Kelly Casteel

This two-part ad is from the August 2003 issue of Andy Warhol's Interview magazine. This particular issue, the "music issue," exclusively features interviews between musicians. The focus on music is reflected in the advertising, particularly in the 40-page "special advertising section" from which I took this two-page ad. The advertising section itself is called "Rock 'n' Roll Rules" and offers 20 ads from companies[1] whose products include cars, clothing, beverages, and hair products in varying price ranges. The demographics that these companies target overlap to some degree but they are by no means all the same; thus, it is important to note that none of the companies or products are related directly to music production or performance (i.e. there is no record label ad or brand of guitar featured). Rather, these brands and their products featured in ads on the right-hand pages are linked to music and to each other by the accompanying painted image on the left-hand pages - the "artwork created specially by Ruben Toledo" for the spread.

Toledo's illustrations link the product/brand to music by providing a narrative of the product "in action," usually by featuring a generic image of a musician (denoted by the possession of a guitar or microphone) performing while at the same time explicitly or implicitly using/wearing the product. The connection between product and music is further tied together through a caption at the bottom of each illustration Æ this is the "rock 'n' roll rule" of the ad after which the section is titled. Toledo takes as his audience the (usually male) aspiring musician; each caption ("rule") instructs the reader to "Let your hair down!"[2], "Blow your own Horn!"[3] or "Be bubbly in public!"[4] in order to be more "rock 'n' roll." This is presumably accomplished by buying, using, or wearing the product denoted by the brand name scrawled somewhere in the illustration.

The 2(x)ist ad for men's jeans presents a closely-cropped image of a man's crotch in tight jeans that reveal the obvious bulge of his penis. The caption of the 2(x)ist ad, "Get into our jeans," instructs the target audience male to wear the jeans while implying that the size of his "bulge" might make getting into them difficult. The visibility of the bulge, however, is desirable as it displays the penis and thus acts as an indicator of masculinity. On the opposite page, Toledo's interpretation presents a musician (who not coincidentally resembles rock star Lenny Kravitz) playing the body of a woman like a guitar, using her hair for strings. The musician is surrounded by a group of several men and two women who, except for one man wearing jeans in the center, are wearing nothing but 2(x)ist underwear. The caption "Dare to bare!" at the bottom of the illustration provides another "rock 'n' roll rule" which links music to sex and women to the role of "instrument" in sexual relationships for the aspiring male musician.

A glimpse at the 2(x)ist website (www.2xist.com) reveals a campaign that is very different from the brand narrative present in the Interview spread. For one thing, 2(x)ist's primary product is underwear; their line of jeans is small and not promoted heavily on their website. The website mainly consists of overtly sexualized images of men's muscular and hairless bodies, usually cropped so that only the torso and crotch are visible. The clear focus of all of the images, as exemplified by the ad in Interview, is the bulge of the penis in the underwear. These images have explicit homoerotic overtones; one in particular shows three men wearing only underwear balancing horizontally on top of each other. While they are clearly sexualized images focusing on the penis as emblem of masculinity, no women appear at all on the website and there are several images of men posing suggestively. This implies that men would wear 2(x)ist underwear and jeans ("the 'it' brand with serious sex appeal"[5]) to be witnessed by other men.

This campaign narrative is obviously quite different from the one presented by Toledo's illustration. In Toledo's scheme, the original ad and his reinterpretation offer a highly sexually charged image of men (of various shades of skin color) united by their underwear and their love of rock 'n' roll. Women take a subordinate position in the illustration, with one legless and topless woman playing the part of "instrument" and two other topless women (whose 2(x)ist underwear is more revealing than those on the men) remaining in the mostly male audience. The 2(x)ist ad on the right focuses specifically on material connections between man, the penis as quintessential symbol of maleness, and jeans as the sheath in which masculinity can be embodied. Toledo's illustration, on the other hand, seeks to tie masculinity to music while playing on the overt sexuality of the 2(x)ist image.

This ad/illustration combination provides an interesting intersection of the different historical trajectories of images of homoerotic sexuality and sexuality linked to music. Music in general, and rock and roll as a specific genre, has always been charged with sexual meaning. It is a field dominated by highly sexualized male figures who are to some degree expected to have multiple sexual partners; the idea of the female "groupie" who sleeps with the members of the band during their tour has been around for decades. Thus images of rock stars surrounded by scantily-clad women and stories of women throwing their underwear on stage or acting in extreme ways to gain access to musicians circulate freely. Hyper-sexualized homoerotic images of men, however, do not find as much available space in mainstream publications; certain fashion spreads offer sexually suggestive images of men but they are not explicitly homoerotic. Rather, homoerotic images of men appear mostly in gay publications or in advertisements for dating services, chat lines, etc. in the back pages of local entertainment weeklies. Images like those on the 2(x)ist website do not circulate in mainstream publications like Interview; the brand narrative is to some degree subordinated to and rearticulated by the narrative that links sexuality and music in the context of the issue.

[1] Alt. Studio by Studio Line L'or³al, Budweiser, Cointreau, DKNY Jeans, Energie, F³ria, ETRO, Footprints by Birkenstock, Hummer, Lancªme, Louis Vuitton, MGD, Moschino, Perrier, Roberto Cavalli, Smirnoff, Target, 2(x)ist, Versace, W Hotels.

[2] Alt Studio by Studio Line L'or³al.

[3] Hummer.

[4] Perrier.

[5] www.2xist.com/home.asp