Deconstructing an Ad
Shopping on Amazon is a bad habit of mine. I like doing it is the problem. There’s always useful stuff that will improve the aesthetic of my surroundings, my boat home. It’s been crazy expensive being here in a boat yard where stuff will arrive from the U.S. in about a month.
So tonight, here is this advertisement for Amazon Prime.
I hope they won’t mind my sharing it. After all, it is an advertisement.
I thought it would be fun to describe it because it struck me as, well, as a tease.
A young woman, college age, is hurrying along, as if she’s getting away with something. She has red hair grown long and parted at the middle, well groomed eyebrows, long lashes, high cheek bones, red glossed lips, white teeth, and a strong chin. She’s wearing white jeans, a white blouse, and a light blue blazer clasped with red links. For jewelry she has a gold necklace and a silver ring on her right forefinger. She is very pale skinned, as a redhead. Her hands are slender. The manicured nails on her long fingers are painted pink or gold.
She is smiling and looking down as she runs along, self absorbed and pleased.
A gold sequined handbag trails from the crook of her right elbow. Her bent arm holds tightly to her breast: a more cubic than flat Amazon Prime shipping box on which is balanced a plant in a pink pot and some small gold thing shaped like, perhaps, a genie lantern.
In her left arm, thrust ahead of herself, she balances a flatter Amazon Prime shipping box on which is balanced a Prada catalog, laptop computer that is open to a screen saver. Balanced on the keyboard of the laptop is a golden mug or bowl with Buddha looking masks printed or sculpted on the outside.
All of this is over a background of royal purple. As she hurries along, she is shedding gold coins tumbling into the air behind her.