Super Models; part two; Marc Gafni

Moralists often accuse the advertisers of a great moral wrong in this kind of advertising. After all there seems to be a false suggestion that we will somehow get the girl if we buy the car. Moralists however often seem to think the rest of us are not so bright. I think we have all figured out that the girl does not come with the car. Rather, the implication is far more subtle. On some level this kind of advertisement actually intuits the secret of the cherubs. The profound implication of the girl/car nexus is that the sexual eros expressed by the girl models the kind of eros the driver wants in his means of transportation. That is a profound and true idea and it is what drives much of advertising.

It is perhaps more than a telling coincidence of language that these glamorous women are called models. An obvious shoe-in for our theme! For essentially they are illustrators of the metaphysical (and physical) fact that sex models the erotic. Their sexual allure is used to pull at the erotic strings of our soul. When we buy into the ad we are chasing not the sex it displays, but the eros modeled there, the eros we so deeply if subconsciously quest after. Models then become a handy visual and linguistic reminder of the fact that all I am really after is some good eros.

marc gafni
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