Thursday, February 27, 2014
Logic?
The appeal to logos in the Volkswagen ad appeals to men in the 1960's and is based on the stereotypes of women being bad drivers. Back then, it was taken as logic that women were inferior at driving and completing simple tasks so it was assumed one day if your wife was driving she would crash the car. The ad successfully uses the logic of the time period and claims that despite the impending crash your wife will be in, the car will be okay and the husband's investment will be safe. Although this ad appeals very well to the dominate male population of the time, it would not be radical to assume it appealed to the women of the time as well. Even though the ad is claiming that women are worse drivers, it does indicate that the woman driving would be safe. This successfully gets the message of the ad through to the audience of both men and women despite the sexism.
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One thing I find so fascinating about this ad is that no where does the ad physically need to indicate that women are bad drivers. There's this implicit stereotype of that era that gives this Volkswagen ad so much meaning. Often in commercial or ads they'll have to make a joke or a statement to correlate to the idea they're trying to portray. The implicit logos of this ad certainly gives the Volkswagen a new meaning.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Debi. The fact that the ideas presented in this poster were simply "logical" in this time period and that Volkswagen could simply imply that women were bad drivers shows how much logical thought has changed and also makes me wonder what kinds of things we are looking at today as "logical" that will be ignorant years from now.
ReplyDeleteIt is very interesting how you note that even though the ad was sexist, it still had the ability to appeal to both men and women. It could even be that at the time, women did not see the ad as sexist, rather an appeal to their safety.
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