What crack? It was just a mention.
The guys are not acting stereotypically gay in any way I can discern, so I really don’t know what you’re talking about.
FWIW, this commercial was airing regularly *before *the SSM decision.
I don’t think that it’s implied that they’re gay, unless you mean they’re expressing the idea that gay people generally don’t really act “gay”.
No, the most offensive thing about that commercial is that it’s boring.
I only saw it for the first time Sat., July 4th.
[QUOTE=Frylock]
What crack? It was just a mention.
The guys are not acting stereotypically gay in any way I can discern, so I really don’t know what you’re talking about.
[/QUOTE]
To me, two dudes knitting (or in this case, *pretending *to knit] does indeed come off as the the producers of the commercial wanting to communicate that they are a gay couple. You really *cannot *see how one would consider that? As to the Mitt Romney crack, I did not take it as “just a mention”. I took it as “obviously Mitt would not go for a gay couple using a play on words involving his name because we all know he is notoriously homophobic”.
Believe me I’m not trying to drive a point home; I honestly don’t care that much. But now I feel like I"m in the twilight zone because, again, to *me *it is glaring, and nobody else agrees. No big whoop.
It looks like a couple of dudes hanging out knitting. The incongruity and over-the-topness about the amount of yarn, the size of the needles, etc. just plays into the cartoonishness of it for me.
I didn’t think they were supposed to be gay, or at least not “the humor in this is that they are gay!”
Fair enough. I’m aware that having worked in advertising/marketing/sales my whole career has caused me to disect everything I see. When I see an ad, print or otherwise, I immediately picture the pitch, the storyboard, the “meeting” the casting, predicting the backlash, etc., etc. It’s impossible to turn off, but I’m always open to have my vision corrected, as you have all done here.
We-ell, don’t give me too much credit. I’m notoriously wrong about almost everything. 
I’m coming in late to the discussion, but since you were from advertising, didn’t it do the thing it’s supposed to do? You remembered the product enough to think about, show it to other people, etc?
For the record, I’ve seen this commercial about 100 times, even though I dvr almost everything. (I never seem to fit the demographic of anything I watch.) And I never read ‘gay’ just ‘odd/stoner/hipster’.
Well . . . that leads to a discussion that I don’t particularly want to get into, only for the fact that that whole line of reasoning, is, to my thought and experience, a fallacy.
I know others will disagree, but in my experience the whole “doesn’t matter what else they take away, as long as they remember it” is an urban legen started by I have no idea whom. For the record, I didn’t remember who this ad was for; I Googled “commercial with guys knitting”. Because I, at least, was not only not sure what message they were trying to convey but what angle in which they were trying to convey it, it did not have the effect they were going for. Admittedly I’m not the average viewer when it comes to advertising, but I would give this ad a fail.
Well, not really. Men do not gay by knitting alone. I have never heard of knitting as a particularly gay stereotype. A man knitting is about as gay as a man feeding a baby with a bottle.
Lesson learned.
It’s an interesting commercial to critique, because a lot of my potential thoughts hinge on intent - did they INTEND to have the guys be horrible at knitting, or were they supposed to look like real, average knitters?
If they consciously chose to have the guys suck at knitting, it ruins it. It becomes yet another commercial that portrays men as stupid and incapable of any “homey” or domestic work/skills.
If they were supposed to look like actual knitters, then I love the concept but the execution was awful. I can’t look at it with non-knitter eyes, but I would think it looks obviously ridiculous even if you don’t know what the act of knitting looks like. I mean, the guy is just sitting there with a huuurrrrduuurrrr expression on his face while sloooooowly putting the needle in random spots, looking confused the entire time. So if they did want them to look like knitters, holy shit did they fail on execution.
But I’d still dig the concept, because there ARE many men who knit and it’s nice to have a commercial break traditional gender norms without it being for laughs.
I didn’t get any gay subtext, though. 
I’m not saying they’re NOT intended to be gay, but they seemed just as likely to be two friends or a couple of brothers.
I couldn’t even pay attention to whatever they were selling, because I wanted to take the needles away from the guy before he could hurt himself and show him how to do it right. They obviously weren’t aiming at the “knows how to knit” demographic.
I have never heard of this stereotype.
I think it’s just an “old lady” stereotype, and when old lady (or even just feminine) stereotypes are applied to men, it’s assumed they are gay.
This is reinforced by having them look like two men of similar age in a house alone. It is undermined by the friendly bro chemistry they have instead of romantic or long-married chemistry.
As a knitter, I shook my head when I first saw this ad. I’m pretty sure no one holds yarn for a knitter. The yarn-holding is for winding a skein into a ball, if you’re not using pull-skeins. :rolleyes: yeah, I know, it’s not a documentary…
I didn’t get a gay stereotype from it - rather, it struck me as yet another look-what-idiots-men-are type of ad. Beyond that, it didn’t make any impression. I couldn’t tell you the name of the company being advertised, and I know I read it somewhere upthread. So I declare it stupid and forgettable.
When I think of men knitting, I think of sailors first, hipsters second, and gays never.
Yes. I recall knitting in particular used this way a couple of times in the past, but it’s just an example of feminine stereotypes applied to men.
Interestingly, way back when, Rosie Greer, famed football player, occasional actor, and friend of OJ used to talk about knitting on talk shows. It was almost a standard disclaimer by him or the host that he wasn’t ‘one of those’. He was actually gay, something he couldn’t publicly state for a long time.
Add me to the camp that didn’t get any gay vibe from the commercial.
To me, they’re just kind of taking a lame shot at hipsters.
Are you sure it wasn’t needlepoint?
I love Rosey Grier.
+me. I thought they were knitting one of these.
