The Dodge Charger Commercial (Finally)

The Dodge Charger commercial entitled “Man’s Last Stand,” depicts downtrodden, worn out men who look like the life has been sucked out of them explaining everything they do in a relationship to keep their mate happy. Though you never see who the men are talking to, it is understood that they are talking to women. In this commercial women are depicted as naggers and the men they are with have to put up with this so the men deserve an award because they will be at work at eight in the morning and sit through an eight hour meeting and clean up after themselves when they get home. This commercial was seen as sexist. As a response to it a video from the women’s perspective was released. In this video, women expressed the things they have to put up with as women, from how they will pretend not to notice when guys look at their breast, or the fact that they get paid seventy five cents for every dollar that men make doing the same jobs. However, at the end of the video, the women offer no real stand against what the men have said, they’ve stated facts and then decided to “feel sorry” for the men in the Dodge Charger commercial. What’s more interesting is that the female rebuttal offered no women of color.
The video that actually speaks volumes is the video where you still see the men’s faces, but it a woman’s voice saying all the things, the man once gave as his reason for wanting his “last stand.” This video gives a voice to women as a whole not just one category. This video also makes a point to the men in the first video by explaining that the things they are complaining about could easily be done by a woman and that it’s not wrong to want to be nice or to have common decency. It also shows that you could not dub the first women’s parody with a man’s voice, thus showing that there is a clear difference between what women experience and what men claim to experience in being emasculated. The third video also shows Lorde’s point about the differences between the passive be and the active being. The women in the second video tried to use the same method as the men in the first video but left off the real message, that men can not put themselves in the same position as women and have it carry the same meaning. Therefore, their message makes a point that is ineffective without the third video.