Television Advertisements..

Advertising is probably one of the most important and influential products of television. Indeed, the average adult spends one and a half years of his or her life watching television adverts. For the amount of time we spend watching adverts, it stands to reason that it will have some kind of effect on those who watch. 

When men are shown in domestic situations, they are usually portrayed as being incompetent or are shown to be manipulative: smarter than the female. Examples of this would be in the Persil advert where the young man has no clean shirts and has to 
wash one. First, he has problems discovering how to open the Persil box and whilst reading the instructions on the side of the Persil box, the powder spills all over the floor, to which his reaction is "Mum!". Finally we see him walking along a street wearing a whiter than white shirt. The advert is below..

The second advert above is for Flash multi-purpose cleaner. The husband is told to take over the scrubbing of the bath, much to the surprise of his wife who leaves him to it. The husband then uses Flash in order to show how 'effortless' cleaning can be. When his wife returns, he is sitting on the bathtub holding the Flash product. The wife then says 'Not bad for a little squirt' the camera then does a close up to the husbands face where you see he is somewhat shocked. This line that was said at the end of this advertisement represents and portrays women to be easy. Using the term 'squirt' which refers to sperm.

In both of these adverts, men are portrayed to be more intelligent than women because she was scrubbing away at the bath and when she left the bathroom the husband opens the cupboard to reveal the Flash products. The first advert demonstrates this as the young man makes a mess and even blames his mother for not being there to clean for him. The second represents this in the way we see the husband using his 'initiative' by using the new Flash products. This gives the women a representation that they are less intelligent than men and as if they are easy and available because of the reference to 'squirt' at the end of the advert. The second even goes so far as to imply that women are gullible and not as intelligent as men through the way that the wife is scrubbing the bath and how in contrast, the husband uses a sponge and Flash. It portrays that the wife is ignorant of modern products that can make the job easier, but the husband doesn't tell her , because he can use it to manipulate her into giving him credit for a task which she thinks he has worked as hard as her on.