Violent women in Spanish TV ads: Stereotype reversal or the same old same old?

Introduction

TV commercials are one of the most important vehicles for advertising and thus are worthy of study. Vast amounts of money are spent on creating and airing them (approximately 215 billion worldwide in 2014), and they reach massive audiences. ¹ Most researchers into TV commercials agree that advertisers’ messages go beyond merely promoting and selling products. While some researchers put forward the idea that TV ads reflect already existing attitudes (Greenberg, 1980; Sánchez Aranda et al., 2002: 2), the majority – and here I will just cite a few: Kilbourne (1999: 74), Cohen-Eliya and Hammer (2004: 165–187), Kacen and Nelson (2002: 291) and Beetles and Harris (2005: 399–340) – believe that they project rather conservative views of society, especially in terms of gender portrayal.

I agree with the latter group that the majority of ads in which both men and women appear tend to reflect the gender status quo or even more conservative portrayals of it. Bearing this in mind, I will analyse three commercials, Utabon, Ariel First Timers and biManán PRO, aired during 2012, 2013 and 2014 on several Spanish TV channels. These particular ads caught my attention both as a consumer of TV ads and as a researcher into this genre as they all contain scenes of physical force used by women against male partners. The reason for these displays of inter-gender aggression have nothing to do with what is being sold, as the commercials feature completely different products: Utabon, a spray to clear up nasal congestion; Ariel, a detergent; and biManán PRO, a diet food product for women. Nor can recourse to violence be due to the house style of one particular agency as a different company created each of the three ads. HCBCN and J. Walter Thompson – both based in Barcelona – were responsible for Utabon and Ariel First Timers, respectively, and biManán PRO was produced by Saatchi&Saatchi España located in Madrid.

As none of the external factors surrounding the ads could explain why aggression by women against their partners was present in the ads, I decided to undertake a critical multimodal discourse analysis of each of them. Williamson (1978: 17) shrewdly points out that one of the myths surrounding advertisements is that they are simply ‘transparent vehicles’ for messages but, in fact, advertising is a form of ‘contemporary communicative manipulation’ (Van Dijk, 2006: 361). One of the reasons advertising is described as manipulative is that it is controlled discourse, that is, our interpretation of a particular ad ‘is consumed rather than produced – we do not produce a genuine “meaning” but consume a predetermined “solution”’ (Williamson, 1978: 75). Kates and Shaw-Garlock (1999) agree that, although consumers are the ones who ultimately make sense of an ad, they ‘are subject to the limitations imposed by the (con)text and by relevant social and commercial discourses’ (p. 47). Ads often implicitly connect a product with a lifestyle, or as Williamson (1978) puts it, ‘[a] product may be connected with a way of life through being an accessory to it’ (p. 35). This means that when we watch TV ads, we may unknowingly be accepting a certain representation of society that we have received through the ad itself. Authoritative sources such as the media are capable of moulding our view of society in this way (Van Dijk, 2001: 357). Van Dijk calls the manipulation of our representations of society ‘mind control’, which is a way of reproducing ‘dominance and hegemony’. He goes on to say that people generally

… accept beliefs, knowledge, and opinions (unless they are inconsistent with their personal beliefs and experiences) through discourse from what they see as authoritative, trustworthy, or credible sources, such as scholars, experts, professionals, or reliable media … (Van Dijk, 2001: 357)

Of course, creating, reinforcing or modifying our representations of society is not so straightforward – as Van Dijk (2001: 364) himself points out. The interpretation of a particular message by different recipients would differ depending on the context in which it is received and also on the recipient’s age, gender, social class, ethnic origin and other individual factors.

