Wednesday, February 10, 2010

A Comparison

This is creepy, off-putting and misogynist.



This is funny as sh*t, smart and tweaks stereotypes and expectations.



Discuss. (H/T to Isaac on the Old Spice commercial.)

7 comments:

Christopher Ashworth said...

30 seconds later and I'm still laughing at #2.

Probably all the more so due to contrast with sketchy creepy WTF #1.

99 said...

I saw it the other night and loved LOVED it. I've liked that entire ad campaign, but this one was just the bomb.

See? You can get mocking sexism right...

rebecca longworth said...

Yep, some folks just don't know satire if it bites them in the a**.

The Dodge ad is FREAKY. I'm tired of "oh, but we're *mocking* sexism - it's funny!" being the excuse for this crap, which is insulting to both men and women.

Jack Worthing said...

I don't see anything wrong with the Dodge ad. What does it do but repeat tired tropes used every weekend at Caroline's and the Laugh Factory? What makes it so insulting? Michael C. Hall? The idea that men often don't get on with their wife's mother?

Jack Worthing said...

I don't see anything wrong with the Dodge ad. What does it do but repeat tired tropes used every weekend at Caroline's and the Laugh Factory? What makes it so insulting? Michael C. Hall? The idea that men often don't get on with their wife's mother?

99 said...

Jack-

It's the creepy stares on the men, the sense that, by doing things that any reasonable person does for their partner they're doing you a favor and general feeling (partly due, yes, to Michael C. Hall's serial-killer voiceover) of menace and threat that hovers around it that's different. There absolutely is a longstanding tradition of Things That Men Aren't Supposed to Like like mother-in-laws and whatnot, but this brings a subtext to it of "If I didn't do those things, I would have to hurt you."

It's a notion of manhood that is so narrow, and so tinged with rage, that I find it unpleasant. Contrasted with the Old Spice commercial, which uses some of the same Things That Men Aren't Supposed to Like (or, in a more positive way, Things That Men Are Supposed to Like), it's dark and unsettling. In a bad, icky way.

Oh, and welcome back!

Jack Worthing said...

I'm sorry for the double post. Thanks for weighing in. I'm still traveling, but I'm happy to catch up.