In the Axe commercial, an abundant amount of different groups of women in provocative swimsuits are running through jungles and swimming through the ocean in a savage manner. They are doing so in order to reach a smiling man who is spraying axe body spray on him. The commercial is using an appeal to pathos as it is trying to convince men (particularly young men) that if they use this body spray, more women will be attracted to them. This is also reinforced by the slogan, "Spray More- Get More- The Axe Effect."
Right off the bat, the audience is presented with the MTV logo. Just with this, we can assume that the commercial is attempting to reach a younger audience in a punk, young, and neoconservative way, which is just what the advertisement did. All of the women in this commercial are depicted as savage and desperate for this man's attention as they try to push and outrace one another to get to him. All of these women acting vulnerable and fighting over him make him be seen in a masculine, superior light which is supposedly due to the body spray. Additionally, these women are all in tiny bikinis and have bodies that can be deemed as sexy and attractive in society today. The women also are separated into groups by bikini color, all the women in a group have a characteristic in common, their appearance. Some women in a group have the same hair color, others have the same skin color and others have the same ethnicity. This shows the variety of women that the body spray could attract. It is also degrading to females across the globe and grouping them in ways they should not be grouped for. The savagery of the women in the video also serves to show how this magical body spray will cause women to do whatever is necessary to get the attention of a man wearing it. The "Get More," part of the slogan is also very degrading to women as it objectifies them and signifies that they are just a number and that more is better. This whole commercial represents men's sexual attraction to women and manipulates the concept so that a man's desires could possibly be fulfilled just by using this body spray.
In the Tide ad, the representation is not much better than the Axe body spray commercials. In this commercial, a mother speaks, in a disappointed tone, about how all her daughter likes to wear are hoodies and cargo shorts. When her daughter left crayons in her pockets, Tide detergent, to the mother's dismay, washed all the stains away instead of ruining the clothes so that she had to throw them away. The slogan, "Style is an option. Clean is not." comes off as quite ironic.
The mother in this ad is representing femininity. She does not have a hair out of place and is extremely well put together. She is wearing a pink sweater as well as a skirt and a hairpiece, an outfit that can easily be seen as girly in society today. She is sitting at the complete center of the frame, it is all very symmetrical giving us a feeling us tidiness and organization, a sense mostly provided by women. The furniture includes pink and feminine patterns and is all organized in a very neat way. There are flowers and a tea kettle, more elements that can connect back to women. Her daughter, however, is wearing gray, a dull color, with camouflage, a usually masculine pattern, on top. She is playing with cars and you can see toy dinosaurs on the floor, not toys that girls usually play with when they are young. Throughout the ad the mother is speaking of how she has attempted to get her daughter to wear more pink, or be more feminine, but that she simply will not give in. The mother's diction and facial expressions tell us all we need to know, she does not like this one bit and is not very accepting of it. The video represents the mother longing for her daughter to fit in with gender norms. She is even trying to look for an excuse to throw out the clothes her daughters want to wear and what she feels comfortable in just because it is not what a feminine girl would want to wear. This mother is portrayed as upset that her daughter does not fit the stereotype of a young female, which is wearing pink or playing with dolls or tea sets. I believe the slogan is a bit contradictory because it states, "Style is an option." Is that to say that anything other than the typical styles is not accepted? The little girl has just favored a different style, one that shouldn't be deemed as anything less than a feminine style.
No comments:
Post a Comment