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Thursday, May 17, 2007

[Hannah]: Uneasy Feeling

So I'm a little freaked out by the GEICO caveman ads (you know, the ads show a caveman in a suit in an airport or something, and he walks by a sign that says "GEICO: it's so easy even a caveman can do it." and he gets upset that this is a discriminatory message.)

What makes these ads funny is that the guy *is* a caveman - hairy, primitive looking, different. He talks about how he deserves respect, and he speaks in a very mature and educated way, but the truth is that he really is a freak - very different from a normal human. Thus, when he complains about discrimination against him, and we laugh, the joke is really on him.

Maybe this is oversensitive, but I'm not comfortable listening to a bit of "we deserve equal rights" rhetoric and knowing that the setup expects me to laugh at that person, going, "ha ha, but he IS a freak who's different from us!"

I think there's a subtext here that's way more loaded than anyone admits.

1 Comments:

At 4:23 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Prepare yourself, I just read in Slate where they are planning to do a sit-com based on this character. Maybe it's a joke...

Is Caveman implicitly anti-creationist?

The most notable sitcom on tap is Caveman, adapted from the Geico Insurance commercials. Three caveman guys—heroic Joel, wise-assed Nick, and mellow Jamie—assimilate into American culture somewhere, according to the accents, south of Charlottesville and east of El Paso. Will they be accepted equals? Will they get into the country club? Would you want your daughter to marry one?

 

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