Question 10

This commercial is for Fancy Feast cat food. The commercial is titled "The Engagement" and centers around a young, heterosexual couple. The woman loves her boyfriend's family's cat, so he uses the cat to propose to her. The video carries many signifiers of the upper-middle class, such as the nice suburban home, nuclear family, and classical music.

Using the Images and Representations Approach that Rakow describes in her article, "Feminist Approaches to Popular Culture," we can analyze the construction of the female in this commercial. Betty Friedan once "pointed out the disparity between the messages of popular culture and the experiences and growing despair of real women." In our postmodern culture, more women are having their own professional careers (by choice or not) and Cosmopolitan once had an article describing the modern day problem of women staying single longer and fearing they will never marry. This commercial brings us back to the idealistic vision for women of finding their "Mr. Right" and having him tend to their needs. The woman shows a caring, nurturing nature towards the cat and the other women are shown tending to the house.

We can look at this commercial from an international and child's perspective as well, through Lemish's article "The Future of Childhood..." The commercial exemplifies the American, white middle-class life. Showing this commercial abroad could influence people of other cultures that this is the life to achieve for to be truly happy, like the people are in the commercial. The commercial promotes the "late modernity" value of commercialism. As for children, the commercial has a "limited scope of culture," and inspires children to vie for this lifestyle, the "American Dream." This is especially true for girls who have more pressure to marry. For example, someone commented on this video and said, "WHY ISN'T THIS MY LIFE."

However, this commercial is nothing but a simulation, as described by Baudrillard in "The Precession of Simulacra." He claims that the world is completely re-imaged and a hyperreal with no true origin or reality. This is because we have copied and simulated images over and over that everything is based off of a simulation itself. This is also true for this commercial; it is all based on the "American Dream," but what exactly is the American Dream? Nothing objective, but something that the media has created and copied multiple times. This commercial is just a rip-off of other portrayals of the "American Dream." This realization is characteristic of postmodern thought, which also explains how we no longer sell products, but ideas. This commercial is a perfect example, because the actual product, Fancy Feast catfood, is hardly advertised, but rather the idea of having a cat to fulfill the "American Dream" is emphasized.