Women and Cars

"What are you looking at?"

...

"You're undressing me with your eyes"

This Italian commercial for the Fiat 500 isn't particularly unique or surprising. Sexy women and sexy cars, we've seen it all before. But what strikes me about this ad in particular is that it reinforces an idea that society has constructed around (1) objectifying women in a literal sense and (2) male ownership of females and (3) giving objects a gendered identity.

Let me explain.

When a man becomes extremely attached to an object he owns - this is usually a car or a music instrument - he will (very often) name that object. The object usually takes on a feminine identity - which I'm sure has deeply psychological underpinnings, and speaks to both masculine desire and ego. In this ad, the Fiat 500 - a new and sexy car - becomes a sexualized object because it is equated with this hot, Italian woman. The point is this: the Fiat 500 makes the slightly geeky-looking man weak in the knees just as a woman might. The car, in effect, has the same effect as a woman on a man - and even though that could arguably speak to the role woman as seductress, I'd actually beg to differ that the woman as seductress role here is not empowering but demeaning. There is nothing surprising here, unlike this ad, because the train of thought in this kind of advertising is that it's necessary to play up to men's egos (men own cars like men own women) for men to buy products. It's time that we start breaking down this correlation between women and cars - and women as objects. As sexy as this advertisement may be, let's admit it - it's by no means creative or innovative.

Canadian Club: A View of Masculinity

These ads for Canadian Club are undoubtedly attractive and catchy. The color of the photographs are warm and saturated, the typography is aesthetically pleasing and attention-grabbing, and the message is strong and demanding. What’s interesting about this ad is that the product is at the very end of the message; in other words, it seems to be more of an afterthought than anything else and it is the trail of thought the viewer must follow that gives strength to the product itself. The success of the ad is contingent upon the associations that the viewer gleans from the ad—associations that are superimposed upon the product later: sharp, masculine, smart, and sexy.

In this ad campaign, Canadian Club is relying very explicitly on a narrow and categorical definition of masculinity, a view of heteronormative masculinity that involves sex, fishing, shaving, and cocktails—all of which—for a real man, according to these ads—are effortless. What’s not included in this definition of masculinity? Metrosexuality. Pilates. Moisturizing. Pink cocktails. And certainly not abstinence, says Canadian Club. These are modern buzzwords that Canadian Club relegates to femininity, suggesting that their whisky drink is both classic and masculine—because YOUR dad (also classic and masculine) drank it. That’s “damn right”—your dad—who slept with other girls before your mom, who got two numbers in one night, who went fishing instead of doing pilates—drank whisky cocktails, and they tasted good. So if you want to be as manly as your dad—the manliest hero of them all—do the manly thing and drink some Canadian club.

The aesthetics of these ads command a dreamy nostalgia of an imagined past—because the audience they are addressing must be young—given that the people in these 70s-era photos include “your dad.” This assumes that the viewer has not lived in the 60s or 70s but have parents that did. And despite this constructed fantasy of masculinity and the contrived photos that come along with it, nostalgia is (and may always be) trendy. Nowadays, people fetishize past decades, associating particular aesthetics, bands, fashions, and attitudes with the 20s, the 50s, the 70s, the 90s—you name it. This yearning for a past we never experienced is comforting in the face of accelerating technology, I’m sure—and it’s why we revel in Instagram and Hipstamatic, mobile apps that create sepia-toned and faded photos reminiscent of Polaroids; it’s why we are advocates of vinyl and find vintage fashions novel. And Canadian Club smartly capitalizes on this nostalgia.

Pilates? Metrosexuals? Moisturizing? Pink cocktails? Those are sissy creations of the 21^st century. You really want to be a man? The kind of man who existed in the 70s? (Yeah, those were real men). Well then, you better drink up—because Canadian Club is the way to manhood.

The Secret

This Campari ad was released in February 2005 Italy. The agency in charge of production was D'adda Lorenzini Vigorelli BBDO.

 What is your most visceral reaction after watching this?

This ad is called "The Secret" - a title which in and of itself is loaded with  meaning. The "secrets" here are layered, the first layer being a personal secret: each of the two transgendered characters, dressed in formal attire for some kind of gala or party, harbor secrets which are revealed in a second secret: a secret rendezvous in which true identities come to the surface. Both of these secrets are tied into Campari's branding of their alcoholic drink as being derived from an old and ancient "secret recipe" - a link which - though it provides a framework for this ad - is realized only as an afterthought (because that's what the intellectualized message that underlies an ad (the signification) usually becomes).

