Microsoft This Microsoft ad plays on domestic gender relations in a way that is at once explicit and ambiguous. It is explicit in that the situation is immediately recognisable, and ambiguous because there is a constant oscillation of meanings, which keeps the ad ‘alive’. The physical setting is a smart and spacious kitchen, and the man and woman are presented through clothes and appearance as well-off and well-groomed: a palpable middle-classness is taken for granted as the backdrop to the ad’s dynamic. This dynamic is portrayed as between the couple, and produced through the way image and caption interact to set up conflicting implications about the relation of the man to his family that are kept perpetually in the air. The main caption, ‘completely Immersed’, applies most obviously to the man, pictured as mentally absorbed in the tablet he is using. His gaze is on its screen, away from the woman, and away from the centre of the photo, so that he seems turned away from the whole setting – the tablet itself is partially cut off at the right hand side of the page. However, the caption also applies quite literally to the woman, who is washing dishes in the sink – we just see her hands soaked in suds at the far left hand side of the page. The male and female ‘immersions’ are as far apart as the image can make them, pulling apart across the page: her left arm from hand to elbow, and his right arm from elbow to hand, form a diagonal line cutting across the image, just behind the ad’s text box. A similar diagonal trajectory is made by following the woman’s gaze in the photo, taking us left to right, from almost the centre of the page, upwards to the man’s face. There is a continuous movement as she turns towards him and he turns slightly away from her. Her expression, looking over her shoulder at him, encapsulates the ad’s central ambiguity: she smiles not at him (he isn’t looking at her anyway) but about him, conveying a benign indulgence. The man, meanwhile, looks highly serious, and rather Grecian, with his aquiline nose and curly hair, a connotation accentuated by the classical lines of the panelling and kitchen cabinets, which create the look of a Greek pillar behind his head. Not only does he appear physically a little like a Greek god, but his intent, slightly pompous expression and the movement of his hand give a sense that he is controlling events, gravely in charge from his position of Olympian detachment. The ‘punctum’ that brings this image down to earth from such heights is the tea towel on the man’s shoulder – a reminder of his very different role in the domestic sphere, where he is the helper (or non-helper) rather than the controller. Roland Barthes, in Camera Lucida, introduced the concept of the punctum as a detail which at once deflates (punctures) and ‘fills’ a photographic image, breaking through the meaning the photo seems intended to portray. In an advertisement, every element is of course intended; but the notion of the key detail that holds one’s attention and can ‘mean’ against the main import of the image is nevertheless a useful one. The tea towel links the man to the washing up, even as his whole body language and activity separates him from it. It is the visual touch that makes his Grecian gravity seem slightly comical – an effect which the woman’s affectionately amused face also expresses. The opposing connotations raised by the man’s comic incongruity within the domestic sphere are set further in motion by the long caption at the top of the page. This runs: ‘Add “Camping With Ted’s Fam” to family’s calendar + Create “Local Fish We’ll Catch” Word doc, share with son and Ted on SkyDrive + Check Tom’s history homework via shared doc + Drag web clips of potential new camping gear into OneNote + Get “IM” to start drying dishes’. When one starts reading this digital To Do list, it seems to be the man’s: after all, he is the one using the tablet and he is presumably absorbed in the programmes and documents referred to. However, the last item on the list, ‘Get “IM” to start drying dishes’, shows clearly that the To Do list is the woman’s, and its digital form is a way of enticing the husband (Ted, presumably) into involvement with the family’s activities. She is the one managing the holiday with his family, the fish list, the son’s homework, and the purchase of camping gear – but he can be lured to participate in these tasks because they can be done on the computer. Which, to come full circle, is simultaneously the means of his not participating in the washing up, another task his wife is doing. So it seems that Microsoft Home software offers a way of getting a man focused on the myriad domestic plans and tasks that women usually handle: it makes planning trips with your family, getting involved with your son, helping with homework, researching purchases, and so on, actually fun for men! The woman’s smile of satisfaction makes sense in this light: she is fundamentally the controller of the situation, as she has set the bait that has hooked the man into these activities, and it has worked. So well, in fact, that he is indeed cut off from a domestic activity and is not doing the drying up. The ad thus manages to show both the problem and the cure, in one go. The peculiar capacity of images to convey opposites at once means that the ad can simultaneously present the need for the product and its fulfillment. We see the man both involved, and not involved; and the woman, at once not being helped, and successfully getting him to help. Taken for granted within this familiar gender dynamic, however, is the whole notion of a family life run on a business model (team building, incentives, monitoring) – a feature of modern middle class life that passes without question. JudithWilliamson 9