ABSTRACT

The fifth chapter turns to the issue of sexuality and youth through a very particular lens. The chapter ties mass market advertising, print and television commercials, to the visual representations and style within the film. Coppola develops these very striking and memorable visual ‘bursts’ of the sisters. We are seeing these shots and scenes from the narrator’s point-of-view, but, keep in mind, that the narrator is now a middle-aged man recalling events from his teenage years. The most powerful way to understand these reveries is not as elements of the narrative or as dreams, but rather as filtered experiences soaked in the world of mass media advertising of the 1970s. Coppola is channeling these fantasy images from an array of cosmetics, fashion and health ads of the decade. Coppola shows the dangers of these stereotypes and of building communication around the beliefs and precepts of this advertising. Interestingly, Coppola has continued these reveries in her own marketing and advertising work: her 2014 commercial for the perfume Daisy by Marc Jacobs is shot in just the same style as these moments in The Virgin Suicides .