I’ve been complaining about this shit for a long time. Gavin McInnes has, too. He also has a funny game: make the same commercial with the same script but replace the white male with a black female. Watch the outrage roll in.
Try it in today’s example, brought to you by GE:
You see how insulting that is? Our modern world has decided, however, that these type of insults can only be directed towards men. I’m not asking you to stop insulting them but I am saying that everyone should be on the table or no one should be.
As part of my traditional sexist ranting, let me fix this ad for you, GE: in the real world, the jet engine is being built by that red-haired autistic nerd and the cute, perky brunette has a Master’s in Psych and works a 9-5 HR job. She also drives a Prius, uses 3 online dating services, and has a rescue dog.
Until I recall a different, better commercial, I’m dubbing this the GOAT of car commercials. It’s a car I’d probably never consider, but the way I see it here, a part of me goes, “Eh, why not? Unconventional and a little weird, but there’s a chance I love it.”
The cocksure attitude of the “what is your emergency” line, the glances of the females, the epic music, the clever ways of showing actual features of the car, and the tongue-in-check nature of the entire ad telling the viewer, “Look, we know it’s not James Bond’s car and you’re just a schlub in a cubicle, but this car makes daily life just a bit more exciting.”
First of all, of course the boy is too stupid to play his game without his sister’s help. And of course boys are naturally such sexists that they will always ignore the advice of girls. It’s on ad companies, of course, to correct this sickness at as early of age as possible.
I initially had a very hard time putting my finger on why exactly this commercial infuriates me. But here it is: this commercial is shaming a boy by questioning his manhood and they (the creators) have no place to do that.
We talk all the time about every kind of real and not-real shaming on the planet: fit-shaming, fat-shaming, trans-shaming, gay-shaming, slut-shaming, retard-shaming, whatever. Well, this is masculine-shaming.
What’s more is that the same people who get up in arms about all this shaming shit are the same type of people who make commercials like this. How do I know this? Because I speak Social Justice Warrior (SJW). I understand modern identity politics, the accompanying narratives, and the motives of the supporters.
Here’s the commercial’s message: “Men are assholes to women all the time and every time you don’t listen to a women you’re actually less of a man.” Uh huh. That one is right from the playbook of these little SJW activists. And guess what? You can’t sneak that shit by me — I can smell it from a mile away.
So the kid is a “little man” because he didn’t listen to his sister’s advice, huh? Where the fuck do you people get off telling a boy what it means to be a man? Are you a man yourself? Are you that awesome of person that you can dole out advice? Probably not.
And you’re not just doling out advice, you’re attacking. So the kid is immature and doesn’t like his sister chiming in with her two cents. So he’s a young man with all kinds of teenage insecurities and feels threatened by a girl telling him what to do. So what? Leave him alone. Don’t shit on him while wearing that snarky, punchable smirk.
Listen, I agree that listening to others (all people, not just women) and taking good advice when you hear it is part of maturing. I’ll even agree that it’s part of being a man. True manly men do not feel diminished because they listen to someone else and follow that person’s advice.
These lessons, though, are learned naturally over time or taught by caring elders. Why do we need to mock, insult, and shame a teenage boy into acting the way we want him to act? That’s what SJWs are all about: talk like we want you to talk and act like we want you to act or else we will attack you. Not teach and uplift, but attack.
But here’s an alternate theory: Maybe the boy just wanted to be left alone. Maybe his know-it-all sister is obnoxious and butts in all the time. And maybe it’s a damn game and not a microcosm for everything you see wrong with gender politics.
I think I got it. The 1950’s were… bad? Okay. Thanks. You can stop now with the girl power commercials.
The line she says towards the end sums it up best: “Is this guy for real?”
No, darling, he’s not for real. He’s quite literally not real. He was created solely for this commercial to be a punching bag for easy jokes about the 1950’s.
