Sexism and Speciesism Both at the Super Bowl

First the sexism and then the speciesism.

Did anyone really believe that, whether or not PETA ever truly planned to pay for its Super Bowl ad, NBC's rejection was based solely on high standards that prevent it from airing sexist, objectifying ads? Umm, no. We all knew sexism was going to be rampant throughout Super Bowl commercials last night. We were not proven wrong.

I dropped my jaw and then picked it back up and growled at the television when Bridgestone portrayed Mrs. Potato Head "nagging" at her husband to slow down as he drove recklessly around sharp curves. And then when Mr. Potato Head stopped suddenly to avoid hitting sheep, and Mrs. Potato Head's mouth popped off, and Mr. Potato Head smiled deviously at her inability to speak and sped off? That's when I started yelling (and cursing) at the TV. What...the...hell? Female ruins male's unsafe fun by "nagging" at him, and he effectively shuts her up. How much more blatantly sexist does it get?

And then, of course, there were the myriad other ads featuring super-sexualized women and even one ad that got its laughs by having a box of flowers shout sexist, demeaning insults at a woman. Yes, NBC is clearly concerned about not promoting sexism and objectification of women.

-Continue after the jump for the rest of the sexism discussion & for the animal discussion-

And now I'd like to see all the hundreds of media outlets that came down specifically on PETA for its ad promoting vegetarianism come down on the companies behind these product-selling ads just as hard. Think it will happen? I have no problem with organizations and bloggers calling out animal rights and animal welfare groups when they see sexism or other inappropriateness in their campaigns. No problem at all. I do, however, have a problem with selective criticisms--if we're going to criticize ad campaigns whose underlying messages make us uncomfortable but insist we're criticizing only the nature and style of the campaigns themselves, then we better criticize equally or more offensive advertising campaigns with equal vigor. (And to be clear, this is not directed at any specific media outlet or blog; criticisms of the PETA ad were everywhere.)

As of a few minutes ago, a Google search for PETA + sexist + "Super Bowl" yields 32,200 Web results and 3,789 blog results. (This search yields only 4 results in the news search category, but change "sexist" to "sexual," and that number jumps up to 358.) Replace PETA with Bridgestone in the "sexist" search, and the numbers drop sharply. Even plug in "Go Daddy," and you still don't get even a fourth of the results that you get with PETA, and I don't need to tell anyone who was watching last night what the Go Daddy commercials were like. Much of this is a result of the fact that PETA's ad was rejected, and they pushed that story; publicity was PETA's intention. But still, all advertisers' intention is publicity, so let's hope those numbers change in coming days as people start discussing what they saw last night. If people aren't as offended by what they saw last night as they are by what they saw in PETA's ad, we have a problem.

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And now the animals. Oh, the animals. They're the stars of Super Bowl commercials, aren't they? Everyone just loves seeing chimpanzees in commercials, for example, but few consider the life those chimpanzees live, what they've endured to become such "stars," or how demeaning such exploitation of them is. See what Jane Goodall has to tell us about the experiences these chimps go through so that we can have a few laughs at their expense: "Chimpanzees in Entertainment." See also "Why a chimpanzee in a suit just isn't that funny," published in 2005 following use of chimps in that Super Bowl's commercials.

Chimps weren't the only animals exploited or mocked last night, of course. Especially memorable was a water buffalo being hit in the face with a Frisbee and the depiction of a (not real) koala being punched repeatedly. Hilaaaarious! Ugh. And leave it to a dog food company (Pedigree) to go about promoting adoption of dogs by exploiting captive wild animals for our amusement (the aforementioned water buffalo plus a rhino, boar, and ostrich). See "Wildlife in Entertainment" for more on how these animals come to be in the entertainment industry and what their lives are like.

There were other instances of animals in the commercials, of course, but I think that's enough venting from me for one day.

It is not acceptable to exploit women just because men find it amusing, and it is not acceptable to exploit nonhuman animals because human animals find it amusing--neither is acceptable. But there is one enormous difference between the two. The women who participate in these such ads at least choose to; they can choose not to participate in their own (and their gender's) objectification or exploitation. The animals have no such choice.

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(I just noticed that Wired agrees with me on some of these matters, including on the atrocious Bridgestone commercial and the not-funny nature of punching an animal, so three cheers for them.)