Advertising "The Sopranos"

A lot can be said for one of the advertisements for the last season of The Sopranos. The particular ad is a wide shot of the Statue of Liberty looking out to sea in the background. It is small and distant and incredibly iconic of how people first coming in to New York City view America. In the foreground, blocking the sea at which the Statue of Liberty is looking, is Tony Soprano. He is wearing a black trench coat over a suit and tie and looks like he’s planning. His eyes are shifting towards the left, as if he’s assessing the Statue of Liberty from afar. Off of his right shoulder, a flock of birds are flying away, out of the image. The entire picture is in black and white. In the sky of the top left corner are black words: “The Final Episodes – April 8, 9PM” and under those are red words: “Made in America.” Nowhere on the ad does the title of the show appear.

This image can be critically analyzed through the writings of Rowland Barthes. In his essay, “Rhetoric of the Image,” he discusses how, “there are those who think that the image is an extremely rudimentary system in comparison with language and those who think that signification cannot exhaust the image’s ineffable richness.” This quote simply compares two ways that people may view images in comparison with language. One group doesn’t think that pictures can convey nearly as much information as language can while others celebrate the level of detail one can get by studying an image, despite language’s advantages. When looking at the Sopranos ad, the first group would commend the subtle complexities that arise from the phrase “The final episodes…made in America.” The second group, on the other hand, would be most interested in the way Tony Soprano interacts with the rest of the image, as if he could dominate and manipulate it the moment he decides that he wants to.

The interaction between Tony and the rest of the image is intriguing. Tony looks every bit the mob boss that he is, and the fact that he looks like he’s planning to take someone or something down to hold onto his power – if not gain any – is intimidating. As a mob boss, he acts very much as if he is above the law: that it has no pertinence to him except to make it more difficult for him to do his business. But since he is over the law, most of the people who work for him or owe him are helpless. Because they got involved with him, they no longer have the option of falling back on the law’s help to protect themselves from him. This stands against all the virtues that America wants to stand for in the global world. America, traditionally, stands for freedom and liberty: something that people lose when getting involved with the law. The birds flying away from Tony show the fear that he uses to control everyone.

With so much detail and story coming from the image alone, those who feel that language can’t convey the same dialogue as a picture can form their argument. They would argue that “in fact, it is simply the presence of the linguistic message that counts, for neither its position nor its length seem to be pertinent…” This could be true. The bold colors stick out in the upper-left hand corner, contrasting with the bold shades that Tony has in the image. The rest of the background is in shades of grey. Without the writing, Tony would not only stick out like a bad Photoshop job, but the image would seem unbalanced. The writing balances the image and makes it seem more unified. The tone of the show, however, is excellently conveyed without words.

The group who believes strongly in the importance of language, obviously, would disagree with this idea. They would be quick to point out how “…the viewer of the image receives at one and the same time the perceptual message and the cultural message…” The perceptual message is what someone sees at first glance in an image, while the cultural message is the one that can be gotten after analyzing an image for more time. While the image itself tells a lot about the message, the language that accompanies it “banishes one possible signified…and orients the reading towards a more flattering signified…” The text in the ad narrows down all the possible meanings that a viewer could get from the image. The phrase that pops out to people in the ad is “the final episodes…made in America.” The information that the series is winding to a close tells viewers of the ad that the series’ climax is coming up and that the drama and severity and finality of characters’ actions are going to be much more intense. That information, in turn, makes the image seem much more intense and urgent. The phrase “made in America,” however, is much more interesting. This phrase is meant to summarize the mood and tone of the final season. Tony’s control over the American system and his disconnect with the consequences of the law give him a lot of power over others. In essence, he can make whatever he wants happen. The power he has over what his industry creates plays on the sense of pride America has over products it makes. The complexity in the subtlety of this phrase draws in viewers’ interests and makes them pay more attention to the ad and to the show.