Advertisements often reflect popular cultural norms of the time. There is a continuous effort by advertisers to stay relevant and appeal to a broad audience and therefore they often echo many aspects of society in their adverts. Vintage adverts can give us a vivid idea of life during a patriarchal era.
This American advertisement from the 1940s promotes a popular fast food restaurant called Hardee’s. The advertisement is multimodal, however prominently visual. In the foreground of the scene their is a woman standing in her kitchen, her demure appearance is alluring and captures the reader’s eye immediately. In the background, through the kitchen window, we see a well-dressed man returning from work and passionately embracing his daughter. Furthermore, the colors in the advertisement are highly saturated which creates a vibrant illustration. The blissful scene that is constructed is an idealistic portrayal of a typical middle class marriage at the time. By emulating popular norms the advertisement is able to resonate with more people and capture the attention of a broader audience.
Beneath the brightly colored sink their is an emboldened caption, ‘Women don’t leave the Kitchen!’, this imperative statement appeals to the dominant discourse of the time- where women stayed at home doing housework while the men were out at work. Women very rarely left the house and therefore the advertisement is explicitly targeted towards men. Below this caption the satirical copy uses a mode of direct address to capture the attention of young men. The written text invites ‘bachelors’ who have not yet found ‘a little miss’ to cook for them to ‘come down to Hardee’s’ for dinner. The advertisement does not try to sell their food as better than a woman’s cooking, instead they describe a ‘sloppy and hastily prepared’ meal, this again levarges masculine tropes to best appeal to a male audience.
The composition of the advertisement creates a very deliberate path for the readers eyes. First you are captured by the brightly colored dress and slightly suggestive pose of the women, then you follow her gave out the window to her husband cheerfully greeting their daughter, next the enlarged and emboldened caption draws your eyes down to the copy and finally you arrive at the Hardee’s logo at the bottom of the page. This path enriches the interplay between visual text and word play in the advert; initially readers are presented with an idealized reality, then the copy presents Hardee’s as an alternative to this romance, the next best thing. Ultimately, the ad reminds the reader of an aperture in their life and then offers Hardee’s as a suitable substitute.
In a modern context this advertisement will have a severely different effect on readers as the patriarchal values portrayed in the advert directly contradict modern social norms. Furthermore, the way marriage is represented in the advertisement is no longer be relatable or admiring. In fact, the degrading portrayal of women would be a turn off to most readers in a modern context. It is also important to recognise that today money is controlled by both men and women and therefore by only targeting men, the advert excludes nearly half of its potential market.
