Wonka Candy Company-Flippantly Subverting Women
The importance of women is subverted constantly, and in every aspect of society. We are allowed certain roles in certain little niches where we can act appropriately according to our gender, and that’s it, nothing more. What brought this thought to my mind specifically today is a very small example of this overwhelming fact, but its miniscule nature makes it a very acute point.
The new Wonka Candy commercial touts the innovative achievements of Albert Einstein, Dr. Frankenstein, and Benjamin Franklin and then equates their new chocolate product to the innovative achievements of these historical men. “Mankind’s greatest thinkers have thrived by thinking outside the box,” goes the commercial as it flashes images of the afore listed historical men, classically known for their inventions. (I’ve looked everywhere I could think of online to find the commercial and post it here, but to no avail. If anyone has better luck, please let me know!)
The subversion of women creeps into to this little scenario when you recognize that Dr. Frankenstein is the only fictitious character is this escapade. Further, Dr. Frankenstein was only an inventive genius insomuch as his story is innovative, and that story is the complete and utter invention of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly. The commercial completely relies on the notion that innovative power is synonymous with phallic power, beheld only by men. The inference is subtle and couched within the frame work of bright flashy colors, but it is still there. While Frankenstein may rhyme better with Einstein than Shelly the accurate representation of history, however minute, functions as the mass spectrometer of consumerism in this country, constantly subverting women.
I doubt that the creators of the Wonka Chocolate commercial sat around a big table brain storming about how to subvert women. It was probably a simple decision that came together as they tossed historical names around and found a few that went together in a catchy tune sort of way. And poof! The commercial was produced and sent out to entertain and influence the masses. This scenario is much more dangerous than any sort of conspiracy theory of marketing moguls making back room deals. Women are undermined and sabotaged in our very language and when comparisons like the ones in the Wonka Chocolate commercial are made, they are made without a second thought. This is one of the biggest challenges of feminism. As much as the idea is seemingly insignificant and only a matter of semantics, it’s at the crux of everything feminism fights for. Changing the language, the way people put words together to construct sentences, will change the attitudes and perceptions about women.
This is obvious in terms of derogatory language that degrade women (ie pussy, slut bitch, mother fucker, son of a bitch) but it goes beyond these obvious calumnious terms into the subtle idiosyncrasies of language, just as the Wonka Chocolate commercial functions. It’s about word choice in every context. The word choice that is “natural” to people is only natural because it is the terminology that was used as they acquired language skills. Constantly fighting to change the way language is used with infiltrate into the subconscious of English language users and work to change the sexist, racist, patriarchal construct of our language.
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OK, so I’m annoyed in general with how women are made invisible in our mainstream media and commercial worlds but in particular, I REALLY hate it when Martin Luther King and Gandhi are the only ones cited for non-violent social change. Props are very RARELY given to the women whose shoulders they stand upon; the suffragists in the US and England who went on hunger strikes, chained themselves to public places, were imprisoned for fighting for the vote for half the population. Gandhi got many of his ideas from them and used them as a laboratory to observe some of his theories before he ever tried them out himself.
I’m listening. Working. Fighting, writing and biting.