preview

The Meanings And Perceptions That Viewers Take From Television Commercials

Decent Essays

DGMD 4850

Audience Ethnographic Criticism

Amanda T. Smith
17 November 2015 The meanings and perceptions that viewers take from television commercials are subjective. The purpose of a commercial and the way the audience understands a commercial has a lot to do with the personality of the individual watching. Race, gender, socioeconomic status, age, and religion are all factors which contribute to how given audiences understand pop culture and Television. Audience ethnography is a tool used by television critics to describe and understand how different groups construct meaning from television texts and mediums. This tool is useful because it helps producers connect to their audience and allows them to assume what their implied viewers …show more content…

The woman begins to look flustered and aggravated. As the camera focuses on the woman, we see that her attention has moved to a bag of Doritos that is on the table in front of them. The woman, with a smirk on her face, takes the bag of Doritos and leaves the couch. At this time, the man runs out of Doritos and looks for the second bag. He soon realizes that the woman has taken his second bag of Doritos and goes to find her to ask where the chips are. As he enters the room, where the woman is, his face lights up with excitement, as he sees the woman on the bed. The woman is naked with Doritos covering her entire body. She is in the bed eating as the man nears closer and closer. In the background we hear the sports announcer shouting out that the football player is close to making a touchdown. This implies that the man and woman are about to engage in sexual activity. As the man jumps on the bed on top of the woman, we hear “Touchdown”! The commercial ends as we hear the announcer say “That’s excessive celebration in the end zone”, and the screen goes black.
What does this ad tells us about the relationships between men and women? It tells us that the only way to gains a man’s full attention is to be naked and initiate sex. It tells us that small gestures, like the woman was doing in the beginning of the commercial, are not enough to gain a man’s attention and the only way men will pay attention to a woman is if she has

Get Access