In the rest of this article I will describe how ‘mind control’ is exercised through the three ads mentioned above. I will argue that female viewers connect subconsciously with the seemingly proactive female protagonists in the ads. This is accomplished through the psychological mechanism that Metz (1986: 47) describes as identifying with ‘our like’ on the screen, which draws on Lacan’s ([1951] 1977, cited in Williamson, 1978: 60–66) notion of the mirror phase in the psychological development of infants. This identification between viewers and the characters in the ad then allows for the projection of ‘common ground’, a positive politeness strategy (Brown and Levinson, 1987), to favourably dispose the female audience towards the female protagonists and, by extension, the products advertised. I will attempt to prove that the portrayal of aggressive women in the ads is not a case of reversing the stereotype of women as passive agents (Conway and Vartanian, 2000). Rather, it is an appeal to the common stereotype of women as carers. In this respect, reaching out to a female audience is partly achieved through the oft-used advertising gambit of depicting men as individuals who are apt to behave childishly and are thus in need of the care and guidance of women.

Gender stereotypes, displays and performance in TV ads

A major type of mind control in TV ads is carried out through the triggering of stereotypes in the minds of the audience as they function as a shortcut to get across ideas and values (Lippman, 1922: 12). Stereotypes activate cognitive schemas or oversimplifications that are already present in the minds of members of a group whereby certain characteristics are attributed to the group itself (in-group stereotypes) or another group (out-group stereotypes). Stereotypes may focus on traits as diverse as race, religion, gender, sexual preference and so on. Although the remit of the Association for the Autoregulation of Commercial Communication (AACC) ² and other regulatory bodies in Spain and other countries is to ensure that advertisers do not deliberately attempt to deceive potential consumers or incite hatred or discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, sex or sexual orientation, stereotypes are still rife in TV advertising. Many researchers have shown that advertisers regularly include gender stereotypes in TV ads even though women as a group are supposed to be afforded special protection. Several explanations have been offered to explain why this is so. Lin (1998), for example, states that stereotypes in advertising play to ‘the perceived fantasies of heterosexual models’ (p. 472). Dietrich (1998: 22) goes further when she warns that TV ads ‘not only sell products but also aggressively sell gender stereotypes’, while Jhally (1987: 135) notes that advertisers appear to be obsessed with them. According to Van Zoonen (1994), an important reason for the presence of gender stereotypes in TV ads has to do with time constraints:

Advertisements and commercials need to convey meaning within limited space and time and will therefore exploit symbols that are relevant and salient to society as a whole. As one of the most deeply felt elements of subjectivity and the social structure, gender provides such symbols most effectively. (p. 67)

Although it is true that gender stereotypes are common, overt and over-the-top stereotypes showing women as objects are found infrequently. There are exceptions such as the notoriously sexist Axe/Lynx adverts, but for the most part, if stereotypes are portrayed in an obvious or even deliberate way this is done in a tongue-in-cheek and humorous fashion. Corner (2004) sees this as part of the tendency to move away from ‘hard-sell’ towards ‘more relaxed, oblique and ironic significations of product quality offered by comedy’ (pp. 231–232). Moreover, blatant stereotypes are less common as the representation of women in TV has changed for the better over the last 20 years (Bresnahan et al., 2001; Coltrane and Messineo, 2000; Elliott et al., 1993; Furnham and Mak, 1999; Ganahl et al., 2003; Kim and Lowry, 2005; Weardan and Creedon, 2002). In most cases, viewers are not aware of the presence of stereotypes, and, as a result, a schema may be triggered in their minds without them being consciously aware of it. A frequent way of covertly introducing stereotypes is through images which, according to Cohen-Eliya and Hammer (2004: 165–187), are ‘not absorbed by the audience in a cognitive and conscious manner’ (see also McQuarrie and Phillips, 2005). Van Dijk (2006) calls this type of communication ‘illegitimate manipulation’ as opposed to legitimate persuasion (p. 361). One cannot combat a stereotype if one is unaware of its presence, and so subtle stereotyping is much more insidious than the overt kind as it is not detected, and consequently stereotypical messages may be absorbed uncritically, especially if we take into account the frequent repetition of ad messages (Cohen-Eliya and Hammer, 2004: 165–187). Lavine et al. (1999: 1050) state that there are two main female stereotypes present in TV ads. The first is the sex object, that is, ‘scantily clad women posing as decorative objects’ and the second, the homemaker showing women as ‘nurturing, communal, and domestically-minded’. Related to the latter is the assignation of different jobs to each gender; for instance, women are more often seen doing non-remunerated work such as shopping and parenting than are men. There seems to be a certain degree of unanimity among researchers that men and women have been depicted differently in TV ads regarding traditional gender roles relating to work and the home (e.g. Bartsch et al., 2000; Courtney and Whipple, 1983; Del Saz-Rubio, 2005; Dominick and Rauch, 1972; Furnham and Saar, 2005; Furnham and Schofield, 1986; Harris and Stobart, 1986; McArthur and Resko, 1975; Manstead and McCulloch, 1981). One way in which advertisers take advantage of occupational gender stereotypes is through the gendering of products implemented via:

