Gay: the construction of sexual myths in advertisements

Abstract

The objectives of the study, Gay: The Construction of Sexual Myths in Advertisement, are to study the changes of sexual myths in advertisements with gay-related content and to study consumers’ decoding of meanings in advertisements with gay-related content. The study is a qualitative research composing of various methodologies: documentary research, textual analysis, interview, in-depth interview and focus-group interview.

The results reveal that signs conveying meanings through codes of advertisement elements are classified into two series of meaning. The first series of meaning is that the products’ property reflects a consumer’s identity, the meaning in which a sender focuses on the product’s property and its utility by encoding both verbal and nonverbal language codes as well as technical-practical codes in the meaning construction, while the second series of meaning is that the product’s image reflects a consumer’s identity. For the second series of meaning, the meaning conveys the value of a product’s image by connecting the relationship between a product’s image and a consumer’s identity. The significations found are “to accept one’s self and change it for the better”, and “one’s choice reflects one’s identity”.

Besides, “freedom”, and “a person with an identity” are symbolic meanings found in this study, which are encoded by verbal and nonverbal language codes, including technical-practical codes. For new myths found in the study are “gays must have high competence”, “gays’ right to have a gay family”, and “dream consumer”. The only old myth that is still often reproduced in the advertisements is “the myth of masculinity.”

Regarding consumers’ decoding of meanings, it is found that there are differences in meaning decoding. The consumers decode the dominant meaning of “a product’s property reflects a consumer’s identity” by Preferred Reading and Oppositional Reading in the equal proportion and decode the dominant meaning of “a product’s image reflects a consumer’s identity” by Preferred Reading