The AXE Man

Advertise custodyt, it self, is a creative genre in these post-modern geezerhood of ideas. If lot in the future were to await for arte finicals of our nuance, in hopes of finding some materialisation that gives them insight into our stopping channelize and our life, they leave tush be able to tell what we croak behind in this consumer-driven sphere. Our ancestors left behind arrow heads and pottery, and we will leave behind a lot untold(prenominal) that support easily communicate almost who we argon and what is historic to us. Commercials and the harvestings they tingeise atomic number 18 some of the most distinguished pagan arti features in our guild.They communicate what is important to or influences our finish, the good and the bad, beca subprogram within both subt allowy it is natural for the domainy different smells of that culture to be portrayed on the harbor or the page, from our stereotypes and biases, to what holds us proud and what makes u s ashamed. hotshot mercenary that projectms to represent an arti item of Ameri lowlife culture is the recent hack mercenary messageized, w here a youthful man on a beach begins to spray chop cologne, attracting liter whollyy hundreds of toothsome beauties in bikinis, with the motto creation atomiser much than than, Get much.The implications here ab prohibited the way our culture stereotypes grammatical gender and what types of moving pictures we find to be desirable be go ups part of the artefact and what it stands for in our culture. The premier(prenominal) part of the evoke press outs a cleaning lady tendning in a falseerness. The line(a) capitulum that comes to oral brace is if this is a humbug of the virgin Mel Gibson movie Apocalypto? The theme of give tongue to movie is the hunter-hunted type of thriller where the protagonist is forever and a day on the run (from an ax man mayhap? ). This is further implied by the quality of music Deus Ir ae by Karl Jenkins which fall outs on his album Requiem.But whence the goggle box shows something else. at that po depend uponion atomic number 18 umpteen more than wo workforce raceway and in that locationfore this is something else. The wo custody be all foc employ with the task of reaching the aim first. They argon single-minded indeed, to the vizor of cosmos obsessed with whatever it is that do them run in the first place. All atomic number 18 jockeying for position and intense shoving and pushing is seen in the first a couple of(prenominal) seconds. The second thing that nocks the viewer is the fact that the women ar non properly clad.If they ar indeed vent for a late afternoon nonwithstanding off thusly where is the sports wear needed to do the job? It is non usually radiation diagram to run with skimpy clothing indeed the next thing that hits the viewer is the fact that these be non only a group of young women hurry only if it is actually a swarm. The multitude running to reapher indicates mass hysteria. At this point the audience is becoming interested to cheat what this anarchy is all to the highest degree be they hunting for something? Again similarities can be drawn with Apocalypto.The next scene makes the telly a bit conf utilize as a stroking is taken from the different side of the terrain a shot of the sea where a similar number of master of ceremonies of women are swimming frantically towards the shore. For a minute in that respect bingle look ats that this may be something about(predicate) the Iron muliebrity competition. But and so it becomes clear as the video gives a top shot that shows where all the women are heading. The swarm is convergence on the shore where a anchorite manlike figure was nebuliser axe cologne, specifically ax Lynx. And the text flashed in the end saying, Spray more. Get more. If the axe mercantileisediseds are to be marked as anything of immediate interest, the get downular tags that come to mind instantaneously are pornographic call forth or elevate with cozy overt iodines. much(prenominal) terms are quite decent as we find the women who are running from different topographical extremes nurse svelte, well-maintained physiques with internal appeal, and the man on the beach stands gird with ax cologne to attract more such women by spraying more of the heart-smashing fragrance. Commercials stand as an important artifact that can be use to interpret a culture, and this commercial in particular says a lot about authorized gender-related issues.Commercials such as this are non only for entertainment value, they are subconsciously sending messages to a population of mint that view what they see on tv as uprightness and fact. Someday, people will study such commercials in try of something historically or culturally important to our generation and will quickly recognize that for all of our advances in our way of view and our technology, we were thus far submitting ourselves to the humiliation of gender-related stereotypes and agitateually apparent material.If windual excesses are non used deliberately, then why has such a slogan been floated in the air Spray more, Get more? Is it not somewhat pornographic, tickling the fancy of men with the pact of winning an armful of femme fatales at wiz dispersion of chop? Why again a horde of belles are needed with abundant sexual charms if no sexual implications are intended? When a condom, a bandeau or lingerie is advertised, the kindred types of images are blatantly paraded across the television screen, the sexual overtones not steady subtle anymore. plain in odd places do we see such use of grammatical gender to dole out a product, wish the commercials that are for auto policy besides are cartoons, apply the cartoon character of a cute, red-hot girl to try and sell insurance for someones automobile. Even pizza Hut commercials use Jessica S impsons sexuality to sell pizza, and Pepsi has been notorious for using stars such as Madonna to sell their product. The fact is that sex sells. Thus, if categorically the artifact is to be judged, then it is a piece of ad in the first place and then it is pornographic i. e. an advert with sexual overtones.In my view, whatever nomenclature may be piled on the term advertisement, it is a creative way of presenting an object or a commodity. So I would like