This is one of those videos that I think you should watch before I say much about it.
There is something shocking about the ending, something awful. And yet the request by the young man in the video is a common one, though it often comes cloaked in more subtle forms. People today use one another in the most crass, utilitarian, and selfish ways! Do others exist merely to give you pleasure? Is this not often the message of cohabitation and sex without marital commitment?
Let me ask you one question about the ending of the video: Why does what the young man says shock you?
The most shocking aspect of the video is that the marketers think (probably correctly) that this ad will be seen as humorous by the target audience. As for what the boy says, a couple of thoughts come to mind in addition to what Msgr Pope says. The obvious unwillingness to commit to the girl entails an assumption that the girl herself is disposable; that is, if she doesn’t “work”, if she doesn’t please him, the young man can simply turn her back over to her father—the conjugal version of a lemon law. ( If she breaks in 5 years, well I guess he’s stuck with her– to follow the logic of the ad.) Perhaps even more outrageous is the assumption that the man has the temerity to ASK the father if it’s OK to treat his own daughter as a disposable toy. And finally, the girl would accept the premise that she is merely disposable.
This is the chicken and the selling of fetal organs by Planned Parenthood is the egg. Not sure which came first but both give evidence of the phenomena of dehumanization in our world of people to the status of commodities. Seems like the fruit of contraception which began the disassembly of women from a whole into parts.
Crass!
That the nihilistic super-culture that dominates self-loathing white people is being peddled to (generally more) God-fearing Spanish-speaking cultures.
Ouch! Wow, that should be an ad against living together before marriage, instead of for cell service.
I didn’t understand the video the first time I watched it, which I found amusing–that I didn’t understand it.
I understand the Muslims have a method for an easy divorce in the sharia law that is practiced in Saudi Arabia. All a man has to do is say I divorce you three times and it is over with. No reason needs to be given. This is another reason I believe the Muslims have it all wrong, right along with earning the right to receiving 72 virgins in paradise, after committing suicide while killing infidels.
How many guys act this out but just don’t say it out loud? If you know a young girl about this age, please help her discern right from wrong men. She doesn’t have the experience yet to see what could happen to her, until it’s too late. We all have to care and do what’s right for her sake!
Honestly women are conditioned from the can talk to pick a kind-hearted man. But they choose not too.
Men have learned that looking out for a women’s eternal soul makes than a women’s friend not her lover.
What else can we as a culture possible do?
It’s shocking because there’s some truth in it. Not capital “T” Truth, but the truth that the western culture subscribes to. If there wasn’t some truth to the belief that our culture sees a woman as an object that should be tried out, no different than a cell phone plan, then there would be no shock. If speaking roles were reversed so that the woman was speaking about the man, it loses its effect because men aren’t materialized to the same degree.
Like satire, it exaggerates a social problem to grotesque proportions. But, I doubt that the marketing team was going for satire when they wrote this commercial.
Unfortunately I have seen both men and women act in this manner.
The video ad is also a commentary on egotistical and self-centered attitudes, which represent much of society today. Corporations play a central role in this psychodrama.
It should be obvious that corporations desire to give their consumers “the business”, which means these corporations use every trick-in-the-book to sell their products. Corporations hire professionals to think, “outside-the-box” around the clock (24/7). Their sole purpose is to find new ways “to entrap” their ever more willing consumers. In other words, they knowingly “addict” their consumers to the ideas, which sell their products. Consumers have already shown their willingness to buy into the concept of “a throwaway society”!
Are human relationships thus to be understood, in the same way as the short-term contract deal proposed by this video commercial?
Here’s the danger: that human beings begin to see themselves, and to treat other human beings, as mere products or services to be bought and sold. Human beings are allowing themselves to be portrayed as throwaways, which are dumped on corporate garbage heaps, like so many inanimate objects.
Human beings are never to be treated as disposable, especially when society is in danger of losing its moral compass; when it is having difficulty finding its way back to the norms of respect for life, human decency, and self-sacrifice; and when it is told that “ideals” are no longer important or obtainable.
Such lies: there are so many of these lies today! We are bombarded by lies. In the end we begin to lie to ourselves and to one another. Truth is the first casualty in this war against human sanity and decency.
The “video ad” places the corporation’s words into the mouth the consumer. It injects deceptive humor into what should be a serious relationship moment. It injects the idea of human relationships as being temporary and disposable!
When a consumer or audience laughs… they are, in effect, allowing the corporative enemy to get free passage behind the sentry guard of their conscience, which is weakened and eventually becomes incapable of guarding against any intruder. This “Television Ad” is so reminiscent of the tale of the mythological “Trojan Horse” used by Greece to enter the impenetrable city of Troy.
Such “Trojan” tactics have become pandemic (in television, music, theatre, art, advertising, politics, and technology) and constitute a real threat to society. How long before such tactics severely disable consciences within society? How long before an infected society reaches the point of self-destructive no return? How will such societies begin again to choose what is right and good and true?
This video is an example of the clever yet insidious manipulation of human beings!
To some extent, I think the marketers were counting on the exact opposite. Humor (which is what this add intended to utilize) often relies upon the unexpected. The marketers were relying on the audience’s expectation that the man would ask for the daughters hand in marriage. The unexpected request for a trial period works as surprise only because a permanent relationship (or at least, more permanent) is expected. The whole ad only works because the expectations for permanence between marriage and a contract for cellular phone services are different.
Sadly, I think the marketers may be mistaken.