Magazine Cover Analysis: Fangoria

This magazine cover is Fangoria’s January 2011 issue, #299, featuring Natalie Portman as its cover model. This issues main feature is the horror-thriller film ‘Black Swan’, in which Natalie Portman plays the character Nina Sayers. First released in 1979, Fangoria is a movie magazine that focuses on the horror genre. Focused in the U.S.A, it is published monthly by The Brooklyn Company Inc. and has a circulation of 46,000.

The general conventions of magazines are followed by this cover with the masthead (Fangoria), the strapline (Darren Aronofsky’s Dance of Death), the cover text and the barcode (bottom-left).

The colour scheme focuses mainly on white, red and black. White, which commonly represents innocence, is the main feature of this cover photo. This presents the idea that innocence is a main feature in the film. However, the black and red intrude violently against the white, raising the possibility that the characters innocence will be intruded upon or damaged. This is further enforced by the fact that red represents danger and that black represents death. The use of red against white is also cleverly used to grab the viewer’s attention. In a sea of magazines, the massively white cover could at first glance be considered blank. A second glance would then reveal that it is not blank. The use of red, as highly visible colour, for the masthead, which is almost always red in all of its cover history, helps grab the viewer’s attention and hold it too. It also helps allude to the type of magazine it is; being a horror magazine the red could represent blood, a common staple in horror movies.

The cover photo is of the actress Natalie Portman, dressed as her character Nina Sayers from the movie ‘Black Swan’. The main focal point(s) of this photo are the eyes of the subject. The red, a highly visible colour, layered against the black which is layered against the white makes the eyes stand out the most out of the entire cover. This piercing stare forces the viewer to stare back, paying more attention to this magazine than others it is sat next to. Also, because the eyes are faced straight forward, no matter where the cover is viewed from, they will always be staring at the viewer.