Stanley Kubrick used “The Thieving Magpie” in “A Clockwork Orange”.
SHAKES
This bit cracked me up:
Re the OP: I am not bothered by that sort of thing. No big deal to this white male. <shrug>
It’s hardly a new phenomenon. It’s been kicking around since before the Sucrets commercial featuring the whiney incompetent man who wakes up his wife because his throat hurts, and that goes back to 1980 or so.
I guess his throat woudn’t hurt so much if he didn’t suck his thumb all the time, the infantile twerp.
A more recent commerical that has me baffled is for Chevrolet. A young man is driving along a oceanside road while McLean’s American Pie plays on the radio. As the final chorus is reached:
…drove my Chevy to the levy and the levy was dry,
And good old boys were drinking whisky and rye,
singing this’ll be the day that I die.
The man parks the car, meets with a young woman who has been waiting and they start to walk, fully dressed, across the deserted but narrow beach toward the ocean.
Narrator: “Chevy. To the very end.”
Ghar? Is Chevy marketing to people who form suicide pacts now? If the driver was an eighty year-old clinging to his Chevy even at his deathbed, then maybe some grim humour could be wringed from the circumstance, but why target a commerical toward depressed Gen X-ers? At the very least, it doesn’t encourage repeat purchase.
I agree. Women are less likely to be the butt of the joke. But “minorities”? If anything, I think males of any race are likely to be the buffoon. You notice a lot of white males because, as I said earlier, most ads feature white males. It’s not a white thing. It’s a male thing.
This isn’t something isolated to commercials. Most sitcoms are from the male perspective. Hidden Hills. Scrubs. The Simpsons. All those stupid ABC family sitcoms (all of which cast an ugly guy with a hot wife he couldn’t possibly attain in real life). Interestingly, I wish women could portrayed as goofy, funny, not-always-right people. If you think about it, most humor out there is targeted to males. You can’t flip on the radio in the morning without hearing a couple of guys giggle about tits and ass and who’s hot and who’s not.
I think all of this demonstrates that humor, like many things, are still considered male domains. DAVEWOO, you see the laughing at males as an insult against males. I see it as an insult against women.
I agree with you. monstro, but it wasn’t this way when I was a kid. George Burns was sensible; Gracie Allen was a ditz. In “Father Knows Best,” father did know best. Desi Arnaz was sane; Lucy was off the wall. Fred Mertz was also more sensible than Ethel. Our Miss Brooks (Eve Arden) was another ditz – not quite so wild as Lucy.
It would be interesting to know when and why this structure changed. I would speculate that it may have been a outgrowth of women’s lib. The sitcom needed somebody we could all laugh at, and it was no longer OK to use women as the butt of jokes. I think the change was for the good, because it helped undo the image of women as not being competent.
I’m with Shakes. I think this a pretty funny commerical. But then I tend not to get easily offended by things. :: shrug ::
I JUST saw this commercial today!
God, it’s so cool when you hear some rail about a certain ad and then you finally get to see it. Still, the build up is usually more momentous than the actual event. Kind of a let down.
I wouldn’t have gotten it at all if I hadn’t seen this thread though. That is, I wouldn’t have realized it was an ass-rapin’ they were worried about. I would have stared cluelessly…“Huh?”
Anyway I personally would have found it funny if it was women or a minority group being afraid of getting ass fucked. I’m an equal opportunities mocker.
Well, to be fair, I think they meant he was waiting till the end of the song before they went on their walk. Not a suicide pact.
Frankly, it’s kind of unsettling that that was the first thing you thought of. 
I agree, that’s what I thought, too…“American Pie” being such a long song, the bored expression on the girlfriend’s(?) face, etc.
I’m not sure what it’s supposed to imply about the car’s performance or reliability, though. I mean, are we supposed to be impressed that the radio doesn’t go Chernobyl before the last verse, or what?
Interesting. If the laughing were at females, would you see that as an insult against men?
Well, I thought of one show that doesn’t depict the typical white male as dumb…
“Frasier”! Well, sure, Niles and Frasier are portrayed as idiots quite a lot of the time- but it’s mainly funny because they still do stupid things, or get involved in immature sibling rivalries, despite being educated psychiatrists. And Daphne is made fun of for being a quirky English chippie, and Roz for being a slutty man devourer…next to all of them, Martin (Frasier’s father and the quintessential beer drunking football watching man’s man) comes out looking really normal.
