Everything depresses me.

[giandujakiss]

So, this commercial was listed as someone's favorite of the year:



And it's very cute and clever, I totally agree - but completely ruined for me because of the casual, implicit gender roles. Can you even imagine them making this commercial but switching the roles of mom and dad?

Comments

[ratcreature]

In advertising they even code gay couples with the gender roles. Like every now and then there are food product ads here with two men and to convey coupledom they are set up like heterosexual couples (strangely I don't recall any with lesbians, maybe because the casual assumption without too much exposition setup in such a commercial would be that it was two friends cooking for their husbands).

[giandujakiss]

Still an improvement over the US - we'd never have an ad featuring a gay couple here. Networks reject that sort of thing when it's tried even for ads that are about accepting gays - I can't imagine a mainstream company using a gay couple to advertise an ordinary product, or television stations airing such an ad.

[ratcreature]

Seriously? I watch so little tv on tv that I mostly miss any campaigns, but I recall a fishstick ad with a gay couple, some for coffee, and a quick googling for gay couple ads shows me there are some for prefab houses with two guys and a kid as happy family, some for natural gas with two guys sharing a bathtub (with the slogan "etwas warmes braucht der Mensch" which is a German standing phrase usually meant for a warm meal, but literally "everybody needs something warm", so I guess a bathtub fits well enough, also it's kind of a pun because "warm" in certain word combinations used to indicate homosexual)... And I just found an IKEA ad that plays cleverly with expectations though that is an Austrian one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPbXwSrwAQk&feature=player_embedded

[giandujakiss]

You found gay couple ads in the US? That aired on a network? Because I've never heard of that.

[ratcreature]

no, that was examples for the ads here to illustrate that they use gay couples for mundane products not just some lifestyle thing, and also my bafflement that they don't in the US.

[giandujakiss]

Yeah, no, we don't have them here. You have to understand - our public broadcasting network tried to have an episode of a children's show where a character visited a farm that was run by lesbians, and there was a massive uproar. Other uproars are periodically raised when some Christian evangelist decides that a male character is too feminine on a children's show - i.e., Tinky Winky on Teletubbies. A church that is explicitly open and welcoming of gays tried to advertise a general inclusiveness message and no network would air it.

[astarte]

Yesterday I just saw a gay couple poster ad for REWE a big high end food discounter and smiled. And in the evening a spot for something with ten men in sport jerseys and in the background a guy hugged another one from behind and nuzzled his neck. I loved how casual it was. So yes, you are right they often play with stereotypes, but the sports team ad did it in a subtle way - it wasn't a big deal, but still plain to see.

[metaphortunate]

Yeah, everything is always casually ruined for me as well. :(

[giandujakiss]

It's frustrating. There is very little uncomplicated enjoyment. Except in cute animal videos.

[mswyrr]

There is very little uncomplicated enjoyment. Except in cute animal videos.

This is something that's been niggling at me--every time I post depressing things on Tumblr and then comfort myself with kittens or sloths ... or kittens being cuddled by sloths!--and I've never seen it put so well. ((draws hearts around these sentences)) 'Tis true.

[giandujakiss]

You don't, umm, actually have any pictures of kittens being cuddled by sloths, do you?

[mswyrr]

I have one of a cat being cuddled by a sloth. I overstated on the kittens part for dramatic impact. lol.

[sapote]

What's interesting to me is that families at the income levels depicted in the ad aren't particularly likely to have stay-at-home mothers. I was thinking maybe it was a question of this ad selling an aspirational view of a household that I might disagree with but can certainly understand - owning this car makes you fancy people who can express gendered roles in the home without economic reality intruding - but I went and looked at the census and really, the majority of stay-at-home mothers are women in families that make less than $50,000 a year and are more likely not have gone to college. Realistically, women who are going to have a hard time making more than the cost of childcare are the most likely to stay home. Only about a fourth of women with children under eighteen are neither employed nor seeking work - it's interesting that we continue to act like stay-at-home mothers are a default instead of one of a variety of strategies families use.

But on tv there's still this use of a stay-at-home mother as a kind of status symbol? Like, the super rich people on Modern Family all have one at-home spouse, idk, it's confusing. Anyway, rambling, sorry.

[giandujakiss]

And here I was just thinking, no one living that kind of lifestyle from working gets to come home from work while the sun is still shining :-).

[sapote]

Haha the over-researching-while-eating-breakfast award goes to...

[auroramama]

They're probably members of the Unearned Income Party.

[some_stars]

Can you even imagine them making this commercial but switching the roles of [female and male characters]?

This ruins everything for me now. I mean, a lot of things I still love in spite of it, but I have to get through so much rage first as my brain automatically switches the sex of the characters and reminds me that the resulting story would never be made, at least not in mainstream big-budget media form.

[giandujakiss]

I'm sorry for ruining it! Maybe it can be redeemed by imagining a coda where the kid takes off the helmet - and it turns out it's a little girl :-).

[em_h]

You know, that coda is pretty easy to imagine -- note the room full of pink stuff and a baby doll, and no evidence of another kid? There may be, somewhere in that rather regressive ad, at least a hint that the child is in fact a girl who is sick to death of being coded as weak and pink and maternal all the time ... although the fact that she can only experience power through the hidden machinations of Daddy ruins that more than a bit too ... damn, I talked myself back into ruiningness now, didn't I?

[giandujakiss]

Heh. I actually don't think that's bad - kids are powerless for reals, and parents making them feel powerful (or powerless) matters for how they develop. So I'm okay with Dad making his daughter feel powerful!

[sasha_feather]

Actually I read somewhere that it is a girl.

[giandujakiss]

Someone just said the same thing on LJ - I am so amused. I didn't know - I'd never heard of the commercial before.

[cass404]

It's not a little girl? I always honestly thought it was. That was what charmed me.

[em_h]

I don't suppose this makes it any better, but I can actually imagine a gender-switched version of the ad being made in Canada. We have the occasional ad featuring gay couples, but we also have at least a scattering of ads with stay-at-home fathers and working mothers (although that pattern remains sadly rare in real life, certainly more rare than gay couples with children).

[giandujakiss]

Well, it's better to know that things are better in some places - like that there are countries where you can actually show a gay couple in a commercial, that's good to know.

[sapote]

There are ads with gay couples on, um, Logo. There used to be a website called The Commercial Closet that did a good international summary of GLBT depiction in advertising, but it doesn't seem to have been updated since 2009. Bryan Safi summarizes the situation pretty well, though.

[echan]

As depressing as this makes you, it makes me happy that there are people like you who notice the unstated gender laws implicit in it and are bothered by that. I'm not happy at your pain, but at the same time I guess I kinda am, that is, I'm happy that other people are bothered too? Sorry if this came out wrong.

[mswyrr]

Being able to articulate your pain and know that other people see it too in a culture where women are shamed as hysterical man-haters if we care is important. At least, for me it always seemed like the second most important part of the battle after working to liberate my own mind -- seeking out people who are doing the same work and acknowledging each other in a world that wants us to feel alone and "crazy."

[raine]

I'll take HGTV showing all kinds of people househunting and doing renovations over an ad any day of the week.

[libitina]

This post made me notice when there was an add on the radio last week for some appliance or general store talking about bad gift for spouses. And they were sighing over the husband who had bought for his wife a lawn mower. And then they sighed over the wife who had bought her husband a dishwasher. You know, as happens all the time. (in exactly the same tone where you'd normally hear them sighing over the husband having bought his wife a vacuum cleaner) Still heteronormative, but a wee bit of mixing it up.