{ 6 comments }
A guest post by Kate. Kate is a freelance writer and full-time law student. Follow her @itscompliKATEd on Twitter.
Superbowl ads are sexist. This is well trod ground: Marketers objectify women and play up stereotypes in order to sell things to (heterosexual) men. But we knew this year was going to be special. This year there was going to be some extra anti-feminist flavor. This year, there was going to be Tim Tebow.
We’ll come back to Tim and his anti-choice ad in a second. But for now, let’s take a look at the companies that decided that it would be a great idea to isolate half the population from their consumer base.
There were fewer half-naked women and dick jokes this year. Instead, the 2010 Superbowl Ad Mantra seemed to have one common theme: “Feeling castrated? . . . by women? Man up.”
Dodge Charger: Man’s Last Stand
A male voice-over starts with a first person monologue of the mundane life of the American male (“I will walk the dog, I will have fruit for breakfast”), as the ad cuts to shots of men staring blankly, blinking at the camera.
“Yeah, life is boring,” you think, “a car could fix that.” But then there’s an eerie crescendo, and it becomes clear that this voice isn’t just listing his gripes with the world, he’s listing his gripes with a person — and not just any person, a woman: “I will say yes, when you want me to say yes . . .I will take your call, I will listen to your opinion of my friends. . . I will be civil to your mother.” Simultaneously the voice-over seems to be getting angrier as the shots get tighter, finally focusing on the twitching eyes of a man in a suit. “Because I do these things, I will drive the car I want to drive.”
The ad is actually frightening. Not only because the voice-over gets more incensed as the tasks get more mundane (putting your underwear in a hamper? you mean being an adult? you think you deserve a car for that?), but because it’s maybe the most explicit misogyny I’ve ever seen in a Superbowl ad. “Feeling emasculated by your wife?” the ad seems to be saying. “Reaching your boiling point? We know you probably want to hit her, but buy a car instead.”
Oh, and did I mention that a television serial-killer (Michael Hall who plays Dexter) does the voice-over? That’s not creepy or violence promoting at all.
{ 29 comments }
CNN contributor Erick Erickson is right — watching Tim Tebow tackle his mom during a Super Bowl commercial last night really inspired me to give up the whole thinking-thoughts thing and get back in the kitchen. It’s a shame I’m too ugly to get a date, because now I have all of this food and no one to give it to. How many brownies do you think 14 cats can eat?
{ 14 comments }
A guest post by Renee at Womanist Musings; read the original over there as well.
This weekend Focus on the Family Plans plans on running a Pro-Life advertisement during the super bowl. From the moment that this was discovered, it received national attention. Groups like NOW and the feminist blogosphere waged a real effort to challenge this threat to women’s reproductive rights. The Center for Reproductive Rights wrote a letter to CBS pointing out that Ms. Tebow lived in the Philippines at the time of her supposed choice and therefore her only real option was to have the baby because abortion was and still is illegal there.
At the same time that this battle is being waged, another is going quite unnoticed. An anti-abortion group in Atlanta is targeting Black women by putting up billboards stating that Black children are an endangered species.
{ 11 comments }
Written something good this week? Leave a link and a short description in the comments. Link to a specific post, not your entire blog.
{ 50 comments }
In January, a storm blew up over cover art for new young adult novel Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore. I haven’t read the book, so I’ll not summarise it, but you can read about it if you click through to the author’s website. The book’s main character, Nimira, is explicitly described in non-white terms – ‘dark,’ ‘brown skin’ – as you can read over at Charlotte’s Library. Here’s what was released as the US/Canada cover.
{ 15 comments }
You all have seen this, right?
Enjoy. Not exactly a music video, but I think better.
Now you know the deal — set your MP3 player to shuffle, and post the first ten songs that come up.
1. Spoon – Mystery Zone
2. Timbaland and Magoo – Up Jumps Da Boogie
3. Rhett Miller – Hover
4. Carmen Rizzo feat. Deer Tracks - Shadows Ramin Sakurai (SBL) Remix
5. Maxwell – Get to Know Ya
6. Feist – Mushaboom
7. Lyle Lovett – My Baby Don’t Tolerate
8. Des Ark – Jesus Loves You (But Yr Still Coming Home With Me Tonight)
9. Santogold vs. Switch and FreQ Nasty – Creator
10. Lykke Li – Time Flies
{ 15 comments }
A recent study says it does. I deconstruct it over at the Guardian.
{ 20 comments }
Scott Fujita. I mean, damn — an outspoken, feminist, gay-rights supporting dude who loves his grandma? Chose to play in New Orleans after Katrina, and gives a lot back to his adopted city? And he sounds pretty humble?
Here’s what he told the New York Times about the anti-choice Tebow ad:
Fujita has spoken out before in favor of abortion rights and gay rights.
“It’s just me standing up for equal rights,” Fujita said. “It’s not that courageous to have an opinion if you think it’s the right thing and you believe it wholeheartedly.”
The Tebow ad suggests that Tebow’s mother was advised about having an abortion when she was pregnant with him, but chose instead to give birth.
The issue resonates with Fujita because he was adopted, and Fujita said he respected Tebow for standing up for what he believed in.
“The idea of focusing on the family — who wouldn’t agree with that?” Fujita said. “But the means of doing so, he and I might not see eye to eye all the way.”
When Fujita was born in 1979, his biological mother, he said, was in her teens and she gave him up for adoption because she did not have the means to raise a child.
“I’m just so thankful she had the courage and the support system to be able to carry out the pregnancy,” Fujita said. “I wouldn’t expect that of everybody.”
He and his wife have twin daughters. Those girls sound like they’re going to be raised by a great dad.
Read the whole Reasons to Love Scott list over at Jezebel.
{ 12 comments }
Major spoilers below!
As Cara explained last week, we’ve got a weekly LOST roundtable discussion for you all. In awesome news, Sady will be joining us!
This week was the two-hour season premiere and it was a doozy. The bomb created two realities: one in which everyone is on the island (on the same timeline??) and one in which the plane doesn’t crash. Off the island, Hurley’s lucky, Kate escapes, Jack and Locke bond. On the island, Flocke reveals he’s Smokey, Ben still feels left out, we see the temple, Sayid is alive… or something.
There’s so much going, let’s begin!
{ 44 comments }
I hope to hell they are. I’d love to say more, but so far all I’ve been able to manage is, “What the… seriously… the fuck… oh, you gotta be kidding…”
{ 27 comments }
