Dreams of Men versus Women: Heineken Commercial
Dreams of Men versus Women: Heineken Commercial
I chose this Heineken beer commercial because it fulfills the four requirements of popular artifact for narrative analysis and it demonstrates how popular culture plays a role in shaping our way of thinking and living. This video of Heineken beer advertisement portrays a unified story with more than two events, which are related and organized by time. The effectiveness of this advertisement depends on the audience’s pre-existing stereotypes that may have formed and reinforced by popular culture. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1ZZreXEqSY
There are several characters in this video. The first character is the host of the party, who is a middle-class European female in her 30s. The host is showing her friends around the house and she is smiling, cheerful, excited, and friendly. This female host of the party is a flat character because her appearances and actions are not surprising to the viewers. There are three more flat characters in this video – three friends of the host. These friends are also female Europeans, dressed-up for the party. These friends follow the host and looks around the house with an interested look on their faces. The host shows her new walk-in closet, full of clothes, shoes, and jewelries, and her friends react with high-pitched screams and hugs. This action goes in hand with their flat characters, as the audiences anticipate women to express and over-exaggerate emotions. In the mid-excitement, a new group of characters are introduced. A group of four European males in their 30s, much like the female group of four, are screaming, squealing, yelling, jumping, crying, and fanning inside a walk-in fridge, full of Heineken beers. These males are round characters, because their actions are unpredictable to the audiences. There is no narrator in this video. The story is communicated directly to the audiences without any added commentaries. There is a short statement at the end of the video:
I chose this Heineken beer commercial because it fulfills the four requirements of popular artifact for narrative analysis and it demonstrates how popular culture plays a role in shaping our way of thinking and living. This video of Heineken beer advertisement portrays a unified story with more than two events, which are related and organized by time. The effectiveness of this advertisement depends on the audience’s pre-existing stereotypes that may have formed and reinforced by popular culture. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1ZZreXEqSY
There are several characters in this video. The first character is the host of the party, who is a middle-class European female in her 30s. The host is showing her friends around the house and she is smiling, cheerful, excited, and friendly. This female host of the party is a flat character because her appearances and actions are not surprising to the viewers. There are three more flat characters in this video – three friends of the host. These friends are also female Europeans, dressed-up for the party. These friends follow the host and looks around the house with an interested look on their faces. The host shows her new walk-in closet, full of clothes, shoes, and jewelries, and her friends react with high-pitched screams and hugs. This action goes in hand with their flat characters, as the audiences anticipate women to express and over-exaggerate emotions. In the mid-excitement, a new group of characters are introduced. A group of four European males in their 30s, much like the female group of four, are screaming, squealing, yelling, jumping, crying, and fanning inside a walk-in fridge, full of Heineken beers. These males are round characters, because their actions are unpredictable to the audiences. There is no narrator in this video. The story is communicated directly to the audiences without any added commentaries. There is a short statement at the end of the video: