"The Consumer:" The Shift to Women's Now Independent Role in Ads, 2015-2017
Reflecting back on the quote by John Berger that "men act and women appear,” Maxwell House’s 1950s television advertisements portray this idea very clearly in their representations of wives and husbands (Leavy, 61). These marriage relations can be observed again in the 1950’s TV ads -- which are decades after the print advertisements analyzed previously -- in part because they are also capturing a time period after war. The men returned from battle and came home to their families, and the roles of the husband and wife continued again. The expectations of an individual’s status in the family were restored. For instance, the first Maxwell House television commercial linked above shows a woman picking up a coffee pot, with her face hidden, and walking towards a group of people gathered together. It can be assumed that the woman is a wife and she is serving her guests and husband coffee. The fact that the wife’s face is cut out of the frame as the camera follows her serving coffee to her guests, clearly supports the impression that her duty is to “appear” with the coffee and tend to her guests, while her husband is most likely engaging with them in conversation and enjoying his own cup of coffee.
Again, in the next ad, the husband reads to their child and puts him to sleep, while the wife “appears” in the kitchen, faceless, until her husband returns and she serves him a tray of coffee. Simone Weil Davis describes the relationships in these ads by saying: “The deep gendering of these positions in the commercial mise-en scene worked to underscore and retain the power imbalance between them, by making it seem to be a “natural” story of the difference between men and women” (Davis, 4). Throughout these commercials, the audience is exposed to the stereotype of the wife serving the husband coffee before work, or meeting him, cup in hand, after he comes home for the day. As Davis wrote, the repetition of these images can normalize the scenes they depict, and thereby institutionalize society’s expectation for the relationships between a man and woman.
When comparing television ads featuring either a woman as the main subject, or a man as the main subject, the characteristics of each still are quite stereotyped. For example, in one commercial the woman, again most likely a wife, sits alone in her kitchen and tries to scoop coffee grounds out of her jar. With a concerned face, she days: “Oh, I’m out of coffee!” She then proceeds to make dramatic gestures with her arms and run about her kitchen, quickly grabbing her coat to go to the store and buy more. The representation of the woman clearly exaggerates the expectation that a wife should be able to manage maintaining household supplies but when she falls short, she is irrationally upset by it.
In the commercial where the man is primarily featured as the main subject, he first runs alongside a dog on a beach, then appears close by a young woman, both drinking coffee. The essence of this commercial captures what men are believed to desire and enjoy. Specifically because the man is running on a beach and then appearing to enjoy the intimate attention of an attractive woman. The emphasis of this commercial is focused on the happiness of the man. He is portrayed in desirable environments including the outdoors and being alongside a woman. The man’s contentedness is also heightened by having a cup of coffee in his hand. Maxwell House essentially presents these images of men and the things that bring them joy, and strategically inserts a cup of coffee to create an association between joy and the coffee itself. Comparatively, the woman from the previous TV commercial is placed in the context of her kitchen and home, which reinforces the association between coffee and a woman’s duties as a housewife.
Refreshingly, when looking at Maxwell House television commercials from today, there has been a significant shift in the storylines regarding the roles and behaviors of women. One TV commercial features a woman sketching out a design for a boat and in the next scene, she is seen in the midst of building the boat. The last scene shows her surfing. In these commercials, the woman’s character is presented in similar contexts as the man in the 1950s Maxwell House commercial. The commercial is focused solely on the woman and how she partakes in activities specific to what makes her happy. She is the main subject and portrayed as the consumer of the product, not simply purchasing for the household. She is depicted as independent, intelligent, and deserving of the desirable coffee drink. In a second TV commercial, a woman finds a trailer home, fixes it up, and is last shown sitting outside the home drinking coffee. Again, she is portrayed alone in a positive and powerful way, instead of tied to the single dimensional context of wife and mother.
The Maxwell House television ads provide a glimpse into other television commercials circulating the digital sphere. The transformed narrative of the female character gives hope that other women rendered in print and TV ads will no longer fall under the expectation of “men acting and women appearing” (Leavy, 61). Women can star in the storylines and fill the role of the deserving consumer, demonstrating that ads are beginning to represent the women of American society more accurately. Regarding advertising in today's culture further, the novel Gender & Pop Culture includes a passage that describes advertising as “a central means of social communication...it tells stories about our wider culture in a popular format, stories that are often gendered in their structure and content” (Leavy, 56). While the Maxwell House commercials are a mere sample of the millions of advertisements created and displayed today, they still carry weight as a sign of shifting gender perceptions. Reflecting on the quote above, advertising indeed tells stories about our culture as a whole, despite supporting certain stereotypes . As long as ads feature men and women, it will be near impossible to de-gender their characters. However, the stories of these modern Maxwell House ads serve to demonstrate that companies who are making strides and shifting perceptions, do exist in today's society.