While We’re Talking About Commercials,

Have you seen this one for the Clear Blue pregnancy test? (You can find anything on YouTube, apparently.)

This commercial astonishes me every time I see it, I guess because it’s like the exact opposite of most commercials geared toward women. It reminds me much more of, say, an ad for a man’s razor (names like Schick Quattro Titanium,  ever-increasing numbers of blades, etc., as opposed to women’s razor commercials, with synchronized swimmers in bikinis). Even that stream of water at the very end looks much more like the way a man would pee…not to get too graphic on you. The product itself is of course incredibly phallic, as this commercial only emphasizes. 

Clear Blue is selling itself as sleek, dependable, technologically sophisticated for best results. Their biggest selling points are simplicity and accuracy–”So Advanced It’s Easy.” We’re used to scenes from movies and television with women trying to figure out what the various symbols mean on their pregnancy test (“Is that good? Is it bad?” they ask). Women need this information delivered with speed and precision.

It’s cool that the company is selling itself as taking women’s needs seriously; I find it fascinating that it’s doing so with such strong masculine imagery. 

Eliminating Bestiality One Condom at a Time

Controversial, what?

 

Somehow, this commercial got banned by Fox and CBS. Something about….condom commercials should only address prevention of disease not pregnancy…shouldn’t be overtly sexual…shouldn’t exist, maybe, is that what they’re trying to say?

Other than the fact that it’s kind of unpleasant to think about pigs hitting on women, I don’t actually see how this commercial is a problem—and I even had the misfortune of watching Bill O’Reilly complain about it. Of course, the obvious response, made in the New York Times article as well as on feministing, is that commercials for other products make full use of sexual content. Sex is on display in ads for Viagra, deodorant, Doritos, chewing gum, etc. Truth is, this is one of the unsexiest commercials I’ve ever seen: who wants to have sex after watching pigs in a bar? For me the commercial promotes abstinence, if anything!

 

I Don’t Want No Baby: Knocked Up, Waitress, and Shmashmortions

I may be the only person in the country who cried in sadness during Knocked Up. I did: I shed a tear for Katherine Heigl’s Alison, when she’s weeping at the doctor’s office having just being told officially that she’s pregnant. That moment is so difficult, and not just for Seth Rogen’s awkward Ben who’s standing next to her unsure what to do. It felt painfully accessible–what young woman couldn’t imagine the terror and confusion Alison is experiencing?

Knocked Up is #3 at the box office right now. It’s a great movie, but there’s no doubt Judd Apatow’s strength is in capturing the male voice, as Dana Stevens notes on Slate. The film succeeded not just in the extended stoner scenes and bathroom jokes–which got a little tiresome if only by their length–but in the poignant conversations between the men, between Ben and his friends, his father and, especially Paul Rudd’s character, Pete. Stevens cites the moment between Pete and Ben, when, high on shrooms in a Las Vegas hotel room, they share their fears and disappointments in a scene that is “as revealing as it is hilarious.” Suddenly honest with one another, they express their feelings and, indeed, their love and respect for the women in their lives, the women who, earlier, had seemed like nothing so much as intrusions on good old masculine fun. A.O. Scott identifies a larger critique here, one that is cheerily embedded in jokes about bongs and getting laid:

A Woman Like a Soldier, Holding Him Down: Fabolous, the Angel in the House, and Club Security

“Make Me Better” is a recently released single by Fabolous, featuring Ne-Yo. The lines of the chorus are, “I’m a movement by myself but I’m a force when were together/ Mami, I’m good all by myself but baby you, you make me better.” The song praises that supportive girlfriend, the woman who stays by her man, encouraging and guiding him. This is sort of what Beyonce is talking about in “Upgrade You”: “I can do for you what Martin did for the people/ Ran by the men but the women keep the tempo/ It’s very seldom that you’re blessed to find your equal/ Still play my part and let you take the lead role…I’ll follow…I’ll be the help whenever you need me.”

Such a woman is essential to any man’s success. The old adage goes something like, “Behind every great man is a great woman.” In Fabolous’s song, it’s a little different: “Beside every great man you can find/ A woman like a soldier holding him down” (emphasis mine). There’s an ongoing battle, and women have their part to play as well. Clearly there’s some history here, the image of the strong black woman floating in the background as Beyonce sings those lines. Women are supposed to do that essential work behind-the-scenes, to hold down the home front, and, in any war, to give their men something to fight for. Fabolous declares, “I’m a need Coretta Scott if I’m gonna be King.”

I Kinda Feel Bad For Paris

Whose jaw didn’t drop with shocked delight watching Sarah Silverman’s opening monologue at the MTV Movie Awards? See the clip below.

Silverman was on her game, and I guess it’s nothing I didn’t expect. But there’s something disturbing about this world of relentless display, a world in which Paris Hilton is in the audience (and apparently scheduled for more than that) at the MTV Movie Awards mere hours before she checks in to prison. How strange to think that, for some people, this is actually real life–showing up at an awards ceremony is almost like gamely showing up to work. That it would make some sense to her to share what must be a crisis in her young life with MTV’s viewers and, inevitably, the entire public. Perhaps she didn’t expect the reaction of the audience, but she risked it.

No Sex For You: Apparently, Sex Has Consequences

The cover of today’s “Week In Review” is all about sex–but not the fun kind.

Randy Kennedy reports on a recent trend in art and literature of sending increasingly severe messages about sex. Instead of having sex, people are “waiting and wondering, longing and thinking,” and probably also agonizing and regretting. Caution and denial shade the portrayals of sex in such works as Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach or Tom Perrotta’s upcoming The Abstinence Teacher. Nowhere near this grim but still sharing some of the same hopes about sex, we find Judd Apatow’s recent hits, The Forty-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up (a post on this last film is forthcoming). Kennedy writes: