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Gillette and the Bungled Message
I finally watched the video which has given rise to such agita, and in my opinion is that Gillette’s marketing department tried — and failed — to get across a very old message. Part of the problem is that when one is thinking about organizations possessing moral authority, marketing departments aren’t usually on the short list.
The early medieval period was pretty chaotic. The collapse of the security provided by the western Roman Empire left Europe with a power vacuum. Various strongmen vied with each other for territory, leading to almost continuous fighting. The Church was almost the only widely recognized authority in the region. It promulgated the Peace of God to get the warring parties to quit raiding churches, abbeys, and convents, and to stop robbing the unarmed clergy.
Shortly thereafter, the Truce of God was added. Days when combat would be forbidden were extended from Sunday only to Thursday through Sunday. In addition to the clergy, immunity to harassment was supposed to be extended to women and children, unarmed men working in the fields, and traveling merchants. Over time, a code for individual behavior evolved.
An expression of this code is summarized in The Song of Roland.
It is frequently pointed out that knights failed to live up to this ideal. This fails to consider that if ideals are easy to achieve, what one needs to do is raise one’s ideals.
Gillette would have been castigated if they had advanced anything like this, which is a pity because it gets closer to what I think they were shooting for. One treats women with respect because to do otherwise brings one into dishonor, not only in the eyes of others but in one’s own eyes as well. “It is how gentlemen behave,” my grandmother told me as she had me hold the door for her. I still hold doors. The last time a woman berated me for doing so, I told her “It’s not about who you are. It’s about who I am.”
So remember:
In Judaism, love for a woman instructs us how to love G-d. Moses Maimonides, the greatest Jewish mind in history, said that the love sickness a man experiences regarding the woman he loves is the same love sickness he should experience in his relationship with G-d. And respect for your wife rivals your respect for G-d.
Jewish law does not permit socialization between the sexes and even touching a potential spouse prior to marriage is forbidden. Education of boys and girls is separate and courtship is brief, seldom lasting more than two or three months. I really do not know what effective socialization between boys and girls, or between men and women, would involve.
Torah observance prohibits a man from being in a room alone with a woman (other than his wife) unless the door is left open. Think of how many careers would have been saved had men followed this practice. Mike Pence, who seems as happy and as relaxed as anyone in Washington, is quite Jewish in this way.
Based on the stability of Jewish marriages within the confines of Torah observance, it would appear that separation, rather than socialization, is the most sensible approach to creating healthy relationships between men and women.
There were many men to tried to shield women during the Los Vegas Mandalay bay massacre, and some of them died in the effort. Here is one report.
https://www.weaselzippers.us/359546-las-vegas-man-who-protected-woman-is-a-us-army-soldier/
Re # 31
If, in your culture, a son sees his father respecting his mother’s needs and preferences related to the maintenance of their home, the kid is being socialized to respect women.
(When my daughter found a new church, and I went with her and my grandchildren one Sunday, I have to admit I felt immediately positive about the church when I overheard the Sunday school teacher telling the boys to get on one side of the room and the girls on the other. To me, it seemed like gender confusion prevention.)
Re # 32
And how about all those times in the past that the women and children were the first ones gotten into life boats when a ship was sinking ?
Indeed, I love masculine men!
When I have been treated courteously by a man, I always express my gratitude and make eye contact when I do it. It is a considerate and caring gesture when I am offered it.
Re # 34
They drive me nuts with exasperation, sometimes, but I wouldn’t want them to be less masculine. Their masculinity enables them to see what I don’t easily see. My femininity enables me to see what they don’t easily see.
Promotion of chivalry is worthwhile, but I don’t think that’s what Gillette was trying to do.
Having destroyed chivalry and civility all that feminists can do is screech at men when they are displeased. The ad was a screech.
Re # 37
It was a sneaky, sanctimonious screech. It implied masculinity—not the way our society directs it—is a problem. As a grandmother, I worry about such messages because boys either will be boys or they will be sick and self destructive.
