Sunday, March 2, 2014
Safety First!
In the 1960s, car accidents were much more dangerous than they are today due to the improved safety features that we now have. The Volkswagen advertisement uses pathos through an image of a post-accident vehicle to evoke fear from the audience. A pressing fear of one's precious wife crashing a car and dying because she was not driving a Volkswagen was the main message behind this advertisement, as seen through pathos. The advertisement states that "women are soft and gentle, but they hit things," which makes it seem like women are constantly crashing vehicles and are not as good as male drivers. Volkswagen uses pathos in this line to evoke a feeling of safety or security from the main target audience, the husband. If a man sees an advertisement that claims to keep his "accident-prone" wife safe, then he will definitely feel a sense of security when his wife drives a car built to keep her free from harm.
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I agree that the Volkswagen ad appeals to pathos by assuring a man that his wife will be safe. I also find that this shows how in a way this incredibly sexist ad was most likely created with good intentions. This highlights how strongly sexism was engrained in culture in the 1960s.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you say on how VW uses women as a reason to buy their safe car. The only thing I don't agree with, and that I find interesting, is that they actually used women crashing cars as a reason for people to buy their cars. Yes the time era was used to seeing this sort of stuff, but I just wonder sometimes if there was really anyone against this before any woman's movement started. Looking at ads today, you wont find many this bad, and it's really interesting to think of the amount of change between the time eras.
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