Since as far back as I can remember the media has been trying to impose certain stereotypes into our minds in almost all forms of media from commercials to movies. I’m sure you all have seen a commercial or can even think of a specific commercial that does this. Right off the top of my head I can tell you that women are portrayed as delicate, sensitive, and domesticated while men are portrayed as strong, aggressive and assertive. Because of this it made it easy for me to find the perfect video to demonstrate this and I’m sure you have also seen it before.
Robert Entmann defines framing as “selecting aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in which such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, casual interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described.” In this case men are being portrayed as obsessive of beer in a bit of a feminine way. In a more stereotypical commercial one might see them men in the beer closet watching a football game or eating a large steak or something. Do you think that this commercial was more taking a shot at how women usually act or do you think they did not even think of that part of it? Most sensible people can see that this is just supposed to be a funny commercial and not how men really are and probably would not have any adverse affects on men who watch it but there are definitely other similar commercials that do affect the issue of framing.
The example of the beer commercial is typical in the way that there are almost no commercials featuring women as the beer representative besides maybe the bud light lime ones. In my experience I found that men are the usual beer drinkers and women prefer a mixed drink with a little better flavor to it. Do you think that these commercials or advertisements have anything to do with that?
I was never so aware of framing and media influence until becoming a media studies major but now that I have been shown these things it is hard not to notice them. Because of this I noticed how the women in the commercial were portrayed. They were all excited over a large closet with lots of clothes and shoes. Do you think the writers of the advertisement did this on purpose or do you think it was just supposed to be funny about how the men reacted?
Can you think of any beer commercials that do not directly focus on men? If so, why do you think they went with women in the commercial instead of men? After hearing what Erving Goffman said how the media has homogenized how women are publicly depicted do you think that men are also publicly depicted?
Will media ever become neutral in gender roles or will things always stay the same?
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