the paradigm of masculinity, that a man would not, under normal circumstances, choose to be shopping (this paradigm that shopping is a female hobby is also reinforced in the ad by the fact that there is only one male figure in the ad as opposed to the three women, and the only man is there because he is fulfilling some unstated requirement of a male in a relationship). In the next line, "Your drink doesn't have to", the syntagmatic relation of the words in relation to the previous phrase, leads one to assume that the Southern Comfort being advertised is the drink that the man used to use before his life was interrupted by the woman, or is at least a common drink of choice for bachelors. Making this connection is important because it links the drink to the freedom that the man presumably had before he became "whipped", the freedom that men like to hold on to. The next line of copy, "Hang on to your spirit", stands out from the rest of the copy because it looks like individually cut-out words which stand out on the contrasting black background. Our mind associates these cut-outs as looking like the print found in newspapers or magazines. By using the cut-and-pasted words the advertisers invoke the "ransom" myth. This myth is something that we have seen in numerous movies, the villain/kidnapper of the film using cut-out letters and words so as to prevent being traced. In this sense, one can see this line of copy as a warning. The advertiser is warning the consumer not to let what happened to the man in the ad happen to them, not to let the man's bachelor spirit be overtaken by a demanding woman. They are imploring the consumer to hold on to their freedom found in their old way of life, which has been linked to the Southern Comfort....
