Strategic Studies of Art

Strategic Studies of Art

The concept of the body in Islamic thought and the negation of body image in environmental advertising

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Reza Rafiei Rad
PhD in Islamic Art, Tabriz Art University, Iran
10.22083/ssa.2025.396617.1012
Abstract
Background/Introduction: As an influential organ, outdoor advertising can communicate with the audience and convey the message to them. Audiences have different levels of perception when faced with the effect of outdoor advertising. the audience perceives and interprets the message of outdoor advertising at three different levels: at the first level, which is the “logical level”, it interprets the message according to the principles and rules of logic; at the second level, which is the “stimulatory level”, the audience instinctively responds to the stimuli of the message; at the third level, which is the “cultural level”, the audience will decide whether to reject or accept that message.  As a result, according to it, in the third stage of audience perception, environmental advertising intersects with cultural fields. Figurative art has a special place in all cultures and in it, the body provides designers with a wide range of meanings. Also, the strategy of gender appeals is possible for the designer through the depiction of the body and things related to the body. For example, using a woman as a tool creates a link between the attractions of the female body and advertising. Roland Marchand, in an article called “Modern Grotesque 2” about advertising in the 20s and 30s, concludes that in these years the female body has gradually lost its true nature and has become a decorative item. Critics consider two important events to be due to the function of advertising; First, the formation of individual and social indicators of humans and society has become meaningful in connection with images of objects, and second, advertising, like a standard-setting organization, has also transformed consumer culture with the developments in daily life.
Research Objective: The purpose of this research is to understand the concept of the body in Islamic thought and to examine the impact of this thought on environmental advertising. In order to achieve this major goal, the present research will answer the following question: How is the concept of the body interpreted and understood in Islamic thought, and what is the scope of using body image as an effective and important element in environmental advertising?
Methodology: This article is qualitative and has been conducted with a descriptive-analytical method using library resources, regulations, and laws and regulations of environmental advertising. These sources were sampled in a non-random and purposeful manner. In such a way that the concept of the body in the West and Islamic sources was extracted from them. The present study attempts to explain the reasons for the denial of the bodily function of the body in this public media from the perspective of Islamic thought. Therefore, various definitions of environmental advertising and also the approved laws that are somehow related to the body are stated, then the concept of the body in the West and Islam is raised, and the religious standards regarding the limits of the representation of the body are also examined.
Key Findings: The goods of the modern and postmodern world, which are advertised in line with the consumption rituals in the West, are generally tools and instruments related to contemporary human life, and the existential necessity of those goods in the current life of humans is supposed to be displayed and advertised. The presence of the image of the human body in advertising reveals the mystery of the way and necessity of the function of that product in relation to humans, and the audience understands its relationship more quickly, without exchanging a word, through the image of the human body and the advertised object. At this time, sexual attractions and aesthetics of the physical (maternal) body are used. However, the scope of the function of the physical (maternal) body and the aforementioned aesthetics are not approved in the Islamic world. This is where the media of environmental advertising in the Islamic world limits the function of the physical body.
Conclusion: The legal frameworks related to environmental advertising in the current laws, in order of priority of approval, include three main resolutions, namely: “Regulations on the Establishment and Supervision of the Work and Activities of Advertising and Promotional Centers” which was approved by the Revolutionary Council in 1979, “Approvals of the Central Committee of the Country’s Advertising Organizations” in 2006, and “Policies and Regulations Governing Environmental Advertising” approved by the Special Council of the Supreme Council for the Cultural Revolution in 2009. In the above discussions, we have listed the cases that were directly and indirectly related to the presence of body images in these laws. In these laws, presenting body images is not absolutely prohibited; The specific and general Islamic customary foundations have also limited the use of these images in advertising to observing certain cases. So that, in these principles, humans have three different types of bodies, namely the body that is born from the mother’s womb (the maternal body), the “ideal body” and the “particle body” in which, in terms of human identity, the maternal body, which is in fact our everyday and physical body, is mortal, and the ideal body is also subordinate to it and lacks originality, and only the particle body represents the complete and entire identity of humans. As a result, contrary to Western individualistic thinking, the mortality of the body and consequently the management of the body, which is promoted in the consumer world by presenting images of perfect and ideal bodies and attributes originality and identity solely to the maternal body, is not an issue or a challenge in this approach.
Keywords
Islamic thought"
media"
without"
Environmental Advertising"
"
particle body"

Subjects

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Strategic Studies of Art
Volume 3, Issue 2 - Serial Number 7
Spring 2024
Pages 87-105