Super Bowl – Super Question

My husband drove to his home town to watch the Super Bowl with his Dad. He left me at home on the couch nursing a cold. Although I had little interest in the game — and couldn’t have even told you which teams were playing, I flicked on the game to watch the commercials and half time show.

Why? Because the commercials often provide fascinating cultural insight into current trends and thought. Advertisers spend millions and millions of dollars to produce and air them. To ensure they appeal to their target audience, they do extensive market research beforehand, to determine what the target group is thinking and feeling. The Super Bowl, being a quintessential male event, featured several interesting commercials that provided insightful commentary on the thoughts on the mind of the modern-day male.

Besides the expected beer commercials (getting the girl), and annoying chicken commercials (getting the food), and voice-over babies trading stocks (getting the money), there were a few commercials that illustrated that men were also getting frustrated:

Dove soap aired a Superbowl “MAN-them” to launch their line of male skin-care products.  It featured a jingle listing the ways that one particular man had complied with what others had told him he ought to be and do as a man (particularly his wife).

“You’ve reached the place where you feel at ease – you’ve come this far, it wasn’t a breeze,  You can take on anything, of course you can – because you’re a man!”

The commercial features a compliant man, and ends by implying that since men have accepted and are now comfortable with the new definition of manhood, they also ought to get comfortable in their own skin – and start using Dove skin-care products.

In “Man’s Last Stand”, an ad for the Dodge Charger, several robotic, compliant, dazed-looking males listed off all the ways they had acquiesced to the demands of the women in their lives. In a defeated tone, they itemized all their obedient behavior. Their “last stand” of manhood was maintaining the right to choose their own car:

• I will get up and walk the dog at 6.30 am
• I will shave
• I will clean the sink after I shave
• I will put the toilet seat down
• I will put my underwear in the basket…
• I will say ‘yes’ when you want me to say ‘yes’
• I will be quiet when you don’t want me to say’ no’
• And because I do this…. I will drive the car I want to drive!!

The Docker’s Super Bowl ad,”Men Without Pants,” featured the song “I Wear No Pants.” The 30-second commercial featured a group of men in underwear who marched through a field singing “I Wear No Pants.” It mocked the concept of compliant, feminized males who were proud of their “pantlessness” and encouraged men to once again “wear the pants.”

Okay. So we’ve got a “man-them” praising men for complying with women’s desires for them, and encouraging them to start using skin cream; a “Man’s last Stand” in which men bravely hold on to their right to choose their car–the only matter in which they don’t need to obey women; and a “MAN-ifesto” encouraging men parading around pantless to “wear the pants.”

The common theme, and the probable finding of market research, is that men are keenly feeling the effects of the feminist movement. They are painfully aware that they’ve been bossed around by women and told what they should be and do.  Women have defined manhood.

The first commercial encourages men to accept this fact and continue to be feminized. The second encourages them to hold on to the very few areas in which they are still allowed to make decisions. And the third encourages them to stop being proud of their de-masculinisation and again start to wear the pants.

I thought the conundrum of male identity was summarized pretty well at the half-time show, when the band of old, tired-looking rocker-types croaked out the question:  “Who are you??”

The message I took away from the Super Bowl commercials is that guys are tired of being told who they are.  They don’t know who they are, but are starting to realize that the feminized, emo, metro-male, skinny vanilla latte image doesn’t fit.  What is manhood really all about? It’s a Super Question… one that the Super Bowl asked, but that apart from Christ, will be left unanswered.

© Mary A. Kassian