Sociological Images

I am curious as to what you, Readers, think of the recent rash of advertising capitalizing on Obama’s “brand.” Here are some examples (found here, here, here, and here).

Budweiser American Ale:

A language school in Israel:

Ikea:

Also check out Pepsi’s “Refresh Everything” campaign in which people send in youtube videos of themselves with a message to Obama.  Here’s one made by Pepsi with celebrities:

In other posts we’ve suggested that ads that appropriate feminism trivialize gender inequality and ultimatly undermine feminist efforts to attain social justice for women (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).  Like many of the “feminist” ads, these ads seem to be genuinely celebrating Obama’s election.  Do they?  Or do they trivialize everything he claim to stand for and the difficult road ahead for both him and the country? Something in between? Something else entirely?

What do you think?

NEW: Breck C. pointed out the Obama Chia Pet:

Amid a controversy that the Obama Chia pet was racist, Walgreens pulled the product.

Christoph B. sent in these Goldstar Beer ads, found at BuzzFeed, that show the differences between men and women:

I know that I, for one, immediately start thinking about marriage every time I meet a guy. My new male neighbor waved at me the other day, and I ran out and bought a wedding dress, just in case.

The other thing here is the assumption that a) the viewer is definitely a man and b) of the two options, the “man’s” life is always preferable. I suppose in the second two ads that might be reasonable–although I never experience all that many problems using public restrooms, but whatever–but why is it automatically better to have sex with no emotional attachments or expectations of ever interacting again? I doubt that all men enjoy such encounters, any more than all women are thinking of marriage every time they have sex with someone.

NEW! Ronni S. sent us a link to a “Thank God you’re a man” commercial playing in Israel.  She explains:

The soccer player keeps yelling “I’m alone!” (meaning “I’m open” for a pass… then it starts raining, etc, at which point “I’m alone” takes on a social meaning). The voiceover says, “Be grateful that you’re a man and drink something. Goldstar.”

This Carl’s Jr. commercial also plays on the supposed differences between men and women, particularly the idea that men are simpler and less worried about being “fancy” than women:

Thanks, Christoph and Molly!

Pharmacopaeia, in the comments, points us to this ad for Hallensteins with the motto “it’s good to be a guy”:

In this short clip journalist Ken Silverstein explains how editors at The Los AngelesTimes censored his reporting of the Israel-Palestine conflict in an article that was, consequently, never published:

Courtesy of the IFC Media Project.

Dubi sent in a link to Axe shower gel’s website for the Israeli market. Click on the Hebrew text on the lower right of the flag stand to see a video (sorry, I can’t embed it). I assure, you, even if you don’t speak Hebrew (I don’t), you’ll get the general message, and it’s totally worth viewing.

I’m quoting Dubi’s email at length, since it sums up the aspects of the video we non-Hebrew-speakers won’t quite get (though, again, I think the overall theme came through just fine):

This is the new campaign for Axe Shower Gel in Israel. It obviously targets the soldier demographic (military service is compulsory in Israel, and most secular Jews 18-21 years old are in active duty), and generally makes use of Israel’s militaristic ethos. The movie tells the story of a “secret unit” of the Israeli Defense Forces – the cheerleading squad. As you can easily tell, they are depicted as feminine, weak, and ludicrous. The younger woman “interviewed” is the commander of the unit (ha! a woman commanding men. How funny is that? Actually, female commanders of male units, especially during basic training but not only [then], are common in the IDF). The older woman in the white doctor’s coat is the unit’s KABAN, an acronym for the (real) position of a Mental Health Officer. This particular Kaban (sporting a heavy eastern European…accent) explains that “there’s nothing wrong mentally with these soldiers. The only problem is they use their mother’s soap, and that makes them feminine”. The reporter shown later on asks “how do you prefer to face the enemy, with a hand-grenade, or with pom-poms?”…The highly subtle slogan for the campaign is: “Soldier, mom’s soap makes you feminine. Change to a men’s soap!”.

Dubi pretty much sums it up: using female products makes men weak, and we know they’re weak because they engage in feminized activities like cheerleading. And they let a woman (a hot, blonde woman at that!) be in charge and tell them what to do! Only in a crazy, de-masculinized, upside-down world would such a thing happen! And, of course, weak men make a weak military, which means they might not be able to beat the (Arab) enemy.

Notice that at the end of the video, it ends with a shot of the soldiers standing in formation with their pom-poms, backed by a tank that has its guns stuffed with what appear to be flowers (roses?). I don’t know if flowers sticking out of the barrels of guns has the same association with the peace movement in Israel as it does the U.S. (where it is an image widely connected to the 1960s anti-war movement); if so, it appears that an anti-war stance is also being feminized here.

I wonder what female IMF unit commanders think when they see this video (if they do), which says that their position of authority is a sign of an emasculated, weak force? Maybe they find it funny or don’t care at all. I dunno.

