Revision: Adbusters Cover analysis

 

• Adbusters presents a deliberately confrontational mode of address, which is emphasised through it's total lack of anchorage 
• MES of the costume of the cover model has militaristic connotations, due to the camouflage colours and the utility pockets. This has significant connotations of war, death and threat, which are potentially highly alarming to the target audience. 
• Unconventional positioning of the masthead creates a confusing and atypical layout for the target audience. By changing the masthead every time, Adbusters not only lacks consistency, it also lacks brand identity. Adbusters brand identity is trashy, confusing, and contradictory. By changing the masthead every issue, the magazine is committing a significant financial risk. Adbusters presents an anticapitalistic, anti profit ideology that goes against hegemonic capitalist ideas in our society.
• Not for profit, makes enough money to keep making the magazine
• Adbusters presents a progressive range of ideologies and a desire to change society. This is symbolically encoded through the constantly changing house style of the magazine. Adbusters asks the audience to reject capitalism and brands, and other hegemonic conventions. 

Adbusters is
Complicated
Challenging
Atypical
Deliberately confrontational
Polysemic

• The MES of the brown 'dirt' covering the model and the masthead has many polysemic interpretations. Some audiences will decode that this is mud, and this will reinforce connotations of war, death and barbarity. Other audiences may see it as film grain, which has connotations of damage and age and general degradation. However, the dirt effect is actually an attempt to make the front cover look badly and cheaply printed, which obscures several key elements. This may simply be to capture the audience's attention and provide a unique selling point. However, this cheap looking printing also constructs a deliberately trashy punk ideology, that challenges the viewers expectations of what a magazine should look like. Additionally, it reminds the target audience that we live in a dangerous, complicated and dirty world filled with danger. 
• The cover model is screaming towards the audience in an angry and direct mode of address. This further anchors the magazines confrontational status. Additionally, the combination of the model's middle eastern ethnicity, combined with the lack of anchorage constructs him as a stereotypical terrorist. By forcing the audience through the lack of anchorage to come to a stereotyped and even racist conclusion, the magazine is positioning the audience in a deeply confrontational and unpleasant mode of address.
• The main and only cover line uses the lexis post west, which presents many polysemic meanings for the target audience. One interpretation is that it refers to the destruction of the Western world, and the state of the world that we know will soon end. This is clearly highly confrontational, and extremely unpleasant for the target audience.
• We live in a confusing and difficult to understand world
• By using the term west, the magazine is using deliberately confrontational and othering language language, that forces the audience to confront their prejudices
• Adbusters presents a nihilistic ideology to it's target audience that suggests that nothing matters, and there is nothing that we can do to change anything While this may in fact be true, it limits the usefulness of the magazine, and arguably positions the audience as the problem. this condescending mode of address arguably desensitises the audience to real problems