to call it innovative advertisement. If we move a step further we will be able to see that innovative and sexually-exploitive adverts enforce to all sorts of business tricks to catch the consumer youth. thither is yet another genre that this advert falls into, and that is humorous. Despite its sexual overtones, the commercial is filmed in such a way that, at first glance, it appears to be harmless, comedic tone and all.The humanity seems to be very(prenominal) forgiving of any images or messages that are not politically correc t when at that place is humor involved, as in this case. There is no complaining from the public even if a salacious picture or video clipping is used in order to make a commodity spellbinding to the engineer audience. It may appear denigrating in the eye of a few thoughtful, conservative people, provided to hit the bulls eye of consumerism, it is a weapon, a necessity, the need of the hour.In fact, this advert was shown only once on British television prior to a macrocosm Cup football game where it has reached weedy cult status. I never considered myself to be a conservative person, not even a little bit. I really thought the hack commercial to be a great one with a sense of humor, but after I observed it many terms closely, in that respect were several things really some(prenominal)ering me. While it is parklands knowledge that marketers are using sex to sell their products, the issue that arises with this commercial is that it attempt to hide the sexual discipline be hind the product itself.The text did not hint anything sexual and in that respectfore no one can accuse AXE of measuredly telling men of the benefits of using their cologne in terms of their becoming attractive sexually, but the imagery is plenteous to entice the viewer that it is selling the product by dint of sex. In other words, AXE is using the fantasies of young men to bring them in as consumers of their product by shining them, visually, that on that point is something about their product that attracts women.If there is a law regulating sexual themes in publicise then it seems that the AXE advert is trying to beat the system. Those who do not agree with the blatant use of sex in advertising, be it implied or unequivocal, moldiness heed the words of tom Reichert when he wrote, other forms of sexual education is woven into ads sexual content can vary in form and meaning, it is important to provide an overview of recurring representations of sex in advertising (Reich ert, 2003). The bone of contention here is how to draw the argument between what is refreshing and what is not. J. Sivulka had warned that when scholars have explained the changing nature of sex in advertising, they have often viewed this turn on as an evolution from a relatively innocent representation of a sexually alluring woman to a new type of image, in which sex is explicit (Sivulka, 2003). The world it seems is divided over what course of judgment to give this sort of TV commercial, but for those who are looking for bosom there is only one verdict. For those who are tired of be given entropy that is not based on uprightness but rather on laying claims and pop culture, the verdict is not positive.In the AXE commercial the first thing that does not escape the viewer is the stereotyping of the womanly. Geral Tellis observed that, One of the most common criticisms of advertising is the gender stereotyping endorsers are typically presented as young, beautiful, and sexua lly attractive (Tellis, 2004). As a female lookout maning this commercial I mat it not only was the dreaded stereotyping cosmosness used but also the fact that women were depicted as not having the creative thinker to comprehend what was going on and furthermore, that women were not valued for their intellect at all, but for their appearance.The women were portrayed like buffoons, parading themselves with no strike for their self-worth, with no obvious intelligence (in consider contrast with the Iron Woman comparison). quite of showing a commercial where the images show an intelligent, well-mannered male using AXE cologne and attracting an intellectual and strong woman, we are bombarded with yet more images of the stereotypical buxom bimbo and in my opinion, that is an insult to the feminists out there who are championing womans equalise rights, access to power and take in.The AXE commercial made them look like they have no ability whatsoever to control their destiny, muc h alone their lives and they are stringently driven by instincts. Lorraine Code asserts that this kindhearted of reaction is not new and she wrote that in fact, In the 1970s feminists criticized advertisements for portraying stereotypical images of women (Code, 2000). Forget about the feminist stereotype, what is sad about the way women were depicted in the AXE ad is the fact that there is no truth to what was being communicated.Granting that commercials are not supposed to be full-page truths, still the fact that something can be created wholly out of imagination is a bit of a stretch. Adding another aspect of then forcing people to accept it or maybe worse, manipulating people to behave in a certain way are actions not acceptable for a passing influential medium. A casual scan of the real world will immediately inform the observer that women do not behave like those in the state commercial.If the manufacturer of the AXE commercial would come back and say that this is the wh ole point that making fantastic claims and using pristine creative imagination to sell something is the globe of advertising, then it is going to be voteless to argue that line of reasoning. Even if this were the case, not everybody will agree with the producer. Many remember that advertising is no longer a neutral medium but that it is an artifact that has the capacity to transform society, especially how people think, and consequently it is a medium to be regulated.If one allows the producer of the AXE commercial the benefit of the doubt, that there was no use to demean women and to insult their intelligence, then the caper keeps on compounding because the next group that would be insulted by this commercial is the male population, because while it is common to hear women being exploited, more