Buy Che Guevara's soap - analysis of publicitary appropriation of revolutionary simbols and discourses

Abstract

This study aims to verify how anti-capitalist symbols and facts, such as the pictures of Fidel Castro, Gandhi, or the sickle and the hammer, are transformed into texts which reaffirm consume. We analyze how a picture of Che Guevara, for instance, one of the best images of insubordination against the capitalist system, is used in the back cover of a magazine to announce the advantages of a home cleansing product. The analysis of the mechanisms of production of meaning are accomplished in accordance with the French semiotics, namely the one developed by A.J. Greimas and his Brazilian followers. We will use the Russian semiotics, namely some texts by I.M. Lótman, attempting to verify the role of publicity and its relation with culture. We will also apply some teachings of Mikhail Bakhtin about intertextuality.