How is it that we have not gotten over 1950’s? Every time women’s rights comes up we have to make comparisons to the 50’s. Every time someone wants to make a joke about the strange ways of our parents, they bring up the 50’s. As if each year since the 50’s has been a step up a staircase made of rainbows and sunshine on our way to utopia. I wasn’t around, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t too bad back then and that people besides white male breadwinners enjoyed their lives.
And what is it with insurance firms trying to co-opt the women’s rights movements with cheap tricks in order to sell insurance? Remember the condescending Allstate commercial? (I think two examples is enough to make a broad generalization about insurance companies.)
Great commercial because it’s funny and true. Sure, it might be a bit exaggerated, but that’s kind of how humor works. Earlier today I said I wanted to kill a character in a commercial. Hyperbole is funny, kids.
What I especially like about this commercial is I think both sexes can look at it and say, “That’s right, you idiot,” to the other sex. A minor disagreement ends with the woman getting emotional, overreacting, and storming out. But hold on, let’s be fair. Maybe if her idiot man didn’t take that patronizing tone with her like he does every time he thinks she’s wrong. A little respect goes a long way, dude. Of course, what she thinks was patronizing was just him trying to calm her down to avoid fighting in front of guests. But it takes two to tango, he could have just let it go rather than trying to marginalize and correct her in front of others.
See? How great is that? A tiny little battle of the sexes. It even ended with the other guy doing the “women, right bro?” comment (which most guys will side with) followed by the other girl rightfully getting mad at him with the “don’t you throw me under the bus just so you can look cool in front of the other guy.”
Well done, whoever Sears hired to make this.
Edit: It’s honestly not that great of commercial and is pretty easily forgotten. Buuut it does what it needs to do and appeals to everyone without being boring. That’s why I like it.
Rule for all families with young children: the father picks the team of the children. Exceptions are below.
The mother is much more passionate about the particular sport. For example, if Dad doesn’t have an NFL team or isn’t very into the NFL but Mom is, then Mom picks. If neither parent cares, none of this matters.
If Father already has sons who are into his teams, then daughters are up for grabs. However, the firstborn, son or daughter, is Dad’s.
Sports matter more to men and they always will. I can’t imagine taking my sons (or daughters) to games and have them rooting for my teams’ rivals. Misery city. Being unable to bond with my kids over the success or failures of our teams? Not being able to call them up 30 years from now and say, “Can you believe what our idiot owner just did?!”
“Oh, but it’s OK for them to root for your wife’s teams’ rivals?” Yup. She won’t care as much. Trust me.
As a final note, this probably won’t be that big of issue for me. No way I end up with a girl from a rival fanbase.
Look I know this is supposed to be a little tongue-in-check but I find it infuriating. Satirical or not, it’s still an advertisement for new cars. As a whole, the commercial displays the height of our vain, consumer-driven society. I want to kill that douche who smiles at the “20-inch alloys” remark. Like he’s just so fucking relieved that he got his spoiled girlfriend the right $45,ooo car or else Christmas would be ruined. Seriously, the world would be a better place without him.
The whole image the commercial is so stupid. “Oh look at all these perfect, upper-class, mostly white people with all their excess and stupid cars, wasting money at Christmastime because that’s what you do when you are perfect and rich. Don’t you want to be these people? You can if you buy an Audi! Just go into huge debt and overextend yourself. Do you have the money? Never mind that doesn’t matter because at least your spoiled family will be happy and you’ll have a wonderful Christmas! Screw any real meaning that comes from this time of year.”
I know almost every business does it this time of year, but this is the pinnacle. I hate all of them so much.
Yeah! Do it, gurl! Strong, independent woman alert!
Watching the Colts-Pats game tonight but I had to pause it and write about this. First time I’ve seen this commercial and it had me laughing:
A couple thoughts:
1) Love the tough guys pumping their fists to this commercial. This is the modern sign of manliness. We don’t have much semblance of real masculinity anymore so guys compensate by flexing their muscles about participation trophies. Also LOVE the dickhead right wingers who make this out to be a victory against those libs and their participation trophies. Literally the first 3 Google results for “car commercial participation trophy” were these:
We get it guys. Liberals are pussies. Here’s something for you, though: I had participation trophies well into middle school. One year, my soccer team demolished every team in our league and we were given participation trophies. We did not give two shits. We knew we were the best. We knew we beat everyone else. We didn’t need a first place trophy. And somehow, I think that makes our team of 12-year-olds more mature that you full grown adults.
