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Friday, August 22, 2008
TV Commercials that promote stereotypes.....and your paying for it
Have you noticed the anti-drunk driving TV commercial sponsored by the Department of Transportation? Have you noticed the drinking drivers depicted in these commercials? My question is this: Why are all the drivers characterized as white adult males?
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4 comments:
Because all the best acting rolls go to white men :)
Okay, now that the glib joke is out of the way, which videos have you seen? Can you quickly check youtube or the sponsors web site to see if they are posted so we could all see them? Is that the Wisconsin DOT that sponsors them?
Without having seen them, I can think of two interpretations of this off the top of my head. One is the we don't want to make minorities look like criminals and risk offending them. The other would be the we want to show this can happen to anybody, even those we might normally see as good upstanding family men.
There are probably other ways of looking at it as well...hard for me to say much more not having seen them.
Apparently it isn't up on You Tube anymore. It is the "Over the Limit, Under Arrest" ad campaign sponsored by the Federal Highway and Traffic Safety Administration. There was another site http://sherifhedayat.wordpress.com/200
7/12/26/sexist-and-racist-dui-commercial
-paid-for-by-the-us-government/
where the poster saw the same thing. The author also cited California stats were 20% of DUIs were commited by females, 37% by whites, 39% by Hispanics and 17 % by blacks. I don't know what the stats are in Wisconsin, but the criteria in selecting the cross section of drivers in this ad would not comply with affirmative action guidelines.
Thanks for the link...with the name of the campaign, I could track it down. Someone else put it up on Youtube and you can watch it here.
I did see this ad during the national campaign...my reaction at the time was what a bad attempt at injecting humor into an anti-drunk driving campaign!
The campaign seems to have a web site of promotional materails including posters, fact sheets, several commercials (including the original) and even a pre-written letter to the editor people are supposed to print out, sign their name and send in and even an op ed piece for newspapers! (and those of you who pay attention to my thoughts on copying the work of others know how I feel about that!)
To see all their materials, check out Stop Impaired Driving.
There is one woman depicted pulled over in one of the posters, but mostly white men (one or two may be hispanic, but it's hard to tell with the lighting). There is a commercial for this campaign in Spanish, but I can't get it to play for some reason.
So call me crazy, but I am MUCH more offended after seeing this at the tactics our government is using to insert their propaganda into the media and trying to make it appear as if it came from concerned citizens. At least the commercial is honest about its source.
Hale-bopp, the correct site is http://www.stopimpaireddriving.com/.
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