… visible design features, advertising, promotion, and perhaps distribution of the product […] modified to include symbols which identify it mainly or exclusively with one sex. (Alreck, 1994: 6)

Nightingale (1990) claims that the reason for this is that women are the ‘prime domestic consumer/purchaser’, which means that they are both consumers and ‘purchasers for other consumers’ (p. 30).

Gender stereotypes are not always negative – at least at first sight. Talbot (2000) reports on a series of British Telecom commercials (It’s good to talk) that show women as good listeners and communicators. Paradoxically, though, positive stereotyping, she argues (Talbot, 2000), may in fact undermine feminism by suggesting that because women are better at some things, such as talking, they may not be as good at others. Furnham and Skae (1997) report a similar promotional strategy, gender stereotype reversal. The difference between positive stereotypes and stereotype reversal is that the former suggests that a group has positive characteristics that are part of the nature, as it were, of the group. The latter, on the other hand, suggests that members of one group have characteristics that normally belong to another group. Humour is pervasive in gender reversal, thus implying that the situations the ads display are out of the ordinary, and consequently that traditional gender roles are more ‘natural’ (Furnham and Mak, 1999: 434).

Gender differences are often communicated more subtly and quickly than through stereotypical portrayals of women as homemakers and men as breadwinners. Certain ways of holding one’s body, the manner in which one walks or sits may be felt to be stereotypically more feminine or masculine. Other gestures such as placing one’s finger to one’s mouth or pouting may be seen as unusual in men, for example, while a woman sitting spread-legged may draw looks from both men and women as behaviour of this kind is considered to be masculine. Goffman (1976) calls these conventionalised gendered behaviours ³ ‘gender displays’ (p. 2). Displays of this kind inform those around us of our relation to them and give clues as to our social identity, mood, intent and expectations. Goffman (1976) posits that displays set the ‘terms of the contact, the mode or style or formula for the dealings that are to ensue between the persons providing the display and the persons perceiving it’ (p. 1). Goffman’s (1976) description of gender displays is not normative. It is, in fact, reminiscent of Butler’s (1990) portrayal of gender as performance, that is, ‘stylized repetition of acts’ (p. 140). Displays like performance have no essentialist basis; they simply reflect behaviours that we have assimilated and are made up to a great extent of ‘oppositions’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 70). Goffman (1976) suggests that we can relate to these displays in advertising as they echo those found in everyday life. The difference is that in TV ads, where advertising messages have to be conveyed in a few seconds, gender displays need to be clearly transmitted, and this leads to the use of a limited number of ritualised displays that advertisers think their audience will pick up on. Goffman (1976) comments that while gender displays in actual life are ritualised, in advertisements they are ‘hyper-ritualised’ (p. 84).

