DOES MEDIA MOCKERY OF DAD HURT SOCIETY?
I can’t remember the phone company, but I can remember the commercial.
It used to be on TV.
Something about some kind of cell phone deal where you can get a bunch of people who can call each other for free.
This dad walks up to his two daughters, sitting at a table, and tells them all about this great deal he’s gotten, and how they can call each other – the dad and the daughters – any time they want.
The daughters are crestfallen.
They look like they’re sick to their stomach, or they’ve just smelled a skunk. They seem disgusted.
Then the mother says that they can also call their friends.
And the girls light up. They jump into her arms and grab the phones and are the happiest young women you’d ever want to see.
Then the dad shouts out, “Group hug” and the mother and daughters, instead of hugging him, walk off together happily, arm in arm. The father is left there alone, looking dumb.
It almost makes me cry.
It makes me very sad. I feel so sorry for the guy. It’s like his feelings are thrown on the ground and walked on.
Don’t think that makes me a pansy.
It just makes me a dad.
And I know how tender and precious children are – no matter how old they are. No matter how much they’d like to pretend they don’t know you.
Nothing in life is better than being a parent, and if you’re a man, that means being a dad. It is a sacred and fulfilling thing. It is often the only true happiness life offers.
And it ticks me off to see a father’s love made fun of to sell some cheap cell phone. It kills me to see some giant telecom use its money to tear down the institution of fatherhood and to mock the tenderest of human feelings.
A guy is slammed emotionally and that’s something we’re supposed to laugh at.
Well, I don’t like it.
And I’m sick and tired of it. I’m sick and tired of fathers and family being the official laughingstock of the popular media. I know others have said this, and they’ve probably said it better, but it’s my TV and it bothers me.
And it’s wrong.
It’s as if there is some unspoken conspiracy to degrade a cornerstone of our society. It seems as if, in a society increasingly defined by the media, the decision has been made to define dad as a buffoon and family love as the province of fools.
And that can lead nowhere good.
Because when dad fails, the family fails. And when the family fails, society fails.
Children and adolescents can pick up so much of their attitude and understanding of life from what they see on TV and in the movies. Popular culture influences the way they talk, the way they dress, the opinions they develop.
Sadly, it can also color the way they see their parents. It can teach them, often incorrectly, how to relate to their parents. They see wisecracking kids on TV, and they get lippy themselves.
They see a commercial in which daughters treat their father like crap, and they begin to think they should treat their father like crap.
The cinematic pain of the rejected father in the commercial is a pattern for the real life pain of fathers whose children watch the commercial and copy the behavior.
And if you doubt that’s possible, or don’t believe in the power of the media, remember the premise of the commercial. The phone company ran that commercial – and spent incredible amounts of money on it – firm in the belief that by doing so it could influence people to buy its product.
So advertising works.
And in this case it works to denigrate a father and his love.
Which is the part I don’t get.
How did this phone company think this particular storyline would help sell its product? How did it think that mocking out the member of the family most apt to pay the phone bill was a good marketing strategy?
And how did it not recognize that this ad would be offensive to the millions of families across the country who take their unity seriously?
Is there no one making these commercials who has any common sense? Or was the slam on fatherhood done on purpose? Is it a coincidence that fatherhood and family are the door mat of the entertainment industry?
I don’t know the answer.
But I do know I don’t like it.
And I do know that commercial made me sad.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2006
