There is a Dodge commercial that features a (smokin’ hot!) faerie flying around the city (Chicago?) turning stuff cute with her wand. She turns a subway train into a christmas train, for example. Spotting the new Dodge, she flies down and attempts to change it into something cute, but her spells bounce right off. Finally, one of them bounces back in her face and she slams into a wall, sliding down to sprawl on the sidewalk. A gruff looking guy is walking by with a bulldog on a leash and he laughs at her. Now, in the original version of the commercial, he said “Silly faerie!” and she turns him into a preppie and his dog into a couple of little yappy dogs, but now they have edited the commercial so that he just laughs at her before she changes him. My question is, why the edit? The only thing that I can think of is that maybe the offenderati got upset because “fairy” is sometimes usesd a a derogitory term for gay people, but that seems far fetched to me considering that, you know, she’s actually a faerie and all. Still, I know that the PC police will go to any length in their niggardly attempts to ensure that nobody, anywhere, uses a word that THEY consider offensive (even correctly). Does anyone know what the story here is? And while we’re at it, does anyone have the faerie’s phone number? She’s gorgeous ;).
I won’t claim to know the actual reason for the change, but when I first saw the commercial, I thought the joke was that the “silly faerie” turned the big macho guy into a “silly fairy”. And I wondered how long they’d be able to show it.
But she is hot.
I love that commercial!! I can see how some of my more sensitive gay brothers might be offended, but I thought it was hysterical.
I’ve never seen the commercial, but has it aired for a while already? If it has, it was probably just cut for time. Commercials are usually shortened after their first run, sometimes to the point that they barely make any sense.
You know, that actually makes sense in a determined-to-find-anything-you-can-offensive way. The only problem I have is that there is a portion of the gay community who does go out of their way to dress and act outrageously. Seems like a double standard to me.
They cut about 1/2 a second out of the commercial, so I doubt it was for time.
Just to be clear: I didn’t find it offensive (it takes a lot more than that, anyway); but I did think that they were going to hear from people who were.
I noticed this during the NHL playoffs. At first, I thought it was oversensitivity at work. Then I saw the full version at the next break. You’re right that the time thing doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t cut that much time from the spot. 
I’ve seen both versions of the commercial recently. I noticed the one without the “silly fairy” line before, but then this weekend I also saw the original. I think I was watching manly NASCAR or something similar on Sunday afternoon. So I suspect there are two versions for two different potential audiences.
Here they are now.
I Googled “silly fairy dodge commercial” more to find out who played the fairy, but the first hit was about the controvery.
Plenty of hits over the outrage, haven’t found out who the fairy is yet.
‘Dodge. When you want a life of boring, grey-faced, mundaness uninterrupted by joy, inspiration, or the slightest bit of wonder. We at Dodge are joyous servants of the machine god. Magic and hope must be destroyed. Chaos must be destroyed. There can only be the ordered precision of clockwork. All things must be the same. Individuality is a crime. The future is a fuel injected, rack and pinion boot crushing the face of humanity forever. Say hallelujah!’
Or am I the only one that sees that as the message of the ad?
Why is resistance to a magical being presented as such a good thing?
Silly Fairy, Trix are for kids!
DocCathode, I would guess that “Dodge ain’t cute” is the message.
Full disclosure: I drive a Dodge, and I’m only a little bit cute.
Nah. Then they would just use the standard ‘because you’re a manly man with a huge penis and a phenomenal sperm count’ approach.
The man walking his dog should have known to carry a bit of iron or the proper talisman though.
I thought the amusing thing about the commercial is that the big macho guy didn’t seem to think it unusual to see an actual fairy flying around the city.
I wonder if there still would have been controversy if he said “silly pixie”. Calling it “hate speech” seems a bit of an overreaction to me.
Then they would hear from the folks at Pixar and the makers of pixie sticks.
Yes, because if a segment of a particular population looks or dresses or acts a certain way then there’s nothing wrong with representing the entire group as looking/dressing/acting in that way. “Hey, some Jews really do have hooked noses and are greedy! Complaining about our representing them like that is a double standard!” Please.
As much as Chrysler spokeswoman Suraya Bliss might want to disingenuously claim that it’s unreasonable to conclude that a man wearing tight white shorts, a sweater tied around his neck and walking four Pomeranians on pink leashes isn’t supposed to make people watching the commercial think he’s supposed to be gay, come on, he’s clearly supposed to be gay, or at the very least the antithesis of masculinity which for all intents and purposes in our culture is the same thing. If there were dozens of ads featuring gay (or even “gay”) images running on mainstream television then this ad might have gotten something of a pass from the so-called “offenderati” (which, having been in touch with the Commercial Closet people on and off for years, they don’t qualify for that label). But I for one can’t think of another commercial currently running that has gay imagery. If Chrysler wants to use gay people as the punchline, then they really ought to be prepared for those people who’re tired of the joke.
As for me, I raised an eyebrow the first time I saw this commercial but it didn’t bother me to the point of actually getting upset about it. It is a negative stereotypical portrayal, though, and Commercial Closet or anyone else calling Chrysler on it is completely reasonable.
Thank you, Otto, I was trying to figure out why I found the OP’s comments so wrong, and you expressed it very well.
I, too, only raised an eyebrow at this ad and muttered “oh, brother, here we are again” under my breath. There was no danger that I would ever have bought a Dodge, so they didn’t lose my business. They did lose another millimicron out of the micron of respect I still might have had for that marque and their advertising agency.
Roddy
Weird. Straight guy checking in here- I never thought she gave him the gay. I thought she turned him into a fratboy.
Bullshit. Nowhere in any context in the commercial, even viewing it with an eye towards being offended, is it stated or even implied that the changed dog walker is representative of “the entire group” of gay people. He’s not even changed into the right archetype if that’s what they were going for, if he had been changed into a flamboyant queen then maybe I’d think you had a glimmering of a point. You’re seeing context that just isn’t there.
He was changed into a “preppie”, which is more or less the opposite of the “jock” type he was originally. I didn’t even consider the posibility that he was meant to be some type of gay icon until the poster above brought it up.
My feeling is that if gay people expect to be accepted as a normal part of society, then they have to be prepared to be depicted as an intrigal part of society, and that includes being the punchline of the joke sometimes. Even so, what exactly is so “gay” about what he was turned into? The sweater? The pomeranians? The pink leash? (My dog had a pink leash, does that make me gay? Or does it make my dog gay?) What exactly? There is no reason to be offended by this commercial unless you’re looking for something to be offended about.
[quote=Otto}As for me, I raised an eyebrow the first time I saw this commercial but it didn’t bother me to the point of actually getting upset about it. It is a negative stereotypical portrayal, though, and Commercial Closet or anyone else calling Chrysler on it is completely reasonable.[/QUOTE]
Again, what is negative about it? Seriously. What?