Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Image Selling: How Depictions Of Power Relations, Plasticity, And Abjection In High-Fashion Advertisements Construct Terrifying Social Narratives, Jennifer Lee Litton

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This paper examines how high-fashion advertisements use visual rhetoric in order to construct social narratives related to power struggles, plasticity, and abjection. In creating these types of images, high-fashion advertisers send explicit messages to their viewers regarding the ways they should engage with the depicted social narratives, ranging from objectification to violence to death. Through a close rhetorical analysis and observational study of high-fashion advertisements, this paper discusses the problematic nature of the marketing techniques and how they skew interpretations of social issues.