Ad synopsis

In this section I will provide a short description of the three commercials that make up my small corpus. They can be classified as mini-dramas (Stigel, 2001), that is, short dramatic narratives. The simplest kind of mini-drama has an initial scene (or scenes) that sets the context for the action to come; a middle section including some sort of action that alters the initial equilibrium; and a final section in which equilibrium is once again regained. Some feature a final voice-over but they all contain on-screen text. ⁴ The opening scenes of a mini-drama are of the utmost importance as they set up a series of expectations that may or may not be met. Of course, not everyone will have the same expectations, but TV ads are carefully designed to nudge us towards a particular understanding of what is happening before our eyes (Kates and Shaw-Garlock, 1999; Williamson, 1978). In spite of this prompting, nothing is signposted, and viewers are expected to understand what is going on through the activation of the mental schema they possess, which has been built up through their own experience of the world. All three ads are mini-drama + lecture, that is, mini-dramas together with a voice-over and on-screen text (Del Saz-Rubio and Pennock-Speck, 2009: 2545). The mini-drama sections of the Ariel and biManán PRO ads contain some verbal language, but the Utabon ad relies almost entirely on images and narrative. In most mini-dramas, there is no direct interpellation between advertisers and viewers until the end of the ad and practically no product information, so the connection between viewers and characters is one of identification (Metz, 1985; Williamson, 1978).

In the three ads no explicit information is given about the characters, but the fact that they belong to different genders, are of roughly the same age and are found in a domestic setting leads us to assume that they are couples. At first sight, no overt stereotypes are present in any of the ads. In the initial section of the Utabon ad we see a man, who is obviously suffering from a blocked nose, on the edge of a bed while his partner gets into it. The camera then shows a close-up of the Utabon nasal spray, which the man picks up and proceeds to use. This gives way to a dream sequence featuring the man carrying out various actions with the air that now flows freely from his nose, such as blowing bubbles, playing golf and inflating balloons. The scene immediately switches to the bedroom, where his partner, who had been marvelling at these wonderful feats in the dream sequence, suddenly hits him on the head with a pillow, bringing him out of his reverie. She gives him a serious look, a shrug as if to say ‘that’s enough’, and a nod in the direction of the bed as if giving an order. The ad finishes with the man placidly sleeping with a smile on his face.

The Ariel First Timers ad starts with a couple, seated on a sofa, being interviewed by an off-screen interviewer who we neither see nor hear. Their baby is seated in a high chair next to them. The man starts to describe how the baby throws food on all of his shirts such as his ‘today-I-ask-for-a-raise’ shirt (mi camisa, hoy pido un aumento). When he mentions his ‘hey-girls’ shirt (mi camisa, ‘hey chicas’) while rubbing his mouth in a sensual manner, his partner suddenly slaps him on his other hand to stop him from talking. The woman then explains how Ariel Excel Gel ‘eliminates baby stains even in cold water’ (elimina las manchas del peque hasta incluso en agua fría), while the man looks on sulkily until the end of the ad. She ends by saying, ‘today you are wearing your make-the-dinner shirt’ (hoy llevas la de voy a hacer la cena), to which he sullenly replies that he has thrown that particular one away.

At the beginning of the biManán PRO ad, we see a rather large young man with a beard observing his partner while she prepares crêpes in the kitchen with a contented look on her face. He attempts to take one, at which point the woman slaps him (loudly) on the hand, which he quickly withdraws. She says ‘You can’t (have the crêpes). You’re not on a diet’ (Tú no puedes. No estás a dieta). Later, at the dining table, the man grabs the plate with the crêpes on it, prompting his partner to pull it away from him playfully.

Critical analysis

In all three ads, after the opening scenes, which establish the relationship existing between the male and female protagonists, the male partners disengage from reality in one way or another. The application of the Utabon nasal spray transports the protagonist to a dream world where he carries out fantastic acts with the air from his newly cleared nostrils. In the Ariel ad the male partner fantasises out loud about his ‘chick-magnet’ shirt while sensually rubbing his lips. In the biManán PRO ad the male character looks longingly at the crêpes while his hand slowly approaches them, accompanied by a celestial chorus and a partial fade out around the crêpes.

