ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates comic-strip advertising to discover how the advertiser constructs intended persuasive meanings within the characteristic format of word-and-picture sequential panels. While comic-strip advertisements mimic comic-strip stylistics, consideration of the comic strip in its functional role as a device to achieve marketplace goals exposes an undertow of social indexicals that formulate what it means to be man or woman. This raises the puzzle of a cartooning phenomenon that embeds formative messages of gender and sexuality for a consumerist readership. The analytical perspective of this study draws on Pascal Lefevre’s framework of mise en scène and framing to explore the communicative technique of panel-by-panel cartoon advertisements. The outcome of this research is two-fold: it adds to scholarship that defines narrative storytelling as a powerful form of communication, and it supports claims of advertising as instrumental in perpetuating the social myth of a male-female behavioural dichotomy.
