When watching the super bowl last night and seeing all the unique commercials that were played during those four hours, one that stood out to me the most was the #puppymonkeybaby commercial promoting Mountain Dew’s new drink. This commercial was promoting the new drink by saying that it has three awesome things combined in the drink. This drink is called Mountain Dew’s kickstart, which includes dew, juice, and caffeine. Although many thought that this commercial was very strange the aspect that stood out to me the most was that they just showed men drinking the new drink. The men were sitting around the television just “chilling” and then the puppy baby monkey comes out and hands the men the drinks and they drank them and started dancing around.
This stood out to me because in chapter 6 we talked about sex and gender. Julia T. Wood ( 2015) states that sex is based on biology, whereas gender is socially constructed and expressed. For example, in this commercial women are portrayed to not just sit around a television and “chill” for the night. Someone even in my class today commented, when we watched the video that it was strange and weird and that’s why women weren’t portrayed in it. I believe that adding a women role in the commercial would have made it more relatable to audiences and the target audience could be both men and women. I love Mountain Dew and watching that commercial is was sad that there was not a woman role portrayed.
I didn’t even realize that! When I saw that commercial my first reactions was, “Uhmmmm what is that thing!”. I honestly had to no idea what was going on because I was more concerned with what this this random thing doing and saying. But you do make a very good point, with the men being around the TV drinking beer and watching TV. People just don’t think that women could be doing the same thing and that men just drink beer with their friends while watching TV. It took me a couple of times of watching the commercial to actually see that and understand it.
Props to you for observing how gender roles were shown in this disturbing, yet fascinating commercial. This seems to be the only commercial people can really remember from the Super Bowl.
I agree with you that it is definitely common to see in commercials or in a movie only guys being portrayed as sitting around watching TV together. And where are the women usually? In the background making the men snack food. I think this goes back to what society thinks gendered norms to be. The woman is usually assigned the caregiver and cooks and cleans, while the men, well… don’t. Since gender roles are learned like you stated, it gives children and viewers of these types of scenes a since of validation that this role of the mother and role of the father is what is normal and acceptable.
When I saw this commercial I was also very intrigued by it. Although a lot of people saw thought it was weird, I thought they did a good job of making it so that it grabbed the attention of viewers. I thought it was a funny commercial and one that I would remember and talk about to other people. This is a good marketing strategy in my opinion. I do agree with what Drew said about there only being men in the commercial though. This is one of those barriers that as a society we must break down. Woman don’t just cook and do house work. In fact my friends and I almost always just sit around the television and “chill” just as the men were doing in this commercial.
Drew,
Great post! I didn’t even notice or think about that. I really like how you applied the information from the textbook about gender being socially constructed. When I think about how women are not supposed to sit around the TV and just chill, I also think about how in most TV shows and movies when people are just sitting around a TV it is mostly men. I also reflected on these scenes and recall that there is usually a woman in the background of the picture doing some kind of housework, such as cleaning or cooking. This reinforces the gender role of the male coming home from work and relaxing while the female cooks and cleans. Since gender roles and norms are learned, these scenes have a heavy influence on the younger population and subliminally instill gender roles/norms into their psyche.