In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground- a time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.
- Wangari Maathai
One of the hallmarks of modern commercial advertising is the effort to re-create traditional ethical values and myths. Advertisement campaigns seek to create a feeling for the glorious days of yore and re-create the nostalgic past in the present. Divine figures as well as traditional art forms and festive cultures are often parodied by commercial advertisements. It creates in the mind of the people a feeling of nostalgia and a sense of pride in tradition and gives them the illusion of a chance to re-create it with the help of the product propagated by the advertisement.
Traditional values such as family, friendship, respect for elders and so on are promoted through ads to create a positive setting for the commercial product. In addition to the feel-good sensation, commercial ads in recent times have tended to promote new and sometimes revolutionary values. Especially when considering the mobile network ads in the last two years, you cannot but notice novel concepts of an ideal society propagated by them. Post-modern ideas such as New Feminism, gender equality, rights of the marginalised people, ecological concerns and so on are artistically promoted, coupled with traditional values. The most striking among these are undoubtedly the concerns in New Feminism. This is an attempt to trace and appreciate the strikingly new female-centric social values pictured in the popular mobile network ads in recent months.
Wife as the New Boss
One of the basic tenets of New Feminism as a cultural theory is to provide equal opportunity to women in each and every social scenario. They should be given higher opportunities for employment, especially in positions that call for leadership qualities and decision-making power. Such an empowered woman is portrayed in one mobile network advertisement, which portrays a woman (wife) as the boss and man (husband) as an employee. The wife, equipped with all the powers of a boss, calls for overtime work for her employees. The husband takes her words for granted and finishes his work. As the boss-wife reaches home, she prepares delicious food for her husband and calls him to come home.
The heroine of the ad, who is the boss at a private firm, becomes an icon who promotes the scope for women becoming the head of an institution. With their high sensibility, skill to empathise and long-term sustainable ideas, they make the best leaders, as the New Feminists opine. While men can be overpowering, callous and insensitive bosses, a confident woman leader is preferred with her smiling face and caring heart.
The Mentor of Disunities
Even back from the time when human beings started living as families, women have been the binding wine of love in the family. Yet, this aspect is not tested in a larger scenario. Women were (and continue to be) treated as being incapable of shouldering larger responsibilities, the scope of which is symbolically propagated in many of the popular mobile network ads. One advertisement campaign frames a girl who transforms her village into a metropolitan scenario with the scope for new industrial establishments where her father can join and travel from home. Here the girl becomes the mentor of social and cultural disunities. Even a village girl can do such great deeds where a man (her father) could only go away to the town and work there for a lifetime.
Another company’s advertisement presents a girl who can be considered the symbol of the truly empowered, passionate and decision-making Indian woman of the new era. Each of her attributes adds to the feel-good sensation of the ad as a whole. As a veteran officer of her company packs up for his retirement, she decides to treat him on his farewell and takes an initiative for this, and all the other staff including the boss comes in line with her. She is presented as a pregnant woman wearing modern dress, having curly hair, smartphone in hand. She is a promise to the Indian girl that she can work even after her marriage and even after becoming pregnant. Her modern dress and jovial nature also puts the green signal for the village girl to enter the metropolitan culture without losing her inner virtues.
Yet another ad featuring cine actor Isha Talwar presents a woman of fresh ideas. While her husband is desperately following money and opportunities, she comes up with ideas “that can change their life”. By using the product, she shows her husband how to help others even at a low cost. She advocates the innovative capability of the empowered, liberated Indian woman.
Bold is Beautiful
Contradicting the traditional concepts, the new generation mobile network ads present women as bold and powerful. They cease to conform to the patriarchal ideas of a homemaker woman. They are presented as challenging the traditional ideals of beauty, dignity and manners. One ad presents a young woman in a male-dominated scene defeating others in a symbolic way. She is fearless, careless about feminine beauty; challenging others in the fashion of a boxer (she imitates some boxing steps also). In another ad we see the housewife taking her son to get his hair cut while her husband takes charge of grocery shopping. Here the female counterpart is attributed capabilities for outdoor activities. These ads also give the female gender the power to choose. One ad has a maverick girl who tells her parents she is not interested in boys. The father and mother blame each other for having their daughter lost from the domestic discipline. Then comes the call from her boyfriend and the daughter gives a negative response. Frightened, the parents conspires to make her stick to that relationship. The girl selects her partner most probably from another religion or caste (as his name suggests), thereby using the power to pursue her own destiny. An ad featuring Ranvir Singh also brings a girl who uses the decisive power over her lover, rather than just obeying the male-centred rules.
Reaching New Boundaries
“We are either going to have a future where women lead the way to make peace with the Earth or we are not going to have a future at all,” wrote Vandana Shiva. Eco- Feminism, one of the more recent developments in feminist theory, advocates that the paternalistic/capitalistic society has led to a harmful split between nature and culture that can only be healed by the feminine instinct for nurture and holistic knowledge of nature’s process. The strikingly new concepts of Eco-Feminism are metaphorically narrated in some of the mobile network ads. Women are equipped with a heightened sense of sustainability and a caring attitude. In one ad, the gift given to the retired man is a sapling, given by a girl. In another ad, the idea of developing traditional and nature-friendly products to develop the village is proposed by the girl; and she leads the men of her village to this goal. All of these advertisements promote eco-friendly ideas such as the use of paper bags, planting of trees and sustainable development.
Men of Honour
And what do the men do when women of the New Feminist boom cover all facets of society? Men are represented, as the New Feminist theories advocate, as caring and nurturing individuals sharing responsibilities equally with their female counterparts. They are no more the unquestioned masters of patriarchy. In one campaign the dad is portrayed as one who takes his son to the school bus, arranges his dress for a fancy dress competition and becomes a ‘super-dad’. Men are willing to do household chores, baby-sit, and make household purchases. Sometimes they are the beneficiaries of women’s work, and they don’t feel humiliated by it. They are the New Men who understand and cooperate with the feminine gender. The male boss accepts and acts according to the suggestion of the female staff in one ad, the father accepts with pride the manager’s chair offered to him by his daughter in her industrial establishment, the man requests his girlfriend not to leave and anxiously waits for her… all these pictures call for a new social order.
All these new generation ads promote in one way or other a welfare society where men and women are co-inhabitants, sharing equal responsibility and freedom. It is a still unfinished dream. It is a good turn that the popular commercial ads promote the values for a better social milieu and let us hope for a finer future with no discrimination, no marginalisation and no oppressions, as 3G turns to 4G and 5G.
binurajrs@yahoo.com
Published - July 01, 2017 08:32 pm IST