Goffman (1976) comments, in his analysis of gender displays in print advertisements, that ‘[w]omen more than men, it seems, are pictured engaged in involvements which remove them psychologically from the social situation at large’ (p. 68). The opposite occurs in these three ads in which each of the male characters is, in Goffman’s (1976) words, psychologically ‘away’ for a moment (p. 64). The fugue state they find themselves in leaves them open to treatment normally reserved for children and, just like children, they are liable to ‘control by physical fiat’ (Goffman, 1976: 5).

In the next stage, the men’s daydreaming is interrupted suddenly by their partners’ use of force – a blow on the head with a pillow in the Utabon ad and a slap on the hand in both the biManán PRO and Ariel ads. In the first two ads, the male protagonists do not seem to be upset by their abrupt awakening and apparently accept their partners’ actions quite happily. In the Ariel ad, the male protagonist begrudgingly accepts his punishment, although he spends the rest of the commercial pouting – generally seen as an unmasculine gender display – and looking uncomfortable, while his partner knowledgeably extols the virtues of the product.

The presence of physical force in TV ads seems to be an unusual promotional strategy against a backdrop of concern for the numerous cases of gender violence in Spain. During 2013 and 2014, a period during which these ads were aired, a staggering 107 women died at the hands of their partners in Spain. ⁵ These deaths were regularly reported on major television stations, while in the media and academia an ideological battle about the term to be used to describe this kind of violence was raging. What is more, the AACC code, which is basically taken from the international version, ⁶ states that ‘advertising will not incite violence nor will it suggest that violent attitudes are advantageous’. Furthermore, special provisions exist for any hint of violence directed against women in commercials (see Note 2). This is why it is extremely rare for violence of any kind against women to be seen in commercial advertising except movie trailers, although it is present in advertising campaigns by the Spanish Ministry of Health, Social Policy and Equality designed to prevent gender violence and inform women of their rights. There are no cases of gender violence in commercial TV ads in the reports from 2000 to 2013 ⁷ by the Women’s Institute (Instituto de la Mujer). I have only witnessed one case of violence against women in commercial advertising on Spanish television, and that is perpetrated by a very popular comedy actress (Mariví Bilbao) who portrays an elderly woman who punishes those who do not recycle glass – both men and women – in an ecoVidrio ad aired in 2014. Gulas et al. (2010) explain that women are not normally the butt of this kind of violent comedy because ‘violence against women is real and thus is not funny’ (p. 117).

A possible explanation for the portrayal of the violence in these ads is that it is considered to be harmless. The physical force we are shown would not come, for instance, under the definition of violence supplied by the World Health Organization ⁸ as it neither ‘results in nor has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation’. ⁹ One of the problems for researchers doing work on violence in TV ads is that it is very difficult to unambiguously define the term (Potter, 1999: 56). To be able to do so is important, as what researchers define as violence affects how much of it they find. Potter (1999: 56), in the same line as Eleey et al. (1972) and Gerbner et al. (1977), concludes that only those images depicting ‘human or human-like characters’ on whom there was an ‘indication or infliction of overt physical pain, hurting, or killing’ can be considered cases of violence. This definition also covers comic violence, practically the only violence of the kind described in the previous sentence that is found in TV commercials.

