8
Popular Culture Review
and the repression of sexual expression has naturally created a desire for it
which will never be satisfied; as a direct result, the signs of sex have become
advertising strategies in a more or less obvious way. It is a known fact that any
beer advertisement must suggest the notion of young female company and
exciting nightlife encounters with promising developments in sight. It is less
often observed that any commercial for watches will always present the hands in
the 10:10 position, hence suggesting a “V," semiotically an idealized
representation of the female genitalia. One particular advertisement for a salad
dressing from a few years ago showed a female hand with red-painted nails
shaking a bottle of salad dressing over a deep dish filled with tomatoes and
lettuce, the camera focused only on the hand and the neck of the bottle, and the
young lady shook the bottle in a regular motion, spreading little streams of
dressing on the salad in a very suggestive fashion. The phallic symbol, as well as
its stimulation leading to a happy conclusion, is as apparent in any soft drink
commercial, where the can or bottle, generally shown in an inclined position,
floods the screen with white foam, constituting a clear, barely metaphorical,
ejaculation.
When it comes to more official narrations, such as films or
documentaries, the exploitation of the sexual theme has become more apparent
throughout the nineties, spawning a variety of works which have in common a
more or less direct representation of explicit sex. The now common, if not
vulgar, expression of "‘the money shof’ is best illustrated by the 1992 highly
successful film, Basic