Men and women should get their razors somewhere else.
Hence the problem of the Giilette ad, or at least the key moment critics have fixed onto, which seems to link misogyny and overall mistreatment of family to guys who like to do things like barbeque grilling. Had Gillette opted to show a scene of, say, a bunch of guys partying while listening to some song with misogynistic lyrics, the people who made the ad would have been savaged and not praised by their peers, because while the message would have been the same, the company would have been seen as going after the wrong people (i.e. — instead of attacking guys who are doing things like cooking out that are seen as being part of the standard American nuclear family, they would have been attacking guys doing something less tied to that lifestyle, and that’s not what the people supporting this type of hectoring ad want to do).
Bingo.
An order that facilitates the friendship, mutual understanding and cooperation between the sexes—an order that facilitates the functioning of families, and communities of families, is what the ad subtly attacks, for some reason.
Yes, and that was the problem with the video. @postmodernhoplite had it right in #13. Our culture has dispensed with honor — so much so that even though they have once again discovered the need for it, they still can’t name it.
Once again, the words of C. S. Lewis ring forth:
Activist pop culture has hated the suburbs for over half a century, because they view the idea of a better lifestyle in suburbia as a lie. Tying barbeque grilling to the inference of abuse of wives and children is simply part of that long-standing hatred — people regularly barbeque in the suburbs, not in the big cities — and therefore is an accepted part of the narrative. Tying it to people listening to music that treats women like dirt isn’t narrative-approved, and P&G would be under attack for Thought Crimes if they had tied that imagry to the message they were trying to send.
I think they had the right idea (even if for the wrong reasons) and failed miserably to execute it well. The problem with art (even pop cultural art like marketing) is that it allows the viewer to be an eisegete and read into it anything he wants. Some watch the ad and see nothing but a feminist screech over the unintended consequences of their successful program to rid the world of masculinity. Other, like this author at Focus on the Family, take away something completely different:
I fall into the latter camp with this ad. Some of the reaction may be shooting the messenger regardless of the message.
I think the rules of chivalry are for me to aspire to too. :-) Sometimes when I am feeling low on inspiration I watch this video. It works every time:
Agree, Marci, but Richard Kiley can’t sing… :-) Try this medley, by Scott Bakula, from Quantum Leap.
My dad had the recording of the Broadway cast. Richard Kiley owned that song.
Okay, Sir Percy…I guess being a Quantum Leap fan colors my judgment…But the opening of the medley grabs me and carries me along…
Here’s a version by another Honorary Marine
I had no idea he could sing. Wonderful. :-)
Okay. This is amazing.
Wow. That’s beautiful. Wow.
This is fun. I could do this all day. :-)
This is beautiful too.
My turn. I can’t find a recording of the individual song, but here’s the West End London Cast Recording of MOLM from the mid-60s. It’s the one I knew, and Don Quixote is played by Keith Michell, who the geezers among us may remember from “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” on PBS many moons ago:
The Impossible Dream starts at 28:07. I like this one:
That one gave me goose bumps. That passed the test. :-)
See, it’s not mere words. It’s how we’re supposed to live our pathetic lives. Try and try again. Right? :-)
And I can’t let this go on much longer without mentioning the “varray parfit gentil knyght” described by Geoffrey Chaucer. Not sure, if I hadn’t learned about him, I’d ever have married who I did, and ended up where I am. As with most of the knights I’ve ever known, this one was a bit disreputable:
Yes! A fitting description of knights everywhere. :-)
Oh, MarciN, thank you SO MUCH for that. I’m sobbing! I love all of those songs, all of those moments. It’s been years. Thank you, again.
Great episode! Great show.
Speaks for itself:
Billy Graham avoided both financial scandal and sexual scandal, unlike far too many imitators and mega-church false teachers. He reportedly would step off an elevator if he found himself alone, with a woman entering the elevator alone. This was part of the Modesto Manifesto, first propounded in 1948.
Which wife did he play?