So, this is a Jimmy Dean sausage commercial. And I am not a fan of the product. But the commercial, oh, the commercial.
I want to say something sappy like, “We’re all rainbows!” but I just can’t quite bring myself to do it. *grin* But, advertising message of this commercial aside, the premise is true: Our bodies need fuel.
Give your body the fuel it needs. Or I’ll have to start talking about rainbows after all.
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6 Comments
This is so glorious. Telling us we should eat SIMPLY because then we feel good and alive and happy? Not to lose weight or fulfill some ridiculous notion of “sinful” eating? Beautiful. I love these commercials, and this one in particular.
I have real issues with this in terms of the woman of color being used as literal color (and the white men who “fix” the woman of color, who clearly doesn’t know what she needs). In terms of diet speak, though, I think it’s a good reminder, and I like that there’s not much of an underlying “this tastes good but also has no calories” message, as with many commercials that claim their food isn’t a diet food.
I love this commercial. It made me start eating eggs for breakfast again. (I’d been on a bit of a cereal binge.)
Anita, thank you for bringing that up. I think the cast diversity is a good starting effort but that there was definitely not enough thought put into the roles played – like, the solar system (this is part of a whole series of commercials) is set up like a corporation with the sun as an executive and there was no thought given to why casting a slightly older white male as the exec might be an issue, much less the other roles. (I imagine any criticism would be met with, “we just mirrored typical corporate setups” without an acknowledgement that there are more white execs due to racism and other social issues.)
There’s a whole series of these but my other favorite, especially when it comes to the diet-speak thing, is the solar system one – the diverse planets are not doing so well as they have not had their breakfast. After breakfast, one of the planets says, “I feel awesome,” and the sun replies, “you are ALL awesome.”
And we are.
(The eclipse one is another particular fave.)
I love that she’s on a “special cereal diet”, which is obviously a poke at the Special K cereal diet.
I thought the ad was kind of charming. When I first looked at it, I didn’t notice that “Rainbow” was a woman of color (either because I was looking at a small monitor in a room with a lot of other light, or because I’m not very attentive to that kind of detail), but I found Anita’s comment very thoughtful. I went to YouTube to look at the other commercials in the series and see if they reinforced or countered those overtones of structural racism.
I found this ad,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHjWO6CTn0Y&feature=related
where “Sun” encourages “Moon” to eat something, so he’ll be full before he rises. He fills out the way he’s supposed to, his boss offers him more, and he says, “Thanks, I’m already full,” before going out to perform. The body image thing is nice…but the idea of a black man being expected to make his body conform to his white boss’s expectations are faintly creepy. I doubt it’s worse than mainstream US reality, but it’s not making any attempt to be better, and that’s sad.
The Full Moon ad led me to this, which doesn’t even mention sausage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHIlUzRt_Lg&feature=related
Some kind of reporter interviews the same “Moon,” played by a black actor. The reporter asks what it was like to have astronauts visit. He says it was uncomfortable, turning to show the flag they left in his surface. The reporter cringes. I *think* she’s nauseated by the way his body was claimed, rather than by the way he’s talking about it…but it’s not entirely clear.