Awesome find, Dubi!

Shoshannah F. sent in these images of Tel Aviv, Israel, during Yom Kippur (images found here):

In case you’re confused, Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of Atonement, a day of fasting when many observant Jews also refrain from other activities, including driving cars. It is not illegal to drive on Yom Kippur, but Shoshannah says that even people who might prefer to drive often don’t because of the negative reactions, including occasional incidents of stone-throwing at drivers. Also, because so many businesses are closed there just aren’t that many places to go, apparently.

What I thought was interesting is that Israel also has Public Transportation Day, on which people are encouraged to take public transportation or ride bikes for environmental, not religious, reasons. I couldn’t find any really useful images of Tel Aviv on Public Transportation Day, but the accounts I found all said things along the lines of “we’ll have to wait for Yom Kippur to have a really car-less day,” which I took to mean that it wasn’t a resounding success at getting people out of their cars.

Shoshannah thought the images might be useful for a discussion of urban life and the role of cars–one thing I noticed when I was searching the web for discussions of this topic was that many commenters pointed out that the streets were actually safe for kids to use when there weren’t cars everywhere, meaning children have a day where they can ride their bikes and poke around the city with a degree of freedom parents don’t usually allow (notice all the kids in the second photo). Also, the Israeli Environmental Protection Ministry reports that pollution was up to 100 times lower during Yom Kippur than on other days.

They might also start a discussion of the role of religious life in society–here we see a religious holiday bringing about an effect (few cars on the street) that Public Transportation Day’s call to civic conscience (don’t drive for the good of the environment) was less successful at, largely because the holiday affects other aspects of social life (shutting down commerce) and is backed up by negative reactions and/or occasional acts of violence toward those who drive. It brings up some of the difficulties of getting people to engage in more environmentally-friendly behavior based entirely on voluntary programs or appeals to conscience.

Just  to be clear, I’m not suggesting throwing stones at people who drive on car-free days, or that religious strictures are always effective at regulating behavior. And I bet there are people in Israel who find Yom Kippur annoying or even oppressive if they would like to drive somewhere, which might make for an interesting discussion, too.

Thanks, Shoshannah!

In a comment, Dubi adds,

…the above-mentioned stone throwing is not necessarily done by religious people – I used to live down the road from an ambulance station and it was not uncommon for the completely secular kids in my neighbourhood to throw stones at AMBULANCES…So this is far more complex than just “the influence of religion on social life”, because this isn’t religion per-se. It is this quaint amalgam of religion and nationalism that is the “Jewish People”: people with no ties to the actual religious practices that still define themselves by (some of) those very same practices, because they don’t know how to define “Jewish” nationally without religion.

Thanks for the input, Dubi!

Dubi K. sent in these two images (found here) and some commentary. This first image came from an ultra-orthodox Israeli newspaper:

Dubi says,

As you can easily see, it was heavily photoshopped – kids are
duplicated all over the place. Originally, the people who posted this
image on an Israeli forum thought that the publishers of the paper
were trying to make it look more crowded, as it was an event sponsored
by the paper.

But here is the original, non-photoshopped image:

Again, here’s Dubi:

A careful comparison will show that all duplicated children are there to hide girls…It’s commonplace in ultra-orthodox papers that pictures of women are not shown (including Israeli foreign minister Livni and US Secretary of State Rice), to prevent impure thoughts in the minds of the readers. Here they simply took this idea to its logical extreme. It’s the obverse case of the sexualizing of women that you normally discuss in your blog: rather than take women and present them as merely sexual beings, these “traditional” papers assume that women are merely sexual beings in the eyes of men, and so they completely eliminate them from view.

Awesome images and analysis, Dubi! And if you just happen to read Hebrew, you can read Dubi’s original post about this here.

Brook M. brought our attention to Al Jazeera’s English-language coverage of Arab women athletes training for the 2008 Olympics. They include a Moroccan runner, Israeli Arab boxers, a Qatar race-car driver, and Egyptian soccer players. Among other topics, the segments address opposition the women have faced being female Arab Muslims in sports, especially concerning their clothing. The first segment is about 11 minutes long; the second one is about 12 and a half.

One thing I like about these videos is they show the diversity of Arab Muslim women, a group often depicted as a homogeneous, passive, subordinate group all wearing veils. Some of the women in the clips do not cover their hair while some wear hijab. Among those who wear hijab, some cover every bit of their hair, others do not; some head scarves are lace and fairly transparent, while others are dark and solid. The women talk about how they feel about mixing religion and sports and being female athletes, and again, they differ in their perspectives.

While the sports element is interesting, seeing the diversity among Arab women, as well as Arab women actively discussing religion and resisting gender roles, may be very useful for students who usually encounter portrayals of Arab women as completely oppressed victims of a sexist culture/religion, so I can imagine using it in classes that aren’t about sports.

Thanks, Brook M.!