Here is how I shut my liberal sister in-laws up. I ask them one question, “Name on thing you use on a daily basis the was invented or perfected by a woman, while you are thinking I will go ahead and list a few male inventions”. While they are thinking I am spouting” . “Automobile, airplane, electricity, computers, light bulb”....and on and on. This really pisses them off.
As a tv spot and tv series director, myself, I instinctively know that if I want a humorous element in any situation, it will likely be a male character. Women and children very seldomly carry the same pathos abilities as male actors/characters. Male vulnerability and male comic ironies have been played out in the performing arts for centuries. No need for alarm.
When comedy shows were filmed in front of live audiences, the jokes, skits, and situations had to be funny. An unfunny joke would fail, and knowing that, the writers had to keep the humor within the expectations and taste of the audience.
Then came the laugh track, so that the producers could avoid the risk of not being funny, and instead could tell us what is funny. Of course we laugh along with it, because "everybody else" is -- even if the everybody else is an electronic phantom.
The laugh track allows the stupid dad syndrome to be perpetuated as a stereotype, along with the too-wise cracking kid, the street-smart and saucy daughter, and the manipulative and back-stabbing wife. Most sit-coms employ one or more of these characters, and present their actions as being 'funny' in that they point up how stoopid and clueless dad really is.
Using a woman or a minority wouldn’t be PC. It might even result in a lawsuit.
Making the husband look stupid was a cottage industry in 60s TV, such as the sitcoms. This has been going on for a long time, and it’s not just in commercials.
I think if you look at what’s being sold.. follow the money. Also, the women’s lib movement was supported by Hollywood and they are always trying to shape America’s thinking with their programs. But I think ads are shaped by the target purchasing group, what Madison Ave thinks would appeal to them.
Just when you think that you are the
Only one that is thinking about a certain issue...
you find out that a Lot of Others
are thinking the Same Way !!
This has been bothering me too.
BUT! Take notice, it’s only the “white” men who are idiots.
White guys are stupid compared to all women, black men, black woman, and children.
I see tv commercials only when I’m stuck in a doctor’s waiting room or an airport. With all the technology available to us now - even to someone as helpless as I - there’s almost never a need to see commercials.
We also have to consider that men tend to be funnier than women. There are exceptions, of course, but on balance making the man the funny one is the best call.
OMG I’ve been ranting about this for years, I was even going to write a blog about it. Glad someone finally did! It drives me NUTS!
The commercials are just following the lead of the sitcom writers who have been pulling this crap since “Married, with Childern.” The article fails to mention the idiot men are always white, too.
Excellent rant and 100% on target.
Essay: Men are unfairly portrayed in this culture. Examples: The Simpsons--Homer is lovable and funny, but a dope. Bart is funny, but rather more than less of a shallow prick. Barney--drunk. Apu--money grubbing. Chief Wiggin, a moron. Mayor Quimby, a lecherous con artist, Rev. Lovejoy, a religious bigot, Crusty, an evil clown, Mr. Burns, an evil rich businessman, the principal of the school, a pompous ignoramous, Groundskeeper Willie, a rage-filled Scotsman, Otto the bus driver, a drug-addled doofus. Only Marge and Lisa are portrayed as more or less sane people (Patty and Selma, also, though living in despair). Malcolm in the Middle: Hal and the boys have to be reined in by Lois who knows all and manages all. Family Guy: Peter Griffin is impulsive, more or less insensitive, self-indulgent. His wife, by contrast, is mostly everything he's not. Radio commercials feature guys who are really dopey who have to be informed by or straightened out or otherwise moderated by the wise, all knowing woman. Men are portrayed as being violent towards women in domestic arrangements when in reality women initiate violence toward men in the same ways and to the same degrees as men.
But does this mean that all negative portrayals of specific men are without foundation? Take Tiger Woods as an example. He has for years gotten the most wonderful press possible. He's been praised as one the best golfers ever. He's been seized by certain people as being a representative of their race, though he himself doesn't portray himself as anything but multiracial. He's been described as a wonder who rose to greatness from a small child under the tutelage of a loving father. He has carefully maintained and promoted his image and gotten endorsement contracts worth many hundreds of millions of dollars. So was the negative attention to his many, many, many adulterous affairs an example of unfair portrayal of a man? Nope. He was a sleazeball. He admitted to it all. He used his position to portray himself one way to enrich himself while living entirely a different way. In this way he was defrauding his sponsors and lying to his fans. Perhaps people expected this kind of behavior out of movie stars, but assumed things were a bit different with a sports figure since he was doing something that was a lot more objective in its accomplishments than acting (though after Magic Johnson and Wilt Chamberlain I don't know how people could make that assumption about golfers unless they thought that sports libido was directly proportional to the size of the ball). On the one hand, it's probably true that he's one of the best golfers ever. But this doesn't mean he's a good guy. On the other hand, that fact that he's a moral slimeball who had probably mortally wounded his family doesn't mean that he can't be a great golfer. What everything means, though, is that his career is going to be eroded because of his truly horrible non-golf choices.
What does all this mean? It means that even though popular media unfairly portrays the male gender, it doesn't follow that all negative portrayals of individual men are inaccurate. It also doesn't follow that women are more to be believed because they are women. Look at what the uncritical willingness to accept the lies of a woman did to the members of the Duke lacrosse team. Were they behaving in bad ways? Yes. In criminal ways? No. But the societal predisposition to believe the woman combined with the prosecutor Nifong's urgency to use this case as a springboard for an upcoming election led to him conspiring to hide exculpatory evidence from the defense attorneys. He himself was later charged for his crimes. Members of the Duke academic community, before any guilt had been demonstrated at all, had already moved to expel the accused students from Duke. This underscores the necessity of looking past societal myths about gender in order to find the truth in demonstrable fact even if it upsets those who seek to benefit themselves from the myths.
That's right, to a certain degree. Most television commercials are aimed at the people in the audience who are most easily manipulated by silly nonsense -- young children and "soccer moms" being two good examples.
If they make a women a buffoon, the feminists will boycott. God help them if they make fun of a minority (and minority actors will refuse to take the part anyway). This is also why the criminal in security commercials is always a white male.
The attempt at making men look like idiots is also prevalent on many tv shows regular story lines not counting the ads. For instance, when I first started watching NCSI, I noticed the younger male characters were made out to be semi-buffoons...overgrown adolescents who would obviously rather be playing video games and looking up female skirts rather than solving crimes. The women were depicted as no-nonsense, hardheaded adult crime-solvers who now and again had to chastise the young males for their childishness. I remember one scene where a female officer pulled a male character out from under his desk by his ears. Which is one reason why I don’t watch the thoroughly chickified NCIS.