Column:
Advertising shouldn't be offensive
Commercials can be sexist or racist and often rely on stereotypes.
Published May 4, 2009
I know a decent number of people who plan on going into advertising, and I'm sure there are plenty of them here at MU because of the journalism school. But I have a hard time understanding what compels them to pursue advertising. I think for a lot of people it's a way to express creativity. But if advertising is an art form, it's the most embarrassing, insulting art form there is.
I was watching Black Entertainment Television a while back, and during the commercial break, I saw an ad where the Kool-Aid Man played basketball, immediately followed by an ad for fried chicken. It would be abhorrently racist to walk up to a black person on the street and imply they like Kool-Aid, basketball and fried chicken in the first 30 seconds of the conversation. This kind of behavior would be incredibly fucked up in any context outside of a commercial. But in advertising it's more than OK -- it's expected.
Another commercial I've seen a lot lately features two men in a library reading a book subtly titled "How to Score a Mega Hottie." One man's girlfriend sees them and gets offended, but luckily the more attractive of the two men has a Twix in his pocket. Somehow the candy gives him the composure to think up a quick lie and condemn his less attractive friend for reading such filth.
Besides the fact that it condones lying to your significant other, it also perpetuates the advertising rule that the more attractive person is always the good guy. This case is especially twisted because the good guy is also the liar.
There's a beer commercial making the rounds on TV right now where a couple moves into a new house with a lot of closet space. The woman's friends start screaming in excitement when they see how much space for shoes and clothes she has. Likewise, the man's friends scream when they see how much room he has for beer.
Besides reinforcing insulting stereotypes, the commercial doesn't even work to sell the product. I've seen the ad dozens of times, and I honestly have no idea whether it's for Beck's or Heineken. They both come in green bottles and neither is really mentioned by name in the ad. For all it's worth, this ad might be for Beck's, and I might go out and buy Heineken because I forgot which was being advertised. It's completely possible this commercial is boosting sales for its competitors while simultaneously being flagrantly sexist.
Good art and stories are always about getting people to understand other people. Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol" is an asshole, but it's ultimately a good story because he learns to understand other people, and he changes. Rorschach in "Watchmen" is a lunatic, but the viewer learns to sympathize with him because we learn about how his unfortunate past made him who he is today.
But in advertising, there simply isn't enough time to show a change in a character, or in a viewer's perception of a character. So advertisers rely on archetypes, but since they're trying to sell products, those archetypes are more often than not racist, sexist caricatures of the advertiser's target audience.
I'm not saying advertising isn't necessary because it is. But as it stands, commercials are the only type of video nobody wants to watch. People watch movies and TV shows because they enjoy them, but commercials are just a negative side effect of trying to watch TV. If advertising has to be forced on us, at the very least it doesn't have to be insulting as well.