So to hell with all these other shows that portray the average white male as inept…
I think that it meant that the day they don’t have a Chevy is the day that they die.
What about the Bundys?
They were all equally incompetent- just in different areas.
As long as we’re sticking up for our respective ethnic groups:
When’s the last time anyone saw a TV show that had a regular character with a Southern accent who wasn’t stupid, racist, cruel, or otherwise an object of scorn? I recall “Boston Common” from 1996 or so, which was about the comical plight of a couple of Southerners in Boston. It was cancelled after about a week. Before that there was of course “Designing Women” (1986-1993). Before that, well, there was “The Dukes of Hazzard.” Yeah, nice PR there.
My point being that the only groups I can think of that ANYONE can make fun of mercilessly and be totally within the bounds of PC acceptability are Southerners and cross-dressers.
What really astonishes me is that so many people outside the South actually believe that we’re all a bunch of toothless, barefoot, cousin-humping, shirtless yokels who think “Hee Haw” was the height of civilization and would rather eat squirrel than caviar. Hey folks, guess what? We have tall buildings and Nobel Prize winners and symphonies and (in Memphis) booming independent-film scenes and, yes, universities! With accredited Ph.D. programs, no less! (Not to mention that my alma mater, UGA, is currently 7-0 and the only undefeated team in the SEC… but I digress…)
For Pete’s sake, there’s not a state in the Union without its share of wackos; I’m sick of having my (slight) Southern accent label me as an ignorant hick, of having people act surprised to find out I’ve been to college and can quote Joyce and Shakespeare. I know this won’t do any good in the world at large, but:
KNOCK IT OFF with the South-bashing, goddammit! Everyone! This instant!
Hmpf.
Jackelope, South-bashing doesn’t seem to be getting any better either. I am also Southern. Once I was asked to do a sort of promo for a network news program. I was to say my name and tell where I was from and say a few words. And so I did. The director said that I didn’t sound like I was from the South. (I am an 11th generation Southerner.) I replied, “Oh…you want ‘magnolia’!” So I did it again and gave them the Southern belle stereotype. The second take, of course, is the one they used.
I had a friend from the Northeast who lived and worked here in the South and poked fun at “us hillbillies.” She is from a minority and an intelligent woman. I talked to her about what she was doing and reminded her that she was from a minority that had been oppressed because of stereotypical thinking. She couldn’t see the connection
But I don’t want to think about that right now. I’ll think about that tomorrow.
Saw an ad for “Bob Crane: The DocuComedy” the other day, starring Greg Kinnear and Willem DeFoe, no less. Does this count? What is the final sign of the apocalypse?
There has to be a spelling error in that post somewhere.
It’s near the top of the thread, but I want to comment on this little aside:
We are biased against Californians, are we? You do realize that California is considered a “destination state” and that many residents of California are originally from other places? Maybe even Columbia, Missouri?
Dennis Weaver in McCloud? Quaintly, stereotypically southern, but a positive character nevertheless. Maybe Arizona doesn’t count as The South for your purposes?
I’m afraid the negative image of the southern US states crosses the Atlantic too, jackelope, whether it’s Hollywood’s fault or not. I recall my father saying years ago how he was amazed you let them get away with such relentless and obsessive character assassination of an entire region. FWIW I was born in an area of Britain that is treated in a similar way.
I thought they mentioned the stereo system in the ad (satellite sound or something??) and I assumed he was transfixed by the sound quality until the end of the anthem.
Barbara, you up? BARBARA, YOU UP? 
You raise so many good points, then you go and spew this. I find your lookism thoroughly despicable. Maybe you’d like all the married male Dopers to send you pictures of themselves with their wives, you could decide whether they’re handsome enough for their women and hand down your oh-so-wise judgement. I wonder if you realize that by endorsing this view of relationships, where women are trophies to be “attain[ed]”, that you are perpetuating the sexism you claim to decry?
jackalope
IIRC, “The DUkes of Hazzard” was wildly popular among Southern males and remains wildly popular among Southern males in syndication. So you’d be, what, contributing to your own oppression?