Page 29 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

18 • Sport, Media and Society

The first stage in conducting a semiotic analysis of a media text such as this is to

identify the signifiers on the cover. In Barthes’s (1967) terms, this is to describe the

cover at the level of denotation—to give its literal meaning. The process of describ-
ing the media at this level is an important part of the analysis and is not as simple as it
appears. When we ‘read’ the media informally, we comprehend the message without
needing to go through this stage. In contrast, a semiotician focuses on how the mean-
ing is being made, rather than on what the meaning is. As a result, it is necessary to

account for all of the signifiers before we can make the link to what they signify. For
example, we can

• describe the people and objects
• describe the colours
• describe the shapes
• describe the lighting

Gascoigne was depicted leaning against a breeze block wall, thumbs in the belt hooks
of his jeans, wearing heavy gold chains around his neck and right wrist, displaying
an expensive-looking watch on his left wrist and looking down into the camera with
a set expression on his face. He was also naked to the waist. The headline next to the
image read ‘Gazza Laid Bare: the Broken Dreams of Britain’s Greatest Footballer’,
using a nickname for the player regularly deployed by the British tabloids (‘Gazza
Laid Bare’ 2003).
Once we have described the magazine cover, we can then consider what the arrange-
ment of words and image connotes. The absence of clothing revealed Gascoigne’s
body. There are many cultural associations of naked bodies in the media, including
pornographic, aspirational or vulnerable. The display of naked flesh has traditionally

been associated with women; however, sport is one arena where men’s bodies are
regularly shown. As Miller (2000: 97) observed, ‘sports allow spectators to watch
and dissect men’s bodies. It provides a legitimate space for gazing at the male form.’
This creates some inconsistencies: while sport can carry connotations of hegemonic
masculinity, this can be undermined by the associations of bodies on display. Gas-
coigne’s body as shown on the cover of the magazine was noticeably thinner than it
had been at other times during his career, yet it was not the athletic, hard body as-
sociated with sportspeople at the peak of their careers. In fact, his stomach appeared
concave beneath his prominent ribcage, giving the impression that he was sucking
it in. Altogether, these signifi ers created a picture of vulnerable masculinity, a body
sensitised to the media’s appraising gaze. It was a body laid bare, as the headline
says, for the inspection of The Observer’s readership. The unglamorous associations
of Gascoigne’s environment (the concrete block wall) compounded the impression
of failure. Gascoigne looked less like a professional, celebrity sportsman than a typi-
cal working-class member of the public. Horrocks (1995) has observed an underly-
ing tension within the gender and class identities of players like Gascoigne: