation, situating them in a position of guilt and responsibility for whatever happened to this woman. It is her friends' fault (which become the viewer through the use of "you") and this situation could have been prevented if her friends ("you") would have just helped keep her drinking under control. In Andrea Fitzpatrick's article, "The Movement of Vulnerability," she says this of vulnerability:

"When different media capture...fragile subjects, in liminal moments that cannot be adequately named, vulnerability becomes an issue of representation. This attention to vulnerability is neither prurient nor morbid. Vulnerability is a complex condition centrally tied to agency, to the subject's ability to enter or extend itself in the world and to be recognized by others"(Fitzpatrick 85).
This comment on vulnerability carries over to this image of the young woman on the bathroom floor in the afterimage of date rape. This woman could not be more vulnerable; she is naked, with her panties pulled down to her ankles, nearly revealing what the dominant culture normalizes as the most private of areas of a person. This vulnerability reinforces this view of dominant culture surrounding a woman's body and gives the viewer agency to say "I do not want to be in this position."


Figure 2 is an initially less shocking image than figure one, but the message is essentially the same. An provacatively dressed young woman, whom the viewer can assume to be intoxicated, is supporting herself against a seemingly sober man. As Capezza & Arriaga note, "Victims of rape are blamed more or seen as more responsible for, and deserving of, the rape when they are seductively-dressed rather than plainly dressed" (840). The two are alone in the image, implying that the situation is intimate and involves only them. Over the body of the man is another large white text warning that reads, "She's never cheated on her boyfriend, until now." Beneath this lies the following subtext: "When your friends get wasted they can forget what's important to them, and the morning after can be filled with regret and consequences. When you see them drinking like there's no tomorrow, slow them down a bit so they actually have one." This advertisement once again interpolates the viewer as a potential friend of someone in the situation being depicted. Not only can that viewer see themselves as the woman, they have the point of view to also see themselves as someone responsible for her.

The woman in the advertisement serves as a physical model for inebriation and its effects. She has a overly-relaxed face, crumpled, disheveled clothing, and seems to literally be holding on the the man next to her to keep herself from sliding straight to the floor. Her legs are slightly parted, giving the viewer the idea that she has the desire to have sex with the man. Her overall appearance gives the viewer the notion that due to being drunk, she no longer cares about what she looks like. This reinforces the idea that women should care about what they look like at all times and always try to look somewhat respectable and refined. The woman's posture and presence here is a direct reference to this normative value and her deviation from that norm is being blamed on her choice to drink alcohol. Also notable in this image is the woman's race. As an African American, the woman carries certain cultural connotations in this seemingly sexual situation. According to George & Martinez, "commonplace stereotypes and myths portray Blacks as excessively sexual compared to whites...black women have been stereoptyped as being more sensuous, permissive, and promiscuous than white women and as having less need or desire for foreplay...they mythically are 'unrapeable' because of their wanton, chronically promiscuous nature" (110).



The man, while not the main focus of the advertisement, plays a very significant role in constructing the reality of the situation. He is clearly the more sober of the two, and as signified by his looming posture over her, is the one in control of the situation. His hand is gripping her leg a little too tightly, leaving indentions in her thigh for the viewer to see. This presents their relationship as one to question whether it is about anything more than lust, which it is not. The man is sharply dressed without a single wrinkle in his clothing. This serves to show the viewer that he is not only on control of the woman but also himself.

In perhaps the most outlandish aspect of this advertisement, the viewer also receives a warning about the potential situations that can arise under the influence of alcohol. In the aforementioned smaller text beneath the larger, warning-like text lies the claim, "When you see them drinking like there's no tomorrow, slow them down a bit so they actually have one." This statement is insinuating that not only will the woman go on to make drunken mistakes with the man in the advertisement, but also that she could (and most likely will) end up dead because of it. The claim being made here is that alcohol and death have a direct correlation to one another in every situation and it is up to the drinker and those close to him or her to keep "control" of the situation.

Overall, this advertisement it creating a narrative that tells viewers that the man in the situation bears no blame at all, despite his semi-ominous appearance and that the situation occurred only because the woman consumed alcohol and her friends (the viewer) did nothing to stop her. This puts the viewer in a position of guilt/shame to an ideology they may not have perscribed to before viewing the advertisement. Also, in a study of the correlation between race and victim-blaming performed by George & Martinez,it was discovered that participants of the study judged "the interracial black victim as more blameworthy, as though her mythic sexuality accounted for" her perpetrator's behavior (115). We can see these findings being played out in this advertisement in that the African American woman is being ascribed blame for the situation she is currently in and whatever consequences that arise out of it.

Figure 3 distinguishes itself from the other two advertisements in that its goal is to speak to male viewers. The image of a lone broken condom on a barren bathroom floor and a small narrative about how it arrived there present this situation as one that men who consume alcohol would potentially have to contend with. The absence of the other sexual participant in physical or semantic form creates a blame paradigm that involves only the drunken male participant and his friend(s). The scene's most salient and eye-catching component is the elongated, broken, and used condom that lies ominously on the grimy bathroom floor. It is blatantly broken, so that the viewer may easily see how the effects of alcohol can alter one's state of mind in ways that render normal human senses inoperable.

Beside the broken condom is yet another large block of text resembling a warning: "He's too wasted to realize it broke." Beneath this it reads, "When your friends get drunk, they lose their inhibitions and their common sense. They're more likely to have unprotected sex, risking STDs and unwanted pregnancies. Be a good friend. Hang on to your good judgement and make sure no one wakes up with regret tomorrow." Above this text is the time on which this situation occurred, 5:51AM.


This advertisement implies that any person under the influence of alcohol would be unable to detect the torn condom and that those who are sober would not suffer from the same lack of cognizance. The dominant ideology at work here is that sex should always be safe, and that under the influence of alcohol, sex is unsafe and regrettable. The setting of the bathroom provides much of the same type of context as it did in figure 1, creating a sense of coldness, unfamiliarity, hardness, and impersonality.

Interactive Website Analysis
Conclusions


Works Cited

Capezza, Nicole, and Ximena Arriaga. "Why Do People Blame Victims Of Abuse? The Role Of Stereotypes Of Women On Perceptions Of Blame." Sex Roles 59.11/12 (2008): 839-850. Academic Search Complete. Web. 30 Apr. 2012.

Fitzpatrick, Andrea, "The Movement of Vulnerablity: Images of Falling and September 11," Art Journal 66/4 (2007), pp. 84-102.

George, William H., and Lorraine J. Martínez. "Victim Blaming In Rape: Effects Of Victim And Perpetrator Race, Type Of Rape, And Participant Racism." Psychology Of Women Quarterly 26.2 (2002): 110. Academic Search Complete. Web. 30 Apr. 2012.