Everyday Practice The everyday practice to be discussed in this paper is a common media pattern, particularly the perpetual characterization of specific gender roles in the media through the use of television commercials. To begin, for just about every product on the market there is an advertisement made to accompany it. Commercials are a common form of media, which are used for soliciting both products and services. They can be humorous, emotional, have a catchy jingle or an aesthetic appeal, or pretty much anything that would make them memorable. On the surface this type of advertising is useful, however, there is a negative side to this medium as well. While constantly being bombarded with must-have products and services, viewers are also presented with images of generalized, and often idealized, kinds of people. More specifically, ideas of what masculinity and femininity should involve, in terms of traits and social roles, are presented to the viewers through this medium. For example, the common idea of masculinity often portrays attributes such as strength (both physically and emotionally), as well as holding the title of bread-winner in a family unit. Similarly, femininity is portrayed with its own set of characteristics such as being a patient homemaker. Current examples that portray these characteristics are advertisements for Swiffer, Old Spice and Mr. Clean, which will be analyzed later on in the paper. Furthermore, each of these advertisements has been in circulation for a significant amount of time, showing some modifications all while maintaining the same generalized main character. Additionally, each is aimed toward a specific audience, such as people of the same gender as the actor, while also being vi... ... middle of paper ... ...y also pave the way for social inequality by excluding and including particular viewers and asserting manipulation and control over the audience. The lesson here is that although humanity has progressed, it is still riddled with inklings of dominance, superiority, inequality and stereotypes, the likes of which people should try to be aware of in such a fast-paced world drenched in media and consumerism. Works Cited Brock, D. (2012). Power and everyday practice. (pp. 62-63). United States of America: Nelson Education. Mr. Clean Magic Reach Commercial [Web]. (2005). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvp6p_BzG0s Old Spice - The Man Your Man Could Smell Like [Web]. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE Swiffer Mud and Dirt What About Love 2011 [Web]. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSw50QKtppQ
Men and women both drive cars, it’s a simple necessity to be able go to work for most people, however, from the commercials on television, one would assume that men are the primary purchasers of cars. In Steve Craig’s essay, Men’s Men and Women’s Women, he analyzes four commercials to illustrate how advertisers strategically targets the viewers. Craig argues that advertisers will grasp the attention of the viewer by the gender ideals that both men and women have of each other. Not only do advertisers pick a target audience demographic, but they also will target the audience at specific time to air their commercials. By analyzing an Audi and Bud Light commercial, one can see that Craig arguments are true to an extent but it appears that commercials have gone from an idealized world to a more realistic and relatable stance. for are still [true, however it seems that commercials may have altered to appear more realistic.] [relevant to an extent. This is to say, it appears that advertisers may have altered their commercial tactics. ]
According to Steve Craig in Signs of Life in the USA, the economic structure of the television industry has a direct effect on the placement and content of all television programs and commercials. Craig is a professor in the department of radio, television, and film at the University of North Texas, Craig has written widely on television, radio history, and gender and media. His most recent book is Out of the Dark: A History of Radio and Rural America (2009). Craig talks about the analysis of four different television commercial, showing how advertisers carefully craft their ads to appeal, respectively, to male and female consumers. The gendered patterns in advertising that Craig outlines in his essay still exist today, in commercials of how a men and women are portrayed.
The Home Depot is a supplier of home goods and appliances such as refrigerators, grills, and paint. The store often uses visual advertisements to attract customers. In these ads there are portrayals of both men and women, which help to illustrate the gender scripts that are prevalent within society. To analyze these illustrations and come to conclusions in terms of stereotypical gender scripts in commercials, a visual sociology research project was completed.
Common sense seems to dictate that commercials just advertise products. But in reality, advertising is a multi-headed beast that targets specific genders, races, ages, etc. In “Men’s Men & Women’s Women”, author Steve Craig focuses on one head of the beast: gender. Craig suggests that, “Advertisers . . . portray different images to men and women in order to exploit the different deep seated motivations and anxieties connected to gender identity.” In other words, advertisers manipulate consumers’ fantasies to sell their product. In this essay, I will be analyzing four different commercials that focuses on appealing to specific genders.
Our society is a complex collection of institutions, status, roles, values, and norms, and the best way to understand and learn about them is through the use of cultural artifacts. These can be anything from music to art to literature, or as in the example of this discussion, the modern day creation of advertisement as seen in women's magazines. As Homo Sapiens moved from the hunter - gatherer way of life to industrial society , it was necessary to construct a framework for living so that such a concentrated number of people could exist together. This framework as come to consist of a myriad of expectations based on values and norms in the form of roles status and institutions. Desirable behavior is sought by people throughout the country based on how one is brought up and the expectations one is bombarded with on a daily basis. These expectations are reflected in every part of our culture and are used by people so as to know how to act in any given situation. The main examples are: the family, education, health and medicine, religion, and the law. I have found that certain mediums reflect the expected roles in these institutions better than others. I originally focused on gender roles as a depiction of stereotypical behavior as reflected by advertising especially the portrayal of women, but I discovered that there were other stereotypes being perpetuated as well that were just as institutionalized if not just simply less noticed or studied. Therefore, although this argument will focus on the depiction of females and the female role in advertising. It will also mention the general use of American values , norms, and institutions to influence consumers.
