Today’s guest post comes from Steve Grooms
It is fun and instructive to consider the social messages hidden in TV commercials. The people who make commercials concentrate so hard on making the big sell that they often send other messages that are more interesting than the main one.
In earlier discussions here on the Trail we noted that it now seems that men are fair game in ads, often being depicted as buffoons. Women are usually presented as wise and adult. That, of course, is a total switch from the way gender was presented in the earlier days of television. Women then were shown as silly, empty-headed shoppers whom their husbands tolerated because they were attractive.
I easily remember when African-Americans never appeared in commercials. When that became controversial in the 1970s, blacks began showing up in ads, especially if the ad featured several white faces with maybe one dark one among them. Happily enough, over the years blacks have appeared in so many commercials that I think few audience members pay any attention to blacks in ads now.
I was puzzled the other day when I noticed that relatively few Hispanics are shown in commercials. That seems odd, particularly in view of how politically important that demographic has become. Then I remembered that Hispanics have many Spanish language channels. Madison Avenue must feel that is where Hispanic actors should be prominent in commercials.
The issue that has intrigued me most is the still-touchy area of interracial dating. I have carefully watched commercials, hoping to spot the first one to show romantic partners of mixed races. To my surprise, in one week earlier this year I saw interracial relationships featured in two prominent commercials. Both are still running.
The first one that I noticed was a State Farm commercial that showed an Asian man partnered with a light-skinned African-American woman. And indeed, they have a child in a stroller. This is the ad where a mime tells the couple about a great Sate Farm policy. The infant in the stroller says, “Am I the only one here who finds it weird that the mime is talking? Freaky!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAPxKiKlBUA
Just days after seeing that commercial I saw a romantic, impressionistic commercial for Apple iPhones with cameras. That ad has many quick cuts, one of which presents an attractive young couple posing for a photo together. A Caucasian male is apparently dating a light-skinned African-American woman. Apple has a similar ad running now with a couple that very well could be biracial, but both young people are so Goth in appearance that nobody could say what races they represent! You have to look fast – it’s at the :46 second mark.
It was fun to see two commercials that were not afraid to show relationships crossing
racial lines, but I told myself that I would probably not live long enough to see a commercial with a black man married to a white woman. That flaunts the most potent racial taboo of all.
Well, I was wrong. There is a commercial now running for Cheerios in which a white woman is in a relationship with a black man, and they have a child. The ad cleverly pulls its punch by not showing the black guy and white woman in the frame at the same time, but that did not save it from controversy.
That ad by Minnesota’s own General Mills has ignited a firestorm of bigotry.
In spite of the controversy, General Mills defends the ad and continues to run it. I wonder how long it will be before this controversy seems odd to us all. And I wonder how many years it will be before we see a gay couple in a commercial.
Have you seen something interesting in a television commercial lately?
Trail Baboon 