Thursday, February 11, 2010
Video of the Day
In response to this pathetic Superbowl ad.
If embedding isn't working, click here.
Transcript:
I will get up and pack your lunch at 6:30 a.m.
I will eat half a grapefruit for breakfast.
I will get the kids ready for school.
I will ignore your smelly loser friend who is crashing on our couch.
I will make $.75 for every dollar you make doing the same job.
I will assert myself and get called a bitch.
I will catch you staring at my breasts but pretend not to notice.
I will put my career on hold to raise your children.
I will diet, Botox, and wax... everything.
I will assure you that size doesn’t matter.
I will be a lady in the street but a freak in bed.
I will turn a blind eye to your ever encroaching baldness.
I will humor your fantasy baseball obsession.
I will pretend not to notice when you cry at the end of Rudy.
I will watch TV shows where fat, stupid, unattractive men have beautiful wives.
I will allow you to cheat on me with other women.
I will see Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Twice.
I will elect male politicians who will make decisions about my body.
I will listen to Rush and tell you, yes, if there were a gold medal for air-drumming, you would win it.
I will get angry, and you will ask if it’s that time of the month.
I will watch Superbowl commercials that depict men as emasculated and depressed, and I will feel so fucking sorry for you.
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Rachel,
ReplyDeleteIt figures you couldn't restrain youself from this. I understand that there aren't many sports fans on this blog, but I'd think that even this socially progressive crowd might have actually tuned into the game if for no other reason than to view the advertisements.
You've been watching Super Bowls for many years, as have I. I'm assuming that most of your readers understand that the Super Bowl is the premier platform for television advertising in the U.S. and pretty much sets the tone for that medium. I'll preface this by saying that professionally I've been involved in some corporate advertising strategy, budgeting and implementation from the operations side. In that context you and your girls need to understand that companies don't make decisions to spend $2.5M for a thirty second spot unless they are pretty confident that their message will resonate with the target market and they'll sell some product. You should also understand that there are huge creative and production expenses relating to these advertisements that are over and above paying for the ad.
Even more important than selling product is setting the tone for your brand in the marketplace to make sure that consumers have a relatively clear understanding of what your product stands for. Point being, these decisions are not made lightly or without significant research and focus group initiatives.
So…I was pleasantly surprised by the tone of many of the Super Bowl ads. We're not just talking about your reference to the Dodge commercial, but ads from FloTV and Dockers carried exactly the same tone. You know…the one that basically says guys in general are tired of the standard bitching, complaining and controlling from their significant others.
You girls may prefer to just view this through your standard misogyny goggles, but actually it's much bigger than that. It's pretty much a confirmation from the market that the previously most popular approach of casting all men as fat, lazy, stupid and unmotivated really wasn't working and they are taking a new approach that they think will be more effective. If there was just one ad that had this tone it probably wouldn't have been a big deal, but actually this huge shift is significant.
What was that quote from Russell Crowe in Gladiator? Something like "The Time for Honoring Yourself will Soon Be At An End, Highness". That's exactly were feminism is going.
For me the only thing that topped these great advertisements was how Gloria Allred and your friends over at NOW and totally botched the handling of the Tim Tebow ad. I never thought I'd see the day when Focus on the Family totally outsmarted, outworked and out PR'd you chicks. It was unbelievable. It accurately cast feminism as the nasty, anti-family, pro-abortion lobby that it really is. Seriously, I think just that scenario set you & your pro-choice girlfriends back years. I'm no fan of Focus on the Family, but good for them.
My suggestion for you ladies is to decide whom you want to stand with in your movement. You've made enough progress over the years that most reasonable women aren't buying your standard bullshit positions and you're going to continue to be cast even more to the far left with organizations like NOW. It's a guaranteed path to failure.
Turns out that the Colts weren't the only organization that got their asses kicked on Super Bowl Sunday. Feminists were right there with them. Nice Job.
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I'm surprised Burn that you aren't more offended by the insinuation in the ad that men are so controlled by the women that they are with that the only way they can express their manhood is to buy a car.