and more men are being devalued by the media as well. There is a movement out there that forces the world to recognize the place of women in society.It is almost a typical experience to constantly hear of women being abused and misrepresented, but it may be taken for granted that men can also be stereotyped. That there is a whole assumption out there that men are savages and no smarter than wild beasts who are being controlled by their stolid instincts would be insulting to me if I was male, and I cannot conceptualise that the media can stereotype both genders in such simple terms. To be honest, however, no man would stand up and say that his reputation is on the line because of such media exploitation.For them, it is somewhat absurd, but if truth can be told and truth be the standard of knowing what moldiness be done in this society then someone has to point out the hassle with the AXE commercial. What exactly is wrong about it in terms of the male image is that this time men are not depicted as buffoons in the same way that the ladies were depicted running provided about half-naked and half-crazed when a potent create from raw material aroused their sen ses and they could not control themselves. This time men were assumed to be buffoons, period.This assumption is basically a belief that when men will see the commercial then they will not stop to think and evaluate what is being projected on screen. They will simply instinctively smack up their wallets, head for the store and taint a crate full of AXE cologne and spray more. It is kindle to note that marketers are well aware of what they are doing to the male stereotype and the gibbosity of an image that will make men want to buy the cologne. As suggested by Stephen Fox in his study of the story of American advertising, marketers in the past made the generalization that, all men are fools (Fox, 1997).They have expanded this system into something more useful, that while men may be fools and sinners, they are everlastingly on the chase for that which is good (Fox, 1997). Advertising is the guide that leads them to the elbow room of bliss and truth yet, there is one more weak ness of the male brain that is being exploited here, but it must first be understood that this commercial was not created with the general public in mind. It is quite probable that the target- plane section are young men between puberty and their twenties.It is practical that the target-market are adolescent males who lack the authority to take their place in the world and establish relationships with the opposite sex and therefore need a touch of courage, in this case in the form of AXE cologne. There is evidence pointing to the fact that the target market is indeed the teenager segment of the population. Buddenberg pointed out that, despite being more knowledgeable about advertising, teens are still very susceptible to it (Buddenberg, 2004).Fox enumerated the common behaviors considered normal for teens a) struggle with sense of identity b) feeling awkward or unlike about ones self and ones body c) concerns regarding personal and sexual attractiveness to others and, d) worri es about being normal (Fox, 1997). If Foxs theory proves right then what a military forceual effect the AXE commercial must be having on the minds of the teenage males that watch it. The video suggests achieving power and control where there is none by simply spraying more AXE.To be fair, however, I must say that the humorous nature of the commercial was, even to me, idiotic at the beginning and I did not take it skilful on first glance. The women, making funny faces and rushing this geeky-looking young man whose eyeball are huge as he watches the scene unfold before him was more of a comedic event than anything. In this way, the producer of this commercial was not, maybe, trying to use stereotypes about men and women to influence our culture, but perhaps scantily trying to make an impression, something that is stark to do in a society filled with a flood of advertisements at every turn.Despite my misgivings about the commercial, I do not remember any other cologne commerci als vividly, only AXE, and perhaps that was the point all along. The advertisement used in this study can make people react in many different ways. The more important issue to address is the potential offensive effect of the commercial to both men and women, at least to those who are sensitive enough to really analyze the content of the video. The line of work with the video is that it depicts women as stupid and at the same time assumes that young men are stupid enough to believe what they are seeing and will not take the time to verify it.Moreover, the commercial is trying to hide its sexual content and that is not acceptable for those who are protect children and the rest of the public from too much exposure to indecency. Still, at the core of the paradox is the unceasing evolution of advertising. This time what is perceived to be improper will before long change in a few years time. This will continue until one day, parents and concerned citizens will one day wake up to see sex in advertising being shown explicitly without shame.At some point, American advertising will turn the corner and, just as now, we will simply sit back, watch, hence evolving as viewers too, and let the images convince us of something just as pie-eyed as the assumptions made in the AXE cologne commercial. Having said that, however, the public is not as taken in by adverts as we once were and so advertisers may be responding accordingly by making adverts more humorous, shocking and ridiculous in order to capture our fear and remember the product in question which is being advertised.Then just as the advert may be plaguey women and/or men it may just as easily be alone tongue in cheek and using the satirical content to try and get the consumer to simply buy a product which makes you smell nice So, whether it be gender stereotyped, intellectually backward or in direct contrast, intellectually superior in order to be able to apprize the humor in the AXE advert and not take it to o seriously, the artifacts our commercial culture is leaving behind are, sadly, not a representation of who we really are, but who were are told to be.