However, in this case, the logic supporting his argument is suddenly replaced with emotion. Rather than attempt to convince the audience of how Old Spice logically makes men smell like a “real man,” he continues to appeal to the ethos and pathos of the audience. Also appealing to the pathos of the audience, by attracting their humor through the ridiculousness of one magically appearing on a boat. the commercial changes the settings to a lavish boat, so this commercial is becoming more creditable since he is now a handsome man with money. He has a perfect physic that is conveniently always on display. He spends time in luxurious shots, so he continues to be the man that women desire. It continues its creditability to the women he is addressing, by showing that he can treat them better than their man in their life ever could. In the short clip he displays tickets to the thing that the directed women love then the tickets transform into diamonds. Symbolically emerging from those diamonds is a bottle of Old Spice body wash. The Old Spice man further continues to build his ethos by revealing to women how true men should treat them. He also continues to strengthen his pathos in this portion of the commercial by encouraging the women to fall even more in love with his chivalry, while appealing to his audience humour through how over-the top and
The question of gender discrimination and stereotyping still remains the actual one in the 21 century. The concept of “gender” as “social basis” assumes studying of the gender stereotypes ordering one line of role behavior in a family and society for men, and others for women. Certainly, gender stereotypes really exist, and they are various in the different countries and during different historical eras. Despite the extensive data of researches, discrimination is widely used in the sphere of mass media, which uses gender stereotypes to attract attention from the necessary auditory or satisfy their own purposes. There are diverse situations where gender discrimination may be expressed through advertisements: the most typical are job advertisements and commercials. As stereotypical representations together with strongly marked discriminative elements are widely represented in advertisements, it is essential to determine the
The commercial observed in this essay is the first of a series of Old Spice commercials. Old Spice is a brand of deodorant and body wash – other male hygiene products as well – that came to the public’s attention via the comical advertisement methods they used. Instead of going to stereotypical way and sexualizing females for their advertisement purposes – presumably a tactic that would work better, considering who their audience is – they went the route of using a sexually appealing male to attempt to sell their product. The commercial uses Ethos, Pathos and Logos in the form of irony to sell their product in an appealing fashion to their audience.
According to Zayer and Coleman (2015) there are three pillars of institutions in advertising, and these pillars potentially influence how males and females are portrayed in the media. In the media, women are typically seen as vulnerable while men are in a powerful position. But Zayer and Coleman found that in the media both men and women feel vulnerable in a sense of being unable to uphold society’s expectations. The research was conducted through a series of interviews, focus groups, and field observations. The data was collected in two rounds, the first round was done in a large advertising agency where someone worked there (attending meetings and such) and interviewed some workers and created focus groups (Zayer & Coleman, 2015). The second round of data was collected by going to several advertising agencies in the U.S. and internationally, and found that they were more ethnically diverse (Zayer & Coleman, 2015). What Zayer and Coleman (2015) found that some believed that either media didn’t portray men or women in a negative way or that, they deflected personal responsibility and placed it on the network itself. This article shows how men and women are affected in the media and this connects to the theme of traditional gender roles, and how media influences
In this paper I will analyze this commercial as well as others to reveal what the world of advertising on the Internet and on the tube set is all about. In a way, the advertising companies are prescribing certain roles of masculinity to men. These advertisers are suggesting that the men that are portrayed in their commercials or advertisement are the way men are or ought to be. I will explain why men should be aware of the issue...
The roles of males and females in society have significantly changed, as opposed to the predominant roles in our history. In the modern culture of today, women have begun to break out of the mold that which society has placed her in. This much can’t be said when it comes to modern gender representation in mass media advertising. It can be safe to state that woman are seen as sexual, fragile, exotic—whereas men are portrayed as tough, in control, and aggressive. This trend can be one seen as an inhibitor to the advancement of our culture, because especially for women, it is hard to pull away from the stereotypes that are continuously represented. As examples of the given trend, the following images help to reinforce.
In the essay “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body,” author and philosopher Susan Bordo discusses the history and current state of male representation in advertisements. While using her feminist background, Bordo compares and contrasts the aspects of how men and women are portrayed in the public eye. She claims that there has been a paradigm shift the media with the theory that not just women are being objectified in the public eye, but also men too. Since the mid-1970s, with the introduction of Calvin Klein commercials, men have started to become more dehumanized and regarded as sex symbols. In a similar fashion to how Bordo describes gender, race plays a similar role in the media. People of all different ethnicities and cultures are being categorized into an oversimplified and usually unfair image by the media over basic characteristics.
The first studies relating to gender portrayal in the media developed in the 1950s with the introduction of Second Wave Feminism (Boyle, 2005). Mass media was a main concern for Second Wave feminists due to its oppressive illustrations of women in different genres. The subject of gender misrepresentations is still relevant in contemporary media studies. In 2011, a documentary dealing with the stereotypical r...
Gender is constructed at a very young age boys are taught to be masculine and girl are taught to be more feminine. In today’s society there are many ways to identify oneself as a male or a female. One way is through materialistic items. Advertisements target women and men to sell their products. The stereotypical traits of women are motherly, caring, slim, pretty, they are more sexualized. However men are more of a dominant figure in advertisements and they are much tougher, sports oriented, powerful, bold, and simple minded.
Advertising is an information source to inform people about the products and new prices of the company which can help them to make informed choices. More recently, huge amount of money has been spent on advertising throughout the world. Different types of advertisement such as television, radio, magazine, newspaper, the internet, billboards and posters can influence consumer’s behavior positively or negatively as there are different arguments and opinions. This essay will focus on the purpose of the advertisement for the company, the positive effects and negative effects of advertisement on consumer behavior.