ReplyDeleteBurn,
ReplyDeleteI also work in the advertising industry, and I would dispute your characterization of superbowl advertising. Superbowl spots are premium spots, it's true. But it's still considered niche advertising (with a predominantly male demographic), which explains the prevalance of ads with misogynistic undertones. As such, it doesn't set the tone for all advertising everywhere.
I also disagree with your claim that all superbowl placements are carefully researched and orchestrated. There are many examples of marketing disasters in superbowl history. One of the more recent ones was a godaddy spota few years ago which neglected to indicate what services were offered by godaddy, and left most consumers confused. I understand that you think of us feminist "chicks" as being out of touch with the business world and clueless about marketing, but you just revealed your own ignorance (and arrogance) in this comment.
burn,
ReplyDeleteIf you and your boys are so insecure in your masculinity that you have to buy a particular car or a pair of pants to feel like a man, then more power to ya. Good luck with that.
@ Anonymous
ReplyDeleteSure…but that just makes the guys involved major league weenies if they put up with it. If they are that weak to begin with they might actually be foolish enough to buy a Dodge.
There probably are actually guys around like this and if they don't have the balls to have an honest conversation with their partners then I think they get what they deserve in the relationship. The most foolish thing to do is hang around and become pissed off. Might as well move on and find someone that is a better fit. It's a "space in time" issue…life's too short.
Concerning these ads I was most fascinated by the fact that there were three ads that pretty much had the same tone / message. That seems to be the early stage of a paradigm shift as to cultural perception on this issue. As any good card carrying feminist knows, it's all about perception, right?
In any case it's a very interesting Macro kind of a thing that I think may well be the start of something. We'll see.
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@ Minerva,
ReplyDeleteGood…we have an expert in the audience. Let's dance.
You and I both know that my original statement was accurate. People that HATE football watch the Super Bowl just to see the ads. It may be a predominantly male demo, but you're being less than accurate if you don't admit that tons of chicks watch the Super Bowl, right? They drink and eat chips during the game but watch when the ads come on. It's standard Super Bowl party stuff, though not just for women. If you're in the business check the data and report back when it's published. If fact, I'll bet you a beer that the Super Bowl female viewer audience distribution, as a percentage of total viewers, is by far the largest of any pro football game during the prior year. Let me share this little tidbit with your sisters as I assume you already know it. The 2010 Super Bowl had the largest audience in the History of Television, by most estimates it was about 106 million viewers. So just maybe the audience is a bit larger than primarily male, but nice try.
Not only do these ads normally set the tone for the brand advertising for a given company, but as you know because creative and production costs are normally higher for these ads the companies involved try to amortize them over a larger calendar. This results in them normally being shown more, assuming the company has the budget to purchase the time and continue their branding efforts going forward. Frankly if you understand brand advertising you'd understand that from a business perspective it would be extremely rare and foolish for a company not to leverage their investment in a Super Bowl advertisement in their future marketing efforts.
I'm a businessman, not an advertising person. That said, I've worked with my share of ad agencies here in Los Angeles. Primarily Deutsch and BBDO. If you're goofy enough to take the position that Super Bowl adds aren't carefully produced there isn't anything else I can say to make you look sillier. Do screw-ups happen sometimes? Certainly. I don't know what your level of expertise is, but in my experience commercials rarely get to broadcast ready status with the kind of a screw up you describe and if they do all sorts of hell breaks loose. For those of you not familiar with this type of situation, were this to take place normally the Agency would be at risk of termination and most likely several of the top internal advertising people in the company are also at risk of being fired.
The only time that I can remember truly poorly produced and executed ads being run during the Super Bowl was during the Dot Com boom when there were a bunch of moronic, 25 year old MBAs who thought they were rich because they had venture capital money and decided to throw something together in the business equivilent of a Hail Mary in an effort to keep their investors from pulling the plug on them. I guess we all know how that worked out. Other than that you're pretty much wrong, Darlin.
Rather than throw up bogus arguments in a weak attempt to impress the sisterhood why don't you leverage your extensive advertising experience and let them know how many times in the past we've seen three advertisements like the three I originally called out that were so clearly sending the same message. Seriously.
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@ Diamonds,
ReplyDeleteI feel pretty comfy in my masculinity but thanks for caring. That said I understand that you girls would prefer that all humans with external plumbing adhere to your new and improved definition of manliness to make the world a better place.
