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Visual Rhetoric - Visual Culture - Pedagogy
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Dove onslaught |
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Visual Rhetoric - Visual Culture - Pedagogy
Site informationRecent Blog Posts
|
Dove onslaught |
TagsRecent comments
|
Comments
interesting
I don't see Dove's commercials as sanctimonious at all. In fact, they are saying exactly what many of us women are saying and have been saying. That they do it to sell products, that's another thing. However, if we consider all of the sins of the commercial world, we'd miss out on great debates over the value of visual rhetoric. :-)
I think this is the best one yet, actually. Why? They are appealing to our sense of family. They want to get to that ethos and make us aware that our daughters may already be dealing with body identity issues. I saw my niece in that little girl. That's what they want....and I deliver.
Wrong word?
Maybe sanctimonious is the wrong word, but I’m still warry of Dove’s motives, since, as you say, their basic motive is to sell things.
The other wrong word
And by “warry” I mean “wary.”
More on the Dove ads
Here’s a collection of Dove’s ads, along with an ad for Axe Body Spray (both Dove and Axe are owned by the same company, Unilever). When you watch the Axe ad, it’s like those Dove ads never happened:
Ugh.
Those Axe ads. But I agree with dorothysnarker that you can't blame Dove for Axe's sins. The ads are likely the products of different marketing firms, or at the very least, different teams within the ad agencies.
I wonder, though, what 30 Rock has to do with Dove or Axe?
Obscure pop-culture reference explained
Sorry :)
In the clip, Jenna, one of the leads on a TV variety show, has gained some weight. Her boss, Liz, tries to argue that she shouldn‘t be treated differently because she is no longer a super-skinny waif. However, Liz slowly finds that she is alone in this opinion after Jenna’s popularity skyrockets when, having embarrassed herself during a live broadcast, she blurts out the instantly popular line “me want food,” which had been insultingly suggested to her at the beginning of the clip by an insensitive writer on the show. The next day, upset that so much attention is being paid to Jenna’s weight, Liz very seriously comments “You just can’t be a real woman in this country. God! It’s like those Dove commercials never even happened.”
It’s a great joke, lampooning Liz’s politically-correct—and Dove’s purely commercial—sanctimoniousness.
No apologies needed
See, that's why I needed to watch the clip with the volume on. Ahem. Because, really? Sometimes you need more than just the visual.