Beyond Storytelling. Art and Advertisement

Abstract

With the advent of the Internet a profound change in advertising language came up, accompanied by a profound mutation in formats. Alongside the well-known commercials have arisen what we may call superspots, films lasting several minutes that while echoing the advertising language of shorter forms – rapid editing, compact narration, high level of allusiveness, considerable demand for interpretive cooperation – articulate more complex discourses. It is precisely such superior complexity that is at the heart of the analysis conducted in this paper, which considers the commercial The One that I Want directed by Baz Luhrman for Chanel, from which the centrality of the concept of storytelling as a model for explaining the functioning of the advertising text is questioned. It thus turns out that it is poetry that offers the best insights for confronting a genre of seemingly no cultural depth.