YE4A Group 8

1094100008 Wei-Fu Hsieh

1094100016 Josie Chen

1094100038 Luke Li

1094100050 Alice Chen

1094100051 Erika Harada

AD Paper Analysis – Mitsubishi Car

In our traditional thinking and notion, we all have various expectations toward gender roles. Stereotypes are always in our mind. If we inspect those stereotypes more closely, we would find that most of the stereotypes are the sexual bias. We divide things into what men can do but women can't, and what women can do but men can't. Take one of the sexual bias as example in our daily life, most people think women are not good at driving. We believe that everyone must have this kind of experience - we are sitting in the car that is droved by our boyfriends, husbands or fathers. At the mean time there's a car moving very slowly in front of us, and 90% of the male drivers will say, "That must be a woman driving that car!" Even women themselves think that men are good at driving and using machines. We can see this kind of case in most of the commercials, but today we are going to introduce you a different one.

This is a commercial from Mitsubishi for its new product, sport utility vehicle Savrin. Unlike other automobile commercials focusing on their capability, this one emphasizes the combination between the product itself and human sentiment of a family. The theme of this commercial is the felicity of family based on trust. Through the story of this commercial, we see the image of a happy family. Two parents and a child are like the elements that form a family well, and the possessing of an automobile seems to make the family even more complete. Compare to other automobile commercials that set the target market to men who have reached great achievements in business and should get their own cars to promote themselves to a higher social class, this Mitsubishi commercial provides a vision of a happy family as one of the achievements that everyone should accomplish. This commercial simply offers the audience the perception and the symbol of the success in life, and then attracts people with an available product that helps everyone to achieve their dreams.

We can see that the wife drives in place of her husband because her husband just drank alcohol at the beginning of this commercial. Her husband was really worried if she could make it, but she proofed her capability of driving afterwards. Men should always know that women are reliable and trustable. In our society, it seems that people pay more attention on women's appearance rather than women's professional achievements. Even women fight for sexual equality for so long, women are more restricted than men, since it is still a patripotestal society here in Taiwan. However, this commercial intends to tell us that women are able to do whatever men can do in our society. Women should be valued and treated the same way as men.

Moreover, the plot of the commercial actually brings out some issues that needed discussion. When we first see the commercial, we believe that there are different opinions from both men and women. Every time mentioning about driving, men usually think that they drive better than women, some men don't even believe that women are capable of driving. Women are considered that they are blunt in sense of direction and too careful to drive quickly. However, as the women's movement and women are getting more independent, modern women today can drive as well as men.

Ideas of both genders are changing gradually. The absolute perspectives about gender are falling away in this modern society. All we need to do is to have an open heart and respect the opposite genders in order to acquire balance in everything.