Starbucks, which is headquartered in the United States, is the world's largest coffeehouse franchise. Starbucks’ logo is inspired by Siren, a mythical woman from ancient Greece. The brand has utilized her attributes of beauty, charm, and seduction as a symbol of its appeal to attract consumers. Masoud Nejabati utilized this logo as the foundation for an intercultural piece of art. The imperative of this research is emphasized by the necessity of comprehending the process through which meanings related to women are constructed and represented in contemporary art, based on modern theoretical frameworks.
This article aims to analyze Nejabati’s work from the perspective of Gérard Genette’s hypertextuality theory. The following inquiries are the focus of the investigation:1. What semiotic systems are involved in the process of deriving the Starbucks poster from the original logo, and how have they undergone homogeneity or heterogeneity?2. What are the explicit and implicit, concordant or conflicting meanings associated with the representation of women in the Starbucks logo and its poster version?
The descriptive-analytical methodology employed in this qualitative investigation is as follows. The visual and verbal systems of the artwork have witnessed travestissement-type transformations, as evidenced by the data collected through library-based research. The verbal system appropriates the widely circulated libertarian slogan as the hypotext. This intercivilizational, intercultural, and translational artwork endeavors to challenge the conceptual significations that are dominant in Western libertarian ideology by introducing implicit meanings such as exploitation, self-interest, and oppression through transmotivation and transvaluation in its verbal and visual components.