Sometimes Lashing Back Doesn’t Work
Written by Sid Bridge on February 18, 2010
Sometimes people get a little uppity and decide to attack whether everyone else wants to listen or not.
No, I’m not talking about my article deriding this year’s lame crop of Super Bowl ads. While many of you did not want to read a public flogging of these million dollar spots, as Senior Editor I felt it was necessary to attack them. Like every other columnist who publicly trashed those ads, we want them to do better.
But that’s beside the point. This is about one Super Bowl ad in particular. Chrysler Corporation tok the brunt of accusations of misogyny thanks to it’s ad for the Dodge Charger which featured men thinking about how much women abuse them.
According to Washington City Paper’s Sexist blog, Filmmaker MacKenzie Fegan created a response featuring women thinking about all the stupid things men make them do.
I learned an important lesson from this ‘parody.’ Lashing out in bitterness does not equal humor. Hopefully Fegan intended for men to be annoyed at her images of frumpy, pissed-off women bitching about stereotypical male habits that annoy them. Otherwise it falls a little flat. Yes, it’s a tit-for-tat answer to the Dodge ad, and I am NOT defending the Dodge ad. It was crappy.
The point here is that all the men I spoke with who watched the ad found the beginning to be pointless. However, when that awesome Dodge Charger roared onto the screen, our heads perked up. Fegan’s parody might have worked a heck of a lot better if it had concluded with one of those women at the wheel of the muscular Charger, eating up a curvy road.
After all, women are allowed to like muscle cars, too.
The bottom line is that Dodge missed the mark in their commercial, a fact which doomed Fegan to miss the mark in her parody.
Dodge should have known that women make up half of the Super Bowl audience. Why piss them off? Why continue the perception that muscle cars aren’t for women?
On the flip side, does a parody where women point out how men annoy them really help the fight against misogyny? Both versions need to be slapped back into reality it the strongest possible way.
When I look at the staff, readership and Facebook following of Parcbench, I don’t see the same gender lines that are drawn in these ads. I see women who are proud individuals, willing to work hard, and not interested in griping about stereotypical male foibles. I’m proud of the progress we’ve made and I like to think we’re above mean-spirited parody like Fegan’s.
In summation, Chrysler – Please remember that the Dodge Charger’s awesomeness speaks for itself. If there’s one thing the world can agree on, it’s that a Hemi-powered Charger decked in stripes and spoilers is an enviable way to cruise into the office (or the school carpool). Ms. Fegan – Please remember that men and women aren’t standing on opposite sides of a battlefield, nervously waiting to see who will attempt to take the next trench. We’re in this together.
And we both look good behind the wheel of a Charger.
Sid Bridge, APR is the Senior Editor of Parcbench and Editor-in-Chief of The Endive, a satirical news magazine. He also wishes the Charger would come with a manual transmission, Chrysler.
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Filed Under: TV
Tags: chrysler, dodge charger, feminism, gender bias, Super Bowl Ads
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