Rant
Ok, so I know this is pointless, but something has been bothering me lately, so I figured, hey, why not bitch about it on Livejournal? Feel free to tell me if you think I'm over-reacting, but at least give my point some thought first.
There's this commercial that I've been seeing on TV a lot that's really started to bother me. (And I've been seeing it a lot because my TV viewing time is increasing exponentially - thanks, Caitlin!) So, the ad is for some sort of fancy cell phone, I'm not sure what brand, but the ad goes something like this:
Setting: Bus
Nerdy white guy: You two, fight.
(Old man and biker dude fight each other)
Nerdy white guy: You, turn it up.
(Guy with boombox turns up volume)
Nerdy white guy: You, shake your junk.
(Large black woman starts pole dancing)
Nerdy white guy: You two, make out.
(Two women make out)
Ad voice: Hey look, you can get all these nifty things anywhere you want on your cell phone!
(Cell phone with some sort of physical sport, music, junk shaking music video, girls making out)
Now, before I go any further, at this point, do you see anything wrong with this? Really, like, respond and tell me if you do, because I want to know if I'm the only one.
The part of this that really doesn't sit well with me is when the guy makes the black lady "shake her junk." It actually makes my stomach turn whenever I see it. Not only do we see some pretty historically meaningful power relationships (man to woman, black to white, hell, white man to black woman), it's the fact that he COMMANDS her to do what he wants and, as the audience, we see her immediatley comply. Not only that, but she does so with this totally expressionless face and while making eye contact with him, like she's looking for his approval, and what she think couldn't possibly matter.
And I know that the objection to this is, "well, why doesn't it bother you when he makes the two men fight?" Well, it does a little (I've always been a respect your elders kinda gal), but it doesn't seem as bad because there's not that nagative power relationship. In the case of the "junk" lady it just seems to hit too close to real-world conceptions of women. I'm not saying that boys will see this and think they can command women to do whatever they want, but it still perpetuates the very real objectification of women in our culture. And, unlike in most music videos or even porn, we don't get a sense that this woman is even complicit in her objectification. All we see is that she does what she's told, which to me is similar to rape scenes in porn - even though we know it's an actress it's still too much of a societal reality to take it lightly. Why would a multi-million dollar company produce an ad that shows a minority woman as the sexual plaything of a white man who doesn't even have a will of her own?
Am I totally off-base with this? Too much liberal education maybe? I don't know, it's such a negative gut reaction for me that I can't think this is a result of me being trained to read things into the media. And why don't the two making out women bother me? I'd say either because I'm already so horrified by junk lady or that at least it's conceivable that those women are getting something out of it. What do you guys think? Any opinions?
There's this commercial that I've been seeing on TV a lot that's really started to bother me. (And I've been seeing it a lot because my TV viewing time is increasing exponentially - thanks, Caitlin!) So, the ad is for some sort of fancy cell phone, I'm not sure what brand, but the ad goes something like this:
Setting: Bus
Nerdy white guy: You two, fight.
(Old man and biker dude fight each other)
Nerdy white guy: You, turn it up.
(Guy with boombox turns up volume)
Nerdy white guy: You, shake your junk.
(Large black woman starts pole dancing)
Nerdy white guy: You two, make out.
(Two women make out)
Ad voice: Hey look, you can get all these nifty things anywhere you want on your cell phone!
(Cell phone with some sort of physical sport, music, junk shaking music video, girls making out)
Now, before I go any further, at this point, do you see anything wrong with this? Really, like, respond and tell me if you do, because I want to know if I'm the only one.
The part of this that really doesn't sit well with me is when the guy makes the black lady "shake her junk." It actually makes my stomach turn whenever I see it. Not only do we see some pretty historically meaningful power relationships (man to woman, black to white, hell, white man to black woman), it's the fact that he COMMANDS her to do what he wants and, as the audience, we see her immediatley comply. Not only that, but she does so with this totally expressionless face and while making eye contact with him, like she's looking for his approval, and what she think couldn't possibly matter.
And I know that the objection to this is, "well, why doesn't it bother you when he makes the two men fight?" Well, it does a little (I've always been a respect your elders kinda gal), but it doesn't seem as bad because there's not that nagative power relationship. In the case of the "junk" lady it just seems to hit too close to real-world conceptions of women. I'm not saying that boys will see this and think they can command women to do whatever they want, but it still perpetuates the very real objectification of women in our culture. And, unlike in most music videos or even porn, we don't get a sense that this woman is even complicit in her objectification. All we see is that she does what she's told, which to me is similar to rape scenes in porn - even though we know it's an actress it's still too much of a societal reality to take it lightly. Why would a multi-million dollar company produce an ad that shows a minority woman as the sexual plaything of a white man who doesn't even have a will of her own?
Am I totally off-base with this? Too much liberal education maybe? I don't know, it's such a negative gut reaction for me that I can't think this is a result of me being trained to read things into the media. And why don't the two making out women bother me? I'd say either because I'm already so horrified by junk lady or that at least it's conceivable that those women are getting something out of it. What do you guys think? Any opinions?