Let's start at the surface of this ad, at the narrative line. The scene is set at a cocktail party with red carpet (Campari is red), and from a distance, we see (what we assume to be) a woman in a black backless dress ascending a white staircase. The ad cuts to an androgynous-looking figure wearing a suit and tie (the apparel suggest this figure is a man, though the face seems to have both effeminate and masculine qualities), who is at a bar. There is a moment in which the woman in the dress turns around at the top of the staircase, presumably making eye contact with the figure in the suit, and it is in this moment that an intention is understood. The figure in the suit grabs a glass of Campari (another "secret") and follows the woman in black through large empty rooms until he(?)* catches up with her. In this confrontation, as she turns around, he, still in motion, spills his Campari on her - more specifically, in between her breasts, where her halter dress plunges. There is a sultry moment in which she gazes intensely at him, and then undoes her dress, revealing a masculine body with no breasts at all. She smears her lipstick with the back of her hand, and in response, he opens up his dress shirt, revealing breasts that have been bound, and then lets down his hair. The ad ends with an overlay of the words, "Campari. Red passion," with the two figures staring intensely at each other in the background.

*The English language actually works in favor of binary categories of gender because people are generally relegated to "he" and "she," while there is no pronoun for someone who does not identify clearly with either of those categories. "It" can be used but has a derogatory, animalistic connotation. In this advertisement, "he" and "she" are not clearly defined, but because I am limited by the constraints of the English language, "she" and "he" here referred to the assumed sexes of the figures prior to the revelation of their respective secrets.

What is the selling point of this narrative? Campari sells itself on the idea of passion (as well as its secret recipe), and this secret rendezvous is supposed to represent that passion: a passion that is illicit erotic, and risque, that transgresses normative bounds, and that is intensely personal and revelatory. Of course, this selling point rests on the very assumptions that Judith Butler decries: the assumption that heterosexuality is the norm while homosexuality or transexuality or anything other than heterosexuality is the "other." Our visceral reaction to this ad depends on our assumptions of sexuality. Are we indignant that this secret has to be a "secret" at all (the two figures are "coming out" to one another)? Why is this particular act a "secret" at all? If indeed heterosexuality is not "normative" then the shock value of this ad might decrease. Perhaps Campari is capitalizing on both the fascination with and fetishization of transgendered individuals while exploiting the assumption that the transsexual is the "other" - the being which must be kept (pun intended) under wraps.

**Other things to consider:
-Norms regarding men pursuing women (and vice versa)

-Ethnicity and "gender-bending"?

Primal Instincts: Food and Sex

Sex sells.

Sure it does.

But since when did sex start selling food?

In the following Quizno's commercial, an oven (with a radio announcer voice) acts as the seducer, who engages in a dialogue that has the semblance of foreplay with a sandwich-eater named Scott.

"Scott, I want you to do something."

"Not doing that again. That burnt."

"We both enjoyed that."

...

"The new tasty torpedo?"

"Yes, Scott. You make one."

"Me?

"Put it in me Scott."

...

"Say it sexy, Scott."

If we're looking at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs pyramid, the most fundamental needs at the base of the pyramid are physiological - a category which includes both food and sex, and yet the intersection of the two can be uncomfortable, namely because we'd like to relegate the former to the quotidian and the latter to... well, the bedroom. The dovetailing of food and sex has quite a history of course. It's easy to conjure up images we've seen in art history of concubines feeding grapes to a fat king or pick out old wives' tales about aphrodisiac foods (e.g. oysters, saffron, ambergris). The word "carnal" has the same roots as the Spanish word for braised or roasted pork, "carnitas." Certainly, with our current culture's mega-obsession with gourmet and gourmandizing, eating is chalked up to be a sensual activity. 

But still, these ads (the Quizno's TV commercial and the Burger King ad below) go far beyond labeling food as an aphrodisiac. In both ads, the sandwich is the penis. Are these companies trying to tell us that food is as pleasurable as sex? Or is it all one huge psychological advertising ploy that lionizes sex as the underlying motivation for the rest of or actions? Maybe these ads are playful, or maybe they are taking the food and sex combination a little too far. After all, the effectiveness of these ads is grounded the assumption that we are purely sexual creatures that cater only to our most primal instincts - which elicits the question: is advertising reductive and dehumanizing?