I AM NOT A MAN

I, apparently, am not a man. I have always harbored this assumption, but now – at last – I have the necessary evidence. Thanks to Burger King, that is. I had wondered, had been uncertain in the past, but now it all seems so obvious. Luckily, at last, I have a blueprint; I know what I must do to be a man.

I am pretty sure the wife has known all along, but I shall have to double check when she arrives at the airport tonight to see if she is alright with this development. Otherwise I suppose it must be cow eating, free-balling, quiche hating, and minivan tipping from now on for me. I guess I will have to learn to like cheerleaders and thrill at punching other men. “Double portion” will need to become a staple of my lexicon. God knows what else I will have to do.

Hopefully, though, the wife won’t mind that I am not a man. But then, can I still be a husband? Does this make me the wife? What happens to the wife then? Will she be the person formally know as the wife?

Damn you Burger King; look at all the perplexity you have added to my life.

But seriously, homophobia – along with it older sibling sexism and the ever-so-fashionable newborn metrophobia – continues to grow as the stalwart of advertising practice, and I find it to be not only offensive, but also to be just plain bad advertising. Contemporary advertising has become increasing reliant upon the premise of the niche – that small audience that needs to be reached in order to succeed. While the niche market has its role in commercial practice – such as those likely to buy a pair of powder-blue loafers in 2006 [i.e. me] – it is a problematic marketing approach when one is dealing with broad-audience products – i.e. things that are dissimilar to the abovementioned powder-blue loafers.

Niche marketing asks who is the primary audience for a product and then attempts to address that group at all costs. In Burger King’s ad the assumption is that men – manly men that is – eat lots of meat. Thus it attempts to make these manly-men feel good about this desire, encouraging them to throw off the shackles of the repressive regimes of women and queers – or at least the stereotypes of what these groups desire. While this commercial may in fact be effective in recruiting the intended audience, what are the ramifications of this success?

Obviously I find it problematic to utilize sexist, racist, homophobic, or any other form of derogatory speech to sell stuff, but that is what this commercial does – along with the countless others like it. It seems to me to be dangerously close to the racist advertising images of the late 19th century and early 20th century. But this is not the point of today’s writing – or at least not directly. My problem is that ads like this one are simply ill-conceived.

I do not really believe that all of these advertising people are sexist and homophobic. I would probably guess that most of them are actually rather open-minded. But these commercials are a result of the growing effect of the niche market premise. If the goal of a commercial is to speak to the niche it is targeting, then all that matters is that it does so. Collateral implications are irrelevant. Hence the assumed beliefs of the target group are adopted by the speakers whether agreed with or not, absolving the advertisers from responsibility for their speech since it is only the efficacy of the commercial that matters. The problem is that niches aren’t secure, and products are not discreet. What about the non-manly men and women who occasionally like a large slab of beef? Or the people who might come to Burger King for breakfast? Or a salad? [I suppose this happens.] What about the potential overlapping audiences that this ad may offend and turn away? In short, what about those who are not part of the niche?

Speaking is hard: especially in thirty seconds. I recognize this. But I do not think narrow spectrum discourse is the answer. Eloquence enables communication with a specific audience while not excluding others. In the case of commercial activity, marketing should find its primary audience while striving to open up new potential markets, and thus sales. The best way to do this is to speak judiciously, which is not the same as being “PC.” It is to speak without doing so at the expense of others.

But what we are currently seeing is a circular process: the niche mentality leads to further use of derogatory communication, which further engrains the niches – or divisions. Again, I assume that most of the people involved in these ads are probably decent human beings – though perhaps a little too driven by corporate desires for my taste. The problem is that we – culturally and individually – are abrogating our responsibility for what we say. I am reminded of a quotation from Martin Luther King Jr.: “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” While it is self-evident that Dr. King was a far better man than I, these words seem all too applicable to the world around me and specifically to the topic at hand.

I could go on for hours about this, but I want to leave off tonight with something a student of mine at the school in Iowa said to me. As I was haranguing this student about the inappropriate ramifications of his/her writing for a design, he/she argued in frustration: “But in the real world I won’t have to write; marketing will just give me the copy.” I replied simply: “But what happens when the copy is bad?”

I have never quite recovered from that event, and I hope I never do. I believe in words – in what they can say and what they can do. What we say shapes the world we live in: today the world has become a little bit uglier again.