The commercial video I chose is balanced in portraying the two genders, male and female. For both the female and the male gender in the commercial, aged persons, approximately over the age of 40 years, are neglected. Even though the watch is a product that is championed as the future of healthy living in the description of the commercial, screen time is dedicated to stressing it as only helpful to the athletic and youthful persons. In addition, the video projects the product as only for highly active people physically, creating an impression that the product is best applicable when carrying out physical activities. Perhaps, that is correct in line with the image extracted from the commercial, where a young male loses control of his bicycle, hits the guardrail and falls hard. He looks at the watch and goes, “I’m okay.”
The marketing of the product differs slightly when the person in action is a man from when it’s a woman. When it’s a man, there’s a lot of expression of power and strength. Individualism is also expressed in men as in case of a problem, and the man safely gets himself out of it. On the other hand, their female counterparts do not encounter significant challenges. It brings up the social idea that the male gender should be busy and struggle out of their problems. They get in tight spots and successfully get out uninjured. This fact is openly shown when only men ask questions or answer the commentator in the video. Women do not do this. They are silent even when in action.
At the end of the commercial, a young female is meditating, quiet and in the imaginary realm, levitating, which tends to bring out the aspect of the female gender being capable of accomplishing the impossible. It is important to note that that is a recent development because many years ago, seemingly doing the impossible would highly likely be portrayed by the male gender. This notion shows how modern-day society is sensitive to how anybody and everybody ought to express their abilities, but at the same time not give them a chance to or worse, assume that their silence means that they are being reasonable in their state.
Gender Recognition
As many would guess from the old days to date, the commercial has more screen time for the male gender than the female gender. This representation is generally the most common kind of representation. It is a viewpoint that underrepresents the female gender in general. Research into gender representation has overwhelmingly found that women are underrepresented on television compared to their presence in society (Collins 64).
One may object that underrepresentation is primarily determined by the commercial product and the circumstances under which it is happening. The target audience also comes in, and putting it all together opens up and closes gaps on who should be shown and when and that is how it happens.
The commercial tries hard to avoid gender stereotyping. Stereotyping, in this case, would be showing the male serving the tennis hard and not showing the female in action or showing the female do it and not show the man. Alternating intensity acts are intentional and designed to show that any gender can do it. At the beginning of the video, a young male serves a tennis ball.
Then what is shown is countered by a young female hitting a golf ball.
This kind of effort is noted, leading to the inconsistency in the portrayal of the female gender being pointed out because the action at the beginning does not show to the end of the commercial. It can be taken lightly from the voiceless perspective; however, on the social media platform YouTube, the commercial sparked outrage and negativity so much that adding comments to the uploaded video was disabled. Gender portrayal is viewed as an artefact of the community in which the content is generated. The outrage is justified with the apple watch considering the commercial was developed in a world with high democracy and equality. So any form of imbalance is openly unwelcome.
Gender Respect
Gender respect moves a step further as a healthy and realistic way of approaching the content in the commercial and gets us to evaluate the involvement and, in general, the role or roles played. Furthermore, it addresses the capacity of participation. How deep is the presence of a given gender in communication? In this case, what aspect of the product is being looked at in-depth? In this commercial, as we have seen, the female gender does not communicate or interact with the product, and so little information is passed to the audience from them. In addition to this, the female gender here is represented as a younger group compared to their male counterparts in general. This approach gives a feel of intent. It may be true or just partially true. Age is crucial in respecting women in many cultures, and this commercial maintains that notion.
A male’s voice is used in the commentating and answering back, and this one-sided affair portrays the male gender as the informed party and fits in the explainer role. A scene in the commercial shows relatively young mothers playing with the kids. This section marks a more exciting part of the commercial. We see a small girl accidentally hitting a grown man while blindfolded. At first, a perspective could come out as an innocent mistake. Then, you look at it again, and you wonder, is it a mistake if the child was blindfolded?
The final take would be that children are allowed to make mistakes. Even though the part is passed quickly, it shows that the female gender tends to be closer to the kids than the male gender as the only time we see kids in the commercial, they are with the female gender who we could take as their mothers.
Works Cited
AdAge. “Bud Light Seltzer’ Last Year’s Lemons’ Video from Ad Age.” AdAge, 1 Nov. 2021, adage.com/video/bud-light-seltzer-last-years-lemons. Accessed 3 Feb. 2022.
Apple. “Introducing Apple Watch Series 7 | Apple.” Www.youtube.com, 14 Sept. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMdQ-gWBNZE. Accessed 4 Feb. 2022.
Daalmans, Serena, et al. “Gender Representation on Gender-Targeted Television Channels: A Comparison of Female- and Male-Targeted TV Channels in the Netherlands.” Sex Roles, vol. 77, no. 5-6, 5 Jan. 2017, pp. 366–378, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5554288/, 10.1007/s11199-016-0727-6. Accessed 3 Feb. 2022.
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