Another explanation for allowing violence in these ads is that, because it is perpetrated by women against men, it is somehow not considered to constitute violence at all. It would be unthinkable to show women or children being subjected to violence by men in a TV ad, no matter how minor it might be, but it seems that violence against men is tolerated. Indeed, men are often the victims of comic violence in commercial consumer advertising, whether it be at the hands of other men, women or objects, as in the Acierto.com ¹⁰ insurance ads, in which men are punched across rooms by giant fists. ¹¹ Gulas et al. (2010) point out that in commercials, men ‘are often portrayed as ignorant, lazy, or childish’ or even as ‘buffoons’ (p. 117). Portrayals like this are often a prelude for some kind of violence against male characters. Regarding the ads we are concerned with here, the pouting look on the man’s face in the Ariel ad and the petite woman’s meting out of physical force on her very large bearded partner might be seen as comical due to their incongruence, while the rude awakening of the man in the Utabon ad through a blow with a pillow followed by his meek acquiescence – another example of an unmasculine gender display – reminds one of slapstick comedy. The kind of physical actions shown in these three ads is similar to the Canadian Supreme Court’s description of ‘reasonable force’ related to the admissible physical disciplining of children, that is, ‘minor corrective force’ which is ‘short-lived and not harmful’. ¹² This reinforces the idea that the male protagonists take on the status of non-adults.

For Conway and Vartanian (2000: 196), status, as a manifestation of power, is a more important characteristic than gender. In Western society a person’s status, whatever their gender, often depends on setting. In this respect, numerous researchers state unequivocally that women are normally pictured as having the upper hand in the home in TV commercials (Elliott and Wootton, 1997; Goffman, 1976; Kaufman, 1999; Pryor and Knupfer, 1997; Scharrer et al., 2006; Valls-Fernández and Martínez-Vicente, 2007; Whitelock and Jackson, 1997). Goffman (1976: 36) describes the kitchen and living room as the domain of the ‘traditional authority and competence of females’, while Elliott and Wootton (1997: 446) refer to the kitchen as ‘that most female of all preserves’. Goffman (1976: 36) also observes that men often have no contributing role in a domestic setting while in the presence of females. If they do, they are only allowed to pursue such ‘alien’ activities ‘under the direct appraising scrutiny of she who can do the deed properly’. Goffman’s (1976) description applies perfectly to the behaviour of the three couples in this study.

If we assume that the women in the three ads have a higher status than the men, this begs the question of why this is so. The answer lies in the fact that the real addressees of these ads are female viewers. In themselves, the products advertised – an over-the-counter medicine to alleviate congestion for those suffering from a cold, diet crêpes and washing powder – are gender-neutral and thus could be consumed by either men or women. In spite of this, the products are targeted at one gender in particular: women. I argue that gendering is realised subtly through the narrative of the ads. Although Ariel First Timers is not the classic washing powder ad featuring only women, it is the female partner who is the expert: ‘We wash with Ariel Excel Gel, because it eliminates the baby’s stains even in cold water’. Regarding the biManán PRO ad, there is nothing to stop men eating low-calorie crêpes but the product is clearly marketed at women as we see in the ad. As for Utabon, the female character is not even the consumer of the product. However, she is obviously the person in charge as her partner has, through his behaviour, relinquished his rights to the authority pertaining to an adult. In this regard, another health product, Frendadol, received a complaint from the Spanish Women’s Institute in 2008 as it ‘reproduces the domestic stereotype of associating the care of the ill with women’ ([r]eproduce estereotipos domésticos al asociar el cuidado de enfermos a las mujeres). Having established that women are the real addressees of these gender-neutral products, it is relatively easy to answer the question of why they are targeted. As we have seen (Nightingale, 1990), women are usually the ones who buy products of this type.

