So I watched the SuperBowl with my attorney, and we were both struck by the even-more-sexist-than-usual tone. Bill DeGenaro has already had smart things to say about the sexualization surrounding the game environment itself, but even my relatively unenlightened sensibilities were amazed by all the advertising violence against women’s bodies, explicit (the Mission Impossible commercial) or implicit (Burger King says women are tasty in sandwiches), and all the ogling and leering. On the other hand, my attorney was pleasantly surprised at the fact that the Steelers don’t have a cheerleading squad. I don’t want to come across as some grim, puritanical sourpuss here — I definitely got a kick out of some of the advertisements’ surrealism, and I’ll confess to a weakness for women in knee-length skirts and calf boots — but I gotta ask: was it just us, or was the misogyny in this SuperBowl’s advertisements even more over-the-top than usual?
Now with Even More Sexism!
Well, it is football. Aren’t they appealing to masses of a male-comprised audience, many of whom are interested only in commercials for the flash appeal? (I say that, but yet, my best friend watches the super bowl every year, not for the game, but for the clever commercials; perhaps this year was a disappointment.)
I didn’t watch it, though, so perhaps I don’t have as firm of a grasp of how mysogynistic it was; even so, I wonder if that word has become overused already. Is it evidence of hatred of women to portray them in sexually alluring ways that targets the audience? That’s just commercialism, really. Isn’t it? We can (and should) attack everything else pertaining to commercialized products if we’re going to do that because the point of the problem is manipulation in general. And then we’re just bitching at advertising companies.
Which I’m totally fine with. Let’s get to the heart of it. What are they trying to sell, why are they marketing it in this way? Do they have an audience. Yes, they do. Isn’t that the problem then? The audience?
We certainly can’t expect business people to have a moral agenda. That’s unrealistic.
It wasn’t the sex that I had a problem with; it was the violence; the MI3 commercial beginning with Philip Seymour Hoffman saying — the first words of the commercial — “Do you have a girlfriend? Cause I’m gonna find her. And I’m gonna hurt her.” And then the BK commercial making women into pieces of food. And so on. It was really weird, in a way that other years haven’t been. It said something about an ugly attitude towards women that had nothing to do with sex.
But Michelle, I totally disagree with your moral relativism vis-a-vis business interests. I think it’s great that Toyota’s doing so well making hybrid cars; I think it’s crappy business practice for Subaru to have escaped fuel economy regulations for its Forester by adding a couple extra inches onto it. Both are “giving people what they want.” I’m able to make an ethical distinction between the two.
Declaring it “unrealistic” for business “to have a moral agenda” effectively gives corporate interests ethical carte blanche to poison rivers, rip off shareholders, and tell adolescent girls that they’re worthless if they don’t look like Barbie. Sorry: I’m not buying that.
I need to see these commercials!
Point taken re: the moral relativism.
I stand by my thoughts regarding it unrealistic on some counts though; my object is not to excuse, but to understand the point of the problem. I’m not saying that all business owners don’t have a moral agenda. I’m saying that it’s not likely, and it’s unrealistic to expect it. To do so does not provide a freebie card to do with what they will; it says, I know what you’re up to, I recognize it, and I’m not going to put up with it. I think that one must recognize that the people behind the corporate facade don’t necessarily share the same moral agenda. Recognizign that doesn’t give them permission: it holds them accountable.
To not do so is to persist in a naive behavior wherein you expect the rest of society to hold fast to the same values that you have. When many do not.
To return to the point that you made in the original blog entry, sex sells, they’re in the interest of selling, and I guess that’s the point. An audience exists.
(I must say that although I’ve heard this out of context, I’m still quite disappointed with Philip Seymour Hoffman’s role in that. Of course, then again, he is an actor.)
Yes, the Superbowl was more sexist than usual. I’m working on a thesis on Sexism. The real point is that any time you de-humanize (Burger King women as lettuce, etc.) you put men in a mindframe to use and abuse women. When soldiers enter the army they are made to dehumanize the enemy so that they are less resistant to killing them. It’s the same idea that these women are not individuals, just objects. After a while even I can not see these women as people, but as bimbo blondes, or a body looking to get f-ked (without condoms, or birth control).
This works to hurt men also, what a shock when they use women in real life and end up with VD and/or eighteen years of child support. Let me be a real downer, sex comes with responsibility! When I lived overseas they had near zero VD or unwanted pregnancies because they were educated and responsible! Even Canada has far better statistics than America.
According to recent statistics half of the sexually active people in the US have VD, and almost none use a condom with new partners that are unconfirmed as safe or untested for HIV. (Top Hat ultra-sensitive condoms are highly recommended).
Thanks for the response, Kiyo. I’m with you on most points, but as a veteran, I’ll disagree on one: yes, many aspects of military training dehumanize the enemy — but most of the folks I served with in the 24th Infantry Division knew far better than most civilians know just how human the person on the other end of the battlefield is. As a sergeant, I gave weekly training sessions on the Geneva Conventions and the reasons — based in shared understanding of a common situation — why those conventions exist. And that shared empathy — understanding that guy on on the other side has a wife and kid, just like you; that he has to put up with hierarchical bullshit, just like you; that he’s worried because he hasn’t gotten a letter from home in a few days, just like you — is, in some ways, a terrible knowledge. Soldiers, whatever nation they come from, aren’t soulless killing machines, and I get quickly impatient with myopic critiques from people who call themselves “anti-war” that portray soldiers as such.
Most smart soldiers I know are more anti-war than anybody else in the world, and they train hard because they view being well-trained as a deterrent to conflict. They don’t want to leave their families and put boots on the ground half a world away. And, for God’s sake, they don’t want to get shot.
They want peace, and they have a strong motivation for wanting peace. That motivation necessarily entails knowing that somebody carrying a rifle on the other side has a similar motivation, and frankly, I don’t think enough civilians understand that.
Can I put a British perspective here. Like football (soccer) in the UK American Football is your blue coller hetrosexual male sport of choice. Now then you have X million redneck, boozed up males with testosterone flowing like the river Thames and a bunch of advertisers with more money than sense looking to sell to them, lets be honest the result was never destined to be anything different. The audience were always going to take more in through the groin than brain so thats where the ads were aimed. Barby dolls sell to 8 year old girls, scantily clad women sell to drunken men watching football.
The one great disappointment is one team did away with the cheerleaders, its the only bits we Brits understand.
Geoff Hibbert