Show and Tell: The Superhero Mum and the limitations of advertising
Show and Tell: The Superhero Mum and the limitations of advertising
A fortnightly newsletter that breaks down the visual construction of imagery.
A few years ago, my mother used to have the habit of answering the phone every time I called with, “Hi ma. Everything is fine.” I found this a very suspicious way of greeting me. I mean, I assumed everything was fine, which is why I didn’t ask.
I was reminded of her when I watched this ad by iD:
The first time I watched the ad, I must admit, I teared up a little. But then I thought about it, and got very mad. Now, iD is hardly the worst offender in this category of ads that traffic in stereotypes of motherhood. It is the target of my ire mostly because it popped up on YouTube and insisted I watch it before I could get to the cooking video I really wanted to see. But it does serve as an illustrative example of the point I wish to make.
What the ad shows
If you couldn’t sit through all three minutes of the ad, I congratulate you on being more critical than me. Briefly, the ad shows a tired-looking woman in surgical scrubs. She pours herself a mug of iD coffee, before making an impossibly-clear video call to her daughter. The daughter answers and when her mother asks how she is, she says, “We are fine”. A younger son also makes an appearance and chants “We are fine”. The mother tears up as she tells her daughter she can’t come home for the “festival”. (iD doesn’t specify that the festival is Diwali, so as to appeal to as broad a consumer base as possible). The daughter tells her it’s OK, and that they will celebrate when she returns. She then walks the tablet over to the father, who is labouring over a misshapen dosa that he’s making with iD batter. The father and daughter show the mother the range of iD products they have been eating, which they call “home-cooking”.
“Wah. I’m gone for two weeks and you guys have become masterchefs?” the mother asks, before tearing up again and telling them she’ll be home “as soon as I can”. The father tells her reassuringly, “Don’t worry about us. We… are fine here.” There is an interlude where a nurse asks the doctor to thank her husband for sending them iD coconut water. Then the doctor gets paged and has to leave. Her family waves her off, with the little kid piping “We are fine” one last time. The ad ends with thanking the [covid] warriors for their love and sacrifice, then announces the tagline: “iD. Made with love”.
By my count, the phrase “We are fine” is repeated nine times in the space of the three minute ad.
First, second, and third thoughts
“First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by themselves. They’re rare, and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
My first thoughts when I saw the ad were of sympathy, for this woman who was doing an impossibly hard job and clearly struggling with missing her family. I thought the husband was reassuring, and the swelling piano track in the background was certainly affecting. But then, I began to think: Why does the mother feel guilt in the first place? Why does everyone take her guilt as a given and hasten to reassure her, with an air of nobility? She has left her children in the care of what one hopes is a well-functioning co-parent who should be fully equipped to see to their needs. Why is it assumed that her husband is incapable of feeding himself and their children nutritious food? I get that she would miss her family, but not why she would worry that they were incapable of caring for themselves without her or that they will fall apart if she has to stay at her job of literally saving people’s lives for longer.
Why is the husband’s inability to make a decent dosa a source of amusement? If the genders were reversed, and it was the man who was the doctor in the covid ward, would he also worry the same way? If the woman fed her children frozen and packaged foods three times a day, would that be celebrated? Why is it that women are expected to prepare home-cooked meals, but the moment men have to step in and cook themselves, an entire industry mushrooms up to make their lives easier, while simultaneously glorifying their slightest efforts?
And why did I (like most of the YouTube commenters on that ad) tear up when I first saw it? Are we so conditioned in these maternal stereotypes, that we don’t even bother to question them? I remember reading an internet comment that stuck with me. “Your first reaction to something, that’s your conditioning. Your second reaction, that’s who you are.” How many of us would pause and think through a second reaction? It’s an ad. Watching it is the price of admission we need to pay in order to get to the actual content we want. So why would we even bother to question our conditioning? That’s what the ad makers are counting on.
A healthy amount of skepticism
The role of advertisement is to sell us things. They identify or create needs and then tell us how we can meet them, for a price. But when many advertisers are competing to sell us the same things, then advertisements need to differentiate themselves. They often do this by overlaying a certain ideology upon the ad. We associate with the ideology, and through it, with the product. Judith Williamson explains this as, “Advertisements rather provide a structure which is capable of transforming the language of objects to that of people, and vice versa. […] Advertisements are selling us something else besides consumer goods: in providing us with a structure in which we, and those goods, are interchangeable, they are selling us ourselves.”
In the iD ad, they are selling us a mother’s love in a product, because – by the logic of the ad – that’s the only way to get it when the mother cannot be present. Heaven forbid the father provide it instead. It isn’t even a possibility the ad entertains, because if it was then there would be no need (in their imagining) for their product.
This is the limitation most ads bump up into when they try to be progressive. If they are speaking up against a social evil (here, that women are made to feel guilt over their jobs coming before their families) in order to sell their product, they cannot do it too stridently, because doing away with the evil might do away with the need for their product itself. Of course the ever-present reality of domestic help – comprising underpaid women with few rights or protections – is completely ignored here, because that too would conflict with the ideology of the ad.
It is the rare ad that can imagine a world which is progressive and situate its product within that world. And to be fair, that is perhaps too high a burden to place upon an ad, whose primary function is to increase sales, not change the world.
Elsewhere:
I stand in solidarity with Sanitary Panels.
When Satan met 2020, with a little help from Taylor Swift.
Jewellery that contributed to building Nicole Kidman’s character in “The Undoing”.
Has photography made climate change… beautiful?
Have yourself a Meowy Christmas.
Show and Tell is a newsletter that breaks down the visual construction of imagery. It comes out every fortnight. If you like it, do share it with someone you think will too?
If you have comments, criticisms, ideas for a future newsletter, or anything else you’d like to talk about, do write to me at nithya@nithyasubramanian.com