Here we have an image, from my cultural interpretation, Katy Perry holding two bags of Popchips purposely in front of her chest to correlate with the heading, ‘nothing fake about em.” My perception of this is a sexual innuendo through a double entendre about natural potato chips. It suggests natural things are better, for a women’s body and food, however if I were a child the innuendo may fly right over my head, it’s just Katy Perry being really excited about these chips. Or maybe I’m not familiar with Katy at all, wow this lady is excited about this chips.

Representation and Interpretation differs from person to person, or more dramatically from culture to culture. How someone determines the meaning behind an image depends on their ideological, cultural and societal beliefs. In semiotics we understand meaning through a shared conceptual map of signs and codes within our culture. I see a white woman (the sign or signifier) and I recognise her as Katy Perry (signified) due to her being established as a famous person in my culture.

Signifer is the signs form which becomes a denotation, what that signs literal meaning is and then the following path becomes the signified what the sign represents which presents the connotations, any secondary meaning. In this Pop Chip advertisement the we have:

Signifier:

• An image of a white woman
• Holding two bags of chips
• Blue background
• excited expression

Signfied:

• Women’s expression means she is excited about the chips
• Blue background is bright and lively

Denotation:

• Blue Background
• White woman holding two packets of chips up to her chest
• She is excited
• Heading says, “nothing fake about em’”
• Under heading it says, “I’m not into phonies. Good things there’s nothing fake or phony in Popchips. They only taste like they’re bad for you”

Connotation:

• The woman is Katy Perry, a western culture pop superstar.
• She is influential and endorsing the chips
• There is a sexual innuendo with the title and the placement of the chips creating a purposeful double entendre about natural things being better than artificial things, in this case Popchips are better than normal potato chips, and natural breasts are better than breast implants.

The idea that natural is better than artificial is an ideological one, created through a discursive change in what is good and bad for you through food research. Theorist, Michel Foucault argues that a subject could only be accepted once the definition of put into practice (Hall, 1997). So our societal held truth that natural is better is accepted due to studies done to make this a definitive truth. In a different historical time period before research was done this wasn’t always accepted as the truth.

Therefore this Katy Perry ad may possibly be interpreted ideologically different from someone of an older age, with more conservative opinions regarding women’s bodies.

All this makes me wonder, what’s Katy Perry’s interpretation of the ad?

Works Cited

Hall, S., 1997. The work of representation. In: S. Hall, ed. Representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. London: Sage, in association with The Open University, pp. 13-74. Accessed 30^th March 2020