2) There’s still good reason to love this commercial. The fact is participation trophies probably have gone to far. I don’t think it’s a major issue or a sign of the liberal-socialist-commie-facist agenda, but there are probably too many of them. And I do think that it’s probably un-PC to make fun of them. Sure, conservatives have been making fun of them for awhile, but it’s something the mainstream will only allude to or mildly joke about — not outright ridicule like this. To see a major car company, in the most-watched NFL game of the week (and probably the highest-rated television show of the week), run an ad making fun of this culture… it did my heart good. Car companies are not in the business of potentially offending someone this overtly. Sure, it’s not that big of risk making fun of these trophies, but it’s still nice to see that the pendulum actually does swing back eventually.
Girl Power! Right? What a dickhead this guy was. I mean, who just comes out and says women are shitty drivers? * Doesn’t that make pleasant date conversation? Apparently, this guy was enough of an ass that this broad felt the need to go home and get her little stamp of approval to repair her ego.
From every direction, this commercial is condescending to everyone and that’s why I fucking hate it so much. And I hate the asswipes who came up with it. And I hate everyone who says, “Yeah! That’s right, gurl!” when they see it. (It’s possible no one is saying that.)
On a superficial level, this commercial shits on men. It plays up an old overplayed stereotype that all men think women are bad drivers and that we are all such assholes that we will tell them this the first chance we get. * And we will do it in a way that is non-jovial, disregarding her feelings. That’s condescending to men.
Now say this was the case and that this woman was offended enough by this man’s comments to go home, stew about it, and get supporting evidence (he clearly barely remembers making the comment). Is she so insecure that she cannot defend herself without some outside validation? Is she that weak of a woman? Is some corporation’s (represented by a man’s voice) pat on the head what she needs to get her point across? Pathetic display of girl power here. That’s condescending to women.
And maybe the guy wasn’t being an asshole by talking about male versus female drivers in their previous conversation. Maybe he was just trying to establish a little banter — you know, a little of the ol’ sexual-energy tennis match. So what if he’s not very good at it and had to resort to cheap tactics like using played out “controversial” topics like driving. She’s that big of bitch that she can’t take a joke? That’s condescending to women. Again.
This might be currently the worst running commercial on TV. I’ve been wanting to sound off on it for a while but just haven’t taken the time. I kept thinking it was going to finally fade into oblivion but since Allstate’s advertising firm has decided it plays well with the modern society’s bullshit view of gender politics it keeps popping up. Ha. The idea that they think this commercial is appealing to women is yet more evidence of this commercial being (you guessed it) condescending to women.
* Women are shitty drivers. **
** Women are not shitty drivers, per se. Statistics are what they are and statistics pretty clearly state that when you put all women and all men together, women on average are less expensive to insure. I haven’t looked at the numbers across age groups or races or regions so this could be out of date but that is the prevailing wisdom. Ladies: the reason men think you all suck at driving (and you do) is because we evaluate driving abilities the same way we evaluate athletic ability. We could play catch in the backyard and you could throw the ball accurately to my glove 10 times out of 10 and I’m still going to walk away laughing and say, “Ha, she gets it there but she sure throws like a girl.” Now statistically, you did what you needed to do and didn’t make any mistakes but you looked like a dweeb doing it. But if you were a man, you would have whipped the ball in there using a variety of grips. Maybe I would be down in a low position to try and both catch the ball and then quickly sweep my arm to tag the invisible runner. So maybe the ball goes past me and into the bushes a few times or I drop it a few times. Then, statistically speaking, we execute the catch more times when it’s me and the girl playing (and if you were “insuring” the ball against hitting the grass you’d give better rates to the girl) but the guy is the better ball player. Make sense?
MrHarmanson 