Comments on: Dad’s a Spoiled Child in Subway Commercial

By: Free Man

Free Man — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:18:26 +0000

Typically, it seems that commercials go as follows:

1) There is a conflict
2) Man does not know what to do in order to resolve the conflict
3) Woman knows what to do; she purchases the advertised product
4) Advertised product resolves the conflict

What we learn from a steady dose of these commercials is:

A) Men are helpless to resolve conflicts
B) Women are more resourceful than men
C) Conflicts can be resolved by purchasing advertised products

Personally, I neither own a television nor have any desire to watch one. But what I gather from viewing an occasional commercial on the web (or remembering the countless commercials I have seen during the years in which I watched television) is:

i) Commercials are directed to women as women shop more money than men
ii) The woman is made to be the hero by virtue of her knowing to purchase the advertised product
iii) The advertiser wants to create a sense of need in the viewer, that magically, the purchase of its product resolves

Now, submit the entire country to a steady diet of this crap for fifty years and what do you expect is going to happen? That we shall be LESS materialistic / consumeristic? That men will be shown MORE respect?

Or that two entire generations of women come to feel deeply unfulfilled in life and believe that spending money on superficial ’shiny trinkets’ is going to make it all better – and that men are idiots if they don’t go along with it.

Materialism and consumerism have become the national drugs of American culture. Male bashing is just collateral damage.

By: Dittohd

Dittohd — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:15:56 +0000

I’ve not yet heard anyone wonder why so many normal or intelligent women would choose a childlike or stupid man as a boyfriend or husband. Are we looking at “birds of a feather” or a woman who can only get her way by hooking up with a no-intelligence, stupid guy?

By: snootfish

snootfish — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 07:17:06 +0000

He has to ask the wife for permission to get a sandwich?

If the roles were reversed, this would be considered domestic violence (DV is sometimes defined to include “controlling behavior” with respect to finances).

Unfortunately, real life is often like this. I very often see guys who have to ask permission for almost everything. They know if they upset the little queen they are in real, real trouble. They lose life as they know it (e.g. divorce).

Encouraging this kind tyrannical attitude by women is very, very evil.

By: steven deluca

steven deluca — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 03:32:27 +0000

Dear Subway,

If men are portrayed as stupid children in your ads then men who are tired of seeing men portrayed that way will take their families elsewhere.