Two Commercials: One Good, One Bad

I've written about commercials here before, such as "stupid men commercials" and the DJ Hero 2 spot that defies concise description. In general, commercials provide both a reflection of the modern culture and a potent means by which leftists push their agenda. Commercials offer a memorable and pithy message, often in a humorous or visually appealing context, and thus it makes sense that liberals would use this as a medium for propaganda. Or more generally, the entrenched constructs of the cultural left manifest often in TV ads, then become even more acceptable due to the repetition of commercials while viewers only passively listen.

During football yesterday, I saw two new commercials, one unsurprising and the other an unusually hopeful instance of mainstream conservatism. The first shows a boy trying to convince his parents to buy him a dog.



We then see that the parents give into his demands as he's happily playing with a new puppy. Notice how at 0:16 the father looks for guidance from the predictably assured wife. Then, at 0:20, the father brings to his wife a presentation entitled "Why I need to play golf on Sundays", essentially infantilizing and emasculating the husband to the maturity and authority level afforded to his own child. Of course, his wife, the ostensible leader of the household, shrugs him off dismissively and he exits with a look of utter defeat, shoulders caved and head down. The father, the man, is depicted as a puerile, weak-willed individual whose wife dictates to him and not the other way around. Here we see the cultural undermining of men as symbols of authority and strength.

But it's not all bad. In opposition to the despair porn of much of the alt-right, I've posited that a conservative renaissance lies unawakened within the masses, illustrated by anti-Obama rage and last year's Tea Party movement. However, the media, academia, and government inhibit the means by which these apprehensive conservative-leaning individuals find each other and, more importantly, discover the social sanction to express their anti-PC views. Commercials can do much to convince people that others like them exist, that others romanticize about a return to traditionalist America - the one we see in our parents' black and white photos and hear our elders reminisce about wistfully.

A recent Chevy commercial makes this romanticism astoundingly explicit:



Now wasn't that great? A fantastic rendition of America the Beautiful (by Ray Charles, ironically enough for this blog) showing a forgotten nation of nicely dressed individuals, families, smiling children, energetic youth, and natural beauty. The commercial ends with this nod to Chevy-based traditionalism, spoken while a family gets into their car together:

For the first 100 years and for many more generations to come...Chevy Runs Deep

YouTube commenters appear to get the conservative symbolism, noting "I think Chevy has been listening to Mark Levin" and "It's to sad to watch, the golden years have passed." But have the "golden years" really passed if commercials like these put stock in the notion that many Americans still long for that society to return? Chevy would not put all that money and energy into a campaign if they didn't believe there existed an audience for it. So despite the alt-right's hasty defeatism, it seems that the masses still believe in America, the beautiful. And this type of commercial will hopefully help that along.