I don't think I ever tried to make the case that I thought these ads would be effective at selling stuff. My point was that they all had the same basic approach to their pitch for the product. In general I think that theme was that "generic guys" were pretty sick of the status quo. Advertising only works if it's delivered in a way that speaks to the target audience. It's interesting that all three of these advertisements were appealing to the same target audience in similar ways. It's also interesting that it wasn't industry specific…Automotive, Electronics and Clothing. So…whatever need these advertisers have identified and were trying to reach seems pretty broadly based and I'm sure they didn't just pick it out of the sky. It was most likely based upon some very robust and expensive market research. Maybe Minerva can tell us.
It's also important to remember that for advertising to be effective it doesn't have to necessarily appeal to a "real world" need. A perceived need that is felt to be legitimate by the prospect works just as well as a real need. A good example would be the rant that Rachel went on concerning the drug that made eyelashes longer. Clearly not a real world need, but maybe for some women they feel the need was legit.
Actually it's sort of funny…it's about how these Dudes FEEL. Who would have thought?
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Burn,
ReplyDeleteI think the deeper issue here is not how individual men feel in their relationships. Of course that's an issue, and something we shouldn't take lightly. But women have been getting the short end of the stick when it comes to relationships for a long time, so I think you can understand why an ad depicting a bunch of men whining about how tough their lives are is going to be irritating. And the response video captures that. Women still do the bulk of the domestic labor even when they work as many hours out of the home as their spouses. They're still considered the primary parent, and the one who fucked up when any issues arise with the children. Women are still expected to do the bulk of the emotional work in a hetero relationship. And on and on.
But if we want to really address these issues in a useful way, we'll refrain from blaming it on individual men, and instead see it as a product of the system we live in - the same one that socialized men to not participate in child rearing and not pull their own weight when it comes to housework. And the same is true of most of the complaints voiced by the men in this Superbowl ad. Many of the frustrations are simply stemming from the stresses of daily life, the workloads people are carrying, the pressure to appear to be a perfect couple that has got it all together, the stress of maintaining a relationship through all of it. But this ad also reflects a tendency by some people in our culture to encourage men to view these stresses as the fault of the women in their lives or of feminism in general. You gotta get up early and walk your dog and shave your face? Boo-fucking-hoo. How did feminism foist that on you? Did you walk your own dog and shave your own face when you were single? Then how is it that you're such a misunderstood, put-upon thing now that there's a woman in your life? I think this is the kind of unfair blaming that the response video is responding to, and rightly so. Life does suck sometimes. It is stressful, and we often don't have the kind of free time to really feel like we're flourishing rather than just running the same old rat race every day. But that's not the fault of women as a group, or feminists. It's also not the fault of men as a group. So we should stop pretending like it is.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteAppreciate your reconfirmation of just how important women are versus men. What you say must be true…men are just being socialized incorrectly. Does that mean that once men are properly educated (or re-educated) they will do what you and your girlfriends want them to do and Society will function properly? Let me know.
It appears that you don't think that any of the issues addressed in the original Dodge ad are legit for men, which speaks volumes as to your bias. This of course is validated by the bitterness and hatred spewed in the YouTube response video you posted. Pretty cool how its creator used it as a platform to trot out the standard previously debunked, worn out feminist bullshit. All of this just confirms that you and your clones instantly shift into attack mode whenever you hear anything you don't like from men. This in turn just validates the tone and tenor of the original ad. So, it's kind of circular…which is Pretty Cool.
I do however agree with your "women do most of the emotional work in the relationship" statement. Of course this is because women create by far the lion's share of the emotional overhead and drama in a relationship to begin with. So…you chicks create the drama because you don't think a Dude is meeting your emotional needs and then when he looks at you like you've lost your mind he's a bad guy. Please explain to me how that is the Dude's fault…I mean other than your standard answer that everything is the Dude's fault.
Most guys try to make relationships work out. Absent that most guys will shut down rather than argue because most of them just don't think it's worth the drama. It's also important to note that the guys that have "options" in the relationship world are more likely to shut down quicker and move on to more compelling arrangements rather than try to deal with a chick that is trying to reengineer his life to meet her objectives. Most guys don't really care what the Feminism 101 instructor said.
