What’s wrong in gay advertisements?

Do you remember the Findus advertisement, the one that went “Mum, Gianni is not just my flatmate, he’s my partner!”? And the Tiffany & Co. one, where the two protagonists are sitting on the stairs, wearing a wedding ring? Can you think of any others? No? But of course there are more! Other famous examples are the ones produced by Althea, Vodafone, Ikea, Lavazza, just to mention some of the best-known brands.

What has changed in the last forty years for people who were stigmatised as being perverted or mentally handicapped to now being the main subjects in the advertising business?

A lot of things have indeed changed. There has been a medical-scientific development that has dubbed homosexuality as a “natural variation” of sexual orientation. There has been a political-juridical development that, alongside popular support, has granted specific rights. Summarising Foucault, the homosexual went from being a bugger to a person with a past, a story, a childhood, a personality, a way of life. There isn’t just the act; there is the actor as well now.

But why did it happen? Because it’s a natural variation of sexual orientation and, unless we admit of being an openly racist society, we have to grant them rights.

And here comes into play a key element of culture: the market. If the process of political and judicial development guarantees the possibility of strengthening the achievements of gay and lesbian families, then consequently these will become more appealing to marketing and consumption sectors, which then express themselves through advertising strategies. It’s clear that the marketing focus shifts to gay issues, not only for the obvious reasons of the advancement of rights, but also because of the economic repercussion. This doesn’t, however, impact the broader affirmation of homosexuality within social life: we are living in a “visual” society that needs to see in order to understand and make something “acceptable”. An object or an action seen on TV or on the Internet is subject, by the viewer, to an activity of socialization: it becomes common, normal. If television or social medias or videos talk about homosexuals, then these will most likely be considered – in a process that is everything but quick – “normal”. The point is how they are represented.

The “as long as we talk about it” is fine up to a certain point. Because representing someone is just not enough: if you don’t represent someone well, you did represent that person, but badly. Advertisements, often praised by LGBT associations, actually contain cultural distortions.

Therefore, it’s definitely a good thing that marketing is now focused on a specific segment of society, but as a producer of aesthetic objects and socio-political artefacts, it has a big responsibility.

A recent study of visual sociology on LGBT marketing in Italy found that advertisements with gay subjects turn out to be low in number, with an average of 1.6 advertisements per year. It’s not very much, is it? In Italy, moreover, the greatest number of LGBT advertisements produced was between 2011 and 2015: this increase can be linked to both the gradual introduction of gay issues in the current debate and to the fact that certain rights have already been granted in almost all EU and western countries.

LGBT individuals are almost always represented in a clear way: window dressings and “gay vagues” are avoided. In these (few) commercials were they are the protagonists, there is not ambiguity or “I’m not too sure, but maybe those two are gay”. Their sexual orientation is not hidden: either they are holding hands or they are kissing.

But not all that glitters is gold. These individuals are always placed in a context of extreme carelessness and everyday life. Even when dealing with issues such as coming out, an essential transitional process in the lives of many homosexuals – which can be a time of great suffering and years of psychotherapy – the theme seems to concern everyone’s friendliness and happiness; the desire to recreate, with a “Mulino Bianco” effect, the ideal society and the serenity to which every family aspires, but that ends up ridiculing some experiences.

They seem to say: “Don’t worry, everything is under control. Everything is normal.”

Homosexuals are represented as normal folks. And this alleged normality is underlined without innuendo. But if it is emphasized that something is normal, then one would think that it is not that normal. Otherwise why would one need to point it out? And it doesn’t matter if the photographer is a heterosexual, a homosexual or a transsexual: culture affects everyone, because we all live in a society where there is a predominant heteronormative fear of doing something wrong if you don’t follow some rules. Morality.

Diane Arbus and Nan Goldin, grunge photographers, have taught us that there is another world that is not subject to the rules of the middlebrow, the average middle-class educated people who spend their time at home on the couch with a cup of tea creating themselves a misconception of the others. A world made of imagined realities like mythologies, of people who are thought to be like “modern hircocervus”: representing a transvestite or a young homosexual dying of AIDS doesn’t require standardization, because it’s real life and not an artefact crafted for money. But theirs was poetry.

In gay marketing emerges an idea of heteronormativity as is something one needs to reach, as a dream to achieve. Somehow it seems that, to make the homosexual presence acceptable within the commercial sector, one needs to “reassure” the public. The heterosexual community becomes a target field that engulfs the image of homosexual people as “abnormal” to then transform it into its revolutionary spirit. The representation of gay and lesbian people is distorted by images aimed at “normalizing” them: white, upper-middle class and straight-looking people with the desire to marry.

So no more effeminate gay man – “gay people are not only like this”, no more images of butch lesbians – “lesbians can also be feminine”, no more trans with a deep voice – “there are trans who sound like women”.

But the reality is that many gay men are effeminate (let’s take the notion of effeminacy and femininity with a pinch of salt and let’s not disturb Judith Butler), many lesbians are masculine (and again go back to the previous parenthesis) and just as many transsexuals have a deep voice.

So what?