As you may or may not know, I study Media Studies in college and that requires me to analyse many aspects of the media, including advertising. For one particular assignment, I chose to analyse an advertisement of CHIKARA Pro Wrestling and this is how it turned. I don't have the image on hand, but I will try add it as soon as I can:
The image I have chosen to analyse is an advertisement of a pro-wrestling promotion. The company advertised is clearly labelled CHIKARA and appears in Issue 024 of the publication Fighting Spirit Magazine.
The reader is met with a series of images in this advert. In the foreground, one finds a drawing of a masked wrestler who is holding a copy of a “Best of CHIKARA” DVD. Emerging from the wrestler, who is clearly the most noticeable aspect of the advert, is a series of speech bubbles, which inform the consumer about the product. The wrestler in question is known as Ultra Mantis Black, although we are not told this directly through the image. Centrally fixed at the top of the page, there is the company logo “CHIKARA”. A series of cartoon images that caricature the company’s wrestlers line the page vertically. These are DVD covers of past events they have held, but look just like comic book covers. In the background, various photographs of the wrestlers grappling and fighting overlap each other.
On a connotative level, the advertisement is, obviously, attempting to tell the reader what kind of commodity Chikara Pro offers. When one scans the images laid out on the page, it’s clear what kind of message they are trying to portray: that this is a fun and entertaining, yet family-orientated, product. The rather cartoonish, comic book-like affect of the advert, along with the bright and varied colours that are used, is a certain giveaway of this. It shows that the product does not take itself too seriously, that it sets out to entertain the audience first and foremost. And much like a comic book, the image aims to demonstrate Chikara Pro’s ability to stretch the imagination to its fullest. The use of both cartoon drawings as well as stills also symbolises the company’s ambition to bring our imagination - or a comic book, if you will - to life. It is saying to us that it is akin to an action-packed adventure with heroes on one side, and villains on the other.
If we try and connect the images with the text on the page, arguably the most telling image sits in the top left-hand corner. It is the DVD cover that depicts a Chikara wrestler (Jigsaw) kicking a WWE wrestler (Edge) in the face, underneath the title, “The Crushing Weight Of Mainstream Ignorance.” WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) is, if you didn’t know, the major company in pro-wrestling and effectively own an oligopoly on the industry. The point of using this image is to inform the reader about the differences between the themselves and the big fish, so to speak, of the business. Chikara Pro are trying offer a fresh, fun and intense alternative to the stale, boring and mainstream product that fans are all accustomed to. Therefore, it could also be argued that this is symbolic of market machinations within capitalism, such as competition between two rivalling firms.
Moving on to the logo that is placed on the top of the advertisement, the company name “CHIKARA” is written in a Japanese or oriental type font, which gives the reader an idea of the kind of style of wrestling they will encounter if they choose to consume the product. This is also seen in the wrestlers they have chosen to feature in the advert, and they indicate a style that is a cross between lucha libre (Mexican), puroresu (Japanese) and an American style of pro-wrestling. In fact, this is even stated on the cover of the DVD they are advertising.
This brings us to intertextuality, as I can now connect the actual text and written language on the page, as well as the images provided, with the intertexts that are also being advertised. The aforementioned speech bubbles that surround the wrestler Ultra Mantis Black contain text that advertise things other than the main product they are trying to sell. These intertexts include their ‘free weekly podcast’, their website and, of course, the “Best of CHIKARA” DVD, as well as all the DVD covers that line either side. Some of the words are also emboldened, such as ’free’ or ’live’ and so on, which has the affect of drawing the reader in. These speech bubbles and the quirky text therein reaffirm the notion that Chikara Pro seeks to be a comic book brought-to-life. Thus, it is clear that the images and text are intertwined with the intertexts in the advert when trying to get across the message of the overall product.
If we take a look at the frame of this image, we find one or two very noticeable traits. First of all, this advertisement was found in Fighting Spirit Magazine, a publication that focuses on the world of pro-wrestling and MMA (mixed martial arts). This very advert can also be seen in Pro Wrestling Illustrated, so it is obvious where one should look first for this image -- pro-wrestling publications. On the same page as the Chikara Pro advert, there are two other images: one is an advert for K-Star Wrestling (KSW) training school in Birmingham, while the other advertises a website known as www.Blades-UK.com, who are an online catalogue that specialise in collectors’ items. The link between the Chikara and KSW adverts are obvious, because these are two separate pro-wrestling companies promoting their product, just in different fashions. The online catalogue is an interesting one. It suggests that wrestling fans may also be collectors, hoarders even, or that they at least like collecting nostalgic or sentimental items. This can actually be linked directly to the Chikara Pro advert, as there is a small yellow and purple logo on the DVD cover that reads, “FREE! CHIKARA TRADING CARD INSIDE!” Even the pro-wrestling DVDs that are being advertised could be classed as collector’s items, so there is a direct correlation between the two products here, even if it doesn’t appear so at first.
In terms of an overall message, perhaps these images are telling us about the behaviour of wrestling fans, or even consumers in general -- that they not only like wrestling, but they may also want to become actual pro-wrestlers or want to collect things to do with wrestling for sentimental reasons.
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