I have already established that the three ads mainly address female viewers as they are the most likely purchasers of the products being advertised. I also hypothesise that female viewers are more likely to identify with ‘their like’ on the screen (Metz, 1986) and thus become more involved in the narrative. I will now explain, using the psychological construct of ‘face’ (Brown and Levinson, 1987), how making women the dominant characters in these particular ads might help to sell the products, or at least positively dispose the female viewers towards them. Face is made up of ‘two specific kinds of desire’ (Brown and Levinson, 1987), a desire for ‘freedom of action’ (negative face) and a desire to be approved of (positive face) (p. 13). Both negative and positive face can be threatened by mundane acts such as requests for money, disagreements or criticism – these are called face-threatening acts (FTAs). There are several sets of strategies for doing an FTA. The first three, bald-on-record, positive politeness and negative politeness, are done on record, that is, it is unambiguously clear to speaker and hearer that the speaker is doing an FTA such as criticising, promising, complaining and so on (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 69). Doing an act baldly differs from the other two sets of strategies as no redressive action is taken when doing the FTA (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 69). For example, ‘Try our new improved washing up liquid!’ or ‘Catch these great deals’. Positive politeness strategies redress FTAs directed to H’s positive face. One of their important characteristics is that they do not necessarily redress specific face-want infringements: ‘the sphere of redress is widened to the appreciation of alter’s wants in general or to the expression of similarity between ego’s and alter’s wants’ (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 103). This makes them especially useful in TV commercials. Positive politeness strategies include attending to the hearer, exaggerating interest, approval of the hearer, using in-group identity markers, seeking agreement and so on.

The final set of on-record politeness strategies, negative politeness strategies, redress threats to our negative face. These strategies include the use of conventionally indirect constructions such as ‘Could you please pass the butter?’ or ‘Can you shut the door, please?’. Other negative politeness strategies include hedges, the minimisation of imposition, giving deference and so on. Finally, we have off-record strategies – communicative acts ‘to which it is not possible to attribute only one clear communicative intention’ (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 211). This means that the responsibility for understanding a statement such as ‘I’m broke’ as a request for money is the hearer’s, as the speaker could deny that he or she was making a request at all.

Before looking at politeness in the ‘real world’ interaction between advertisers and actual viewers, I will briefly examine the violence within the mini-dramas from a politeness standpoint as it confirms the downgrading of the status of the male characters and the ascendency of their female counterparts. In two of the ads, the violent acts perpetrated by the female characters are not accompanied by verbal commands. Although it is rarely mentioned in the literature, Brown and Levinson (1987: 65) make it clear that manifestations of politeness can be both verbal and non-verbal (see also Ambady et al., 1996). All the examples they give of non-verbal politeness strategies concern on-record redress directed to H’s negative face, such as bowing and lowering of the eyes (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 172, 186, 190, 222). They make no mention of physical contact to do an FTA. However, the most salient FTA in the Ariel ad is haptic, or tactile (cf. Poyatos, 2002: 244), when the woman slaps the man’s hand to stop him talking. In the Utabon commercial, haptics and gesture are both used; for example, the female character hits her partner on the head with a pillow to awaken him from his daydreaming, shrugs her shoulders as if to say ‘enough is enough’ and then nods towards the bed to visually order him to get into it. In these two ads there is no redress towards H’s face. So, in both ads, we have what could be described as non-verbal bald-on-record acts (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 60). In the biManán PRO ad there is some redress. When the man’s hand approaches the crêpes, the woman slaps it loudly and exclaims ‘You can’t. You are not on a diet’. The first sentence, together with the slapping of the hand, would constitute a bald-on-record imperative. However, the second sentence, which serves as a reason for the prohibition, constitutes a hedge, thus turning the whole sequence into a negative politeness strategy (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 170). The existence of a hedge highlights the more amiable nature of the interaction in this ad as compared to the other two – notwithstanding the dominant position of the female character.

I will now turn to the analysis of the politeness strategies employed by the advertisers to persuade the viewers of the benefits of the three products being advertised. First of all, one could argue that these ads – like every ad thrust upon unwilling viewers – threaten the viewers’ negative face in that they interrupt the programmes they are watching. This is compounded by the fact that most ads contain specific threats against the viewers’ negative face in the shape of direct requests that they do, or refrain from doing, one or more acts. Del Saz-Rubio and Pennock-Speck (2009) found that in mini-dramas, requests of this type are seldom found given the predominance of non-verbal communication directed at the viewer. This is the case in the three ads being examined here, in which directives addressed to viewers are limited to the type: ‘Find us on Facebook’ (Ariel), ‘Find out more at Bimanan.com’ or ‘Utabon, breathe better.’ Bald requests like these can be classified as non-face threatening as they minimise the imposition ‘by coming rapidly to the point’ (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 131) and because they are done with the viewers’ best interests in mind (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 67).