In any case the three ads viewed by 106 million Super Bowlers versus the 140,000 YouTuber's that viewed the response POS speaks for itself. Those numbers work for me. You girls can ignore the clear message at your own risk. It is what it is.
It's interesting to me that you don't think its productive for men to blame women in general although Feminism has been blaming men for pretty much everything from the beginning. What's with that? Now that it looks like men are pissed it's time for us to all get along? You sound like Obama after he lost Massachusetts.
By the way my girlfriend has been forcing me to watch the Winter Olympics which I'm not loving as I'm not a women's hockey or figure skating fan. That said, since you girls have inspired me to be more sensitive to her emotional needs I signed up. Just wanted to let you know that I've seen that Dodge ad a couple more times and the FloTV ad at least once more. It's a Beautiful Thing.
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Burn,
ReplyDeleteGo back and actually read Rachel's response before you reply to it. Not once did she say or even imply that women are more important than men. The socialization she refers to happens to both men and women, and she's objected to it on both fronts here and in many other posts. And for the last time, you need to separate out whatever weird fucked up view you have of "Feminism" from the things that are being said on this blog. Rachel doesn't represent everything you've ever heard of or associated with feminism in your head. If you want to engage with the things she says, then address them. But don't start some big argument with whatever it is you imagine feminism to be and the foist that on an actual person who has never expressed or defended those views. That's a ridiculous and immature approach.
Ms. Shawna,
ReplyDeleteSeriously? I guess the fact that she started out by minimizing men's individual issues and immediately launched into a diatribe that can pretty much be described as the old "everyone knows" how bad women have it speech…closing it out with the "and on and on" blurb doesn't reflect her favorable bias towards women? Are we reading the same response? How does dismissing men's concerns and focusing on how hard women have it mean that she's not implying the relative importance of women? Please enlighten me.
She specifically discussed how men are being socialized incorrectly, right? I've been reading this blog for a while and Rachel's message has been 100% consistent. Men and the Patriarchy are the problem. We need to change society; re-educate men and then things will be fine, right? Seriously, how about a response on this?
Just in case you haven't been paying attention to your feminist reading list, it's a pretty standard approach for feminists to say the current reality hurts everyone but the only people that need to change are men. She demonstrated that in her response. Her mantra is that if the "collective we" could just change Men, things would be fine. That said, please let me know of any of Rachel's posts in which she makes a plea to the sisterhood to try to change their views of men to try to find common ground and make things work better. If there is one I missed it.
Actually, I don't have a weird and fucked up view of feminism so shove it. I do have a realistic view of what has happened under the auspices of feminism. I'd be happy to have a dialogue with you concerning the standard feminism myths. Let's start with the bullshit seventy-five cents on the dollar wage complaint that has no basis in fact but has attained urban myth status due to feminists using the historically proven approach of stating and restating lies long enough that the general population accepts them as the truth. I'll rock that deal, but please have your facts in order because I promise you that I will.
Feminists have done a great job of never actually defining feminism, which of course means it can be anything they want it to be at a given moment. Up to this point this approach has been a strength because you've followed the Alinsky model in which there is no truth, just power. Frankly I think you've won that battle over the past several decades. The problem of course is that this model won't work over time, because feminists never take a real stand and eventually reasonable people figure out their selfish agenda. Mainstream feminism leveraged the man hating anger of radical lesbian feminists to their advantage early on in the movement but disclaimed it when it appeared too radical to be accepted by the mainstream feminism being indoctrinated in post-secondary education. The radical lesbian feminist model was adopted by the GLBTQ population through the feminist framework because it appeared to have worked over time. So that's where we are now and that's why you have a problem.
Although I'm sure the sisterhood is proud of you, please take your lecture & cram it. My original response to Rachel's post was a confirmation that men in general are pretty sick of you ladies and the ads reflected such. So…forgive me if my feelings don't get hurt because my response doesn't fit your agenda. It's only ridiculous and immature because it doesn't fit your worldview.
I appreciate response like yours because they just confirm how Done, Done and Done mainstream feminism is. You goofs are dead and you just don't know it.
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