In all three ads, potential FTAs are redressed chiefly by the macro positive politeness strategy ‘claim common ground’ (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 103) which, in turn, is implemented through several positive politeness strategies. Interestingly, these are conveyed not through direct verbal messages addressed to the audience, but implicitly through the narrative of the mini-dramas – a frequent approach in many commercials (cf. Del Saz-Rubio and Pennock-Speck, 2009; Pennock-Speck and Del Saz-Rubio, 2013). The first of the common ground strategies is Strategy 3: ‘intensify interest to H’ which, in our ads, is achieved by telling ‘a good story’ in order to engage H in the unfolding events (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 106). Mini-dramas are designed to entertain the audience and appeal to their emotions rather than inform them. They accentuate what Crook (2004: 734–735) calls the reward dimension of TV commercials, as opposed to the product-claim dimension in which viewers are given information about products or services. Even more central in our ads is Strategy 7: ‘presuppose/raise/assert common ground’, indicating that ‘S and H belong to some set of persons, who share specific wants, including goals and values’ (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 103). The common ground projected by the advertisers in all three cases is that both the female characters and the female audience belong to the set ‘proactive women’. By association, the products in the ads are also shown in a positive light.

Conclusion

The majority of viewers of TV commercials are far from being naïve. As far back as the 1970s, Williamson (1978) stated that most people have a sceptical view of advertising: ‘[a]ds are generally regarded as lies and “rip-offs”’ (p. 174). For his part, Crook (2004) wryly remarks ‘one would be hesitant to accuse advertisers of integrity’ (p. 736). The fact is that these statements reflect our ‘conscious’ attitude to the world of advertising (Williamson, 1978: 174), but as consumers of TV ads, it is easy to become involved in them without being fully aware of the messages they convey. If the narrative in a mini-drama, for instance, has some verisimilitude and does not jar with our view of the world, we may tacitly accept its premises. The three ads I have analysed, along with others such as the ecoVidrio ads mentioned earlier, appeal to ‘common sense’ ideas about the roles of women that many of us may have acquired in childhood and adolescence through personal experience or through sources such as the media. We may struggle against these ideas, but they are part of what we have learned. What these three ads do is use subtle stereotypes of male and female roles that possibly lie dormant in the minds of the audience in such a way that potential female customers may identify with them. The insidiousness nature of this kind of implicit communication from the viewpoint of the advertiser is that, as Van Dijk (2001) says, it is ‘hidden’ (p. 358), and so it is less open to challenge. In the words of Schudson (1984), ‘… television ads may be more powerful precisely because people pay them so little heed that they do not call critical defences into play’ (p. 4).

On the surface, the women in these ads seem to be in control of the situation, which makes them seem more powerful and therefore gives them a higher status as, according to Conway and Vartanian (2000), higher status is conveyed by agency, an ‘assertive, instrumental orientation’ – in the case of these three ads, exercised through violence (p. 181). This is the idea projected by the advertisers to appeal to the female viewers’ positive face. However, because their partners are apt to lapse into childish behaviour, the female characters are obliged to adopt a maternal role. They therefore become subjects who have roles with an ‘emotional, interpersonal orientation’ – normally reserved for lower status individuals (Conway and Vartanian, 2000: 181). The dependence of the male characters on their partners, revealed by the way they accept their punishment, relegates the female characters to the traditional roles of guardians of their homes and families. Thus, the apparent image of proactive women, which seems to reverse the gender-role status quo found in many ads (Bell and Milic, 2002), actually reinforces the stereotype of women as carers rather than debunking it.