You Got This

I pride myself in being able to adjust to new situations. It comes from the experience growing up of moving from place to place. My dad was a professional athlete, a hockey player in the NHL. Although he was a good goalie, he seems to have been traded every two to four years throughout his career, and of course that meant a new house in a new city, and my having to change the hockey sweaters that I wore to school to avoid getting into a fight.

While I did not want to go through such shifting in my own career, that was not to be. I am involved in television advertising. While I have a creative mind that constantly seeks to develop a commercial like no other before it, I have rarely been given an opportunity to do that. I had to go with the company’s usual type of commercials, or risk losing my job. Early in my career I didn’t have the type of flexibility to follow the company way. My young man’s ego made that difficult for me to do that. This caused me to be fired rather quickly in the first three jobs I had.

In one such advertising job, the company was solidly invested in the idea ‘sex sells’, meaning that the women in the commercials had to be all but naked, and had to be seductive in all they said and how they moved. I tried to add a little intelligence to what they said, and suggested to my boss that the advertizements were being demeaning to women. I had taken a course in sociology at university in which the professor was a dedicated feminist. She had effectively taught me how the obvious and the subtle ways of demeaning women on television and in the movies. I wanted to be part of the solution, not yet another part of the problem. I think that I even used that phrase when I was in the boss’s office. I was fired before the week came to an end.

This job shifting was not really that much of a problem when I was in my twenties, optimistic and unmarried.  But now that I am married with three children in school, and am approaching 40, I cannot afford this kind of flexibility any longer. I have learned to play the game that the advertizing company wanted me to play. I have come to realize that standing my ground could mean losing ground.

My Latest Job

In my latest and hopefully long lasting job I get paid well, better than at all of the other jobs. I feel that it is be up to me to not spoil this by expressing what I truly feel, but to learn the company’s chosen path to sales, and walk that path myself. The company is called Viceroy, and the V symbol could be seen at least once in every room in their building.  They manufacture men’s shirts. Their star product is a man’s shirt that has a big V down the middle of the wearer’s chest.   

The First Commercial    

  Their first television commercial, put together before I started working there, features a group of men friends in the stands of a baseball game. The man in the centre of these friends is wearing a Viceroy shirt that exposes his rather massive, muscular chest. Women seated near them in the stands are seen staring at him, and their comments to each other of sexual attraction to the man are heard in the commercial. A woman selling popcorn spends a long time with him, ignoring his friends, who clearly want to buy popcorn.

The Second Commercial

I was involved in this commercial, but only in a very minor role. It involves two parties held at a condo, whose main occupants are older men and women. Featured at the first party is one older man who bears a striking resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenegger. He could be a cousin of his. He is surrounded by ladies, and is the only man dancing, while the other men look on in envy. He asks one of his dance partners, “Do you like my shirt? It’s a Viceroy.” Her response can be called a verbal swoon.

In a brief display of the second party, most of the men are wearing a Viceroy shirt, and all those who are have muscular chests, and are the only men dancing. If you could play the video backwards, you might be able to see that none of those men were portrayed in the first party. 

I know that as, with my hair dyed gray, and posing in a slightly bent over position, I was one of the men in the first party.

The Third Commercial

           The third commercial also has two sequences in it, both of a Sadie Hawkins dance at a high school, a dance in which the girls ask the boys out. I had never been to one as a teenager. In the first sequence, there are very few people there, male and female, and none of the males is wearing a Viceroy shirt: not a big surprise. Nobody appears to be having a good time.

           In in the second dance, many teenagers are there, and the dance floor is crowded. All of the dancing males which you see from the front are wearing the Viceroy tee-shirt.

           I was given a larger role in this commercial. I wrote the words of envy that the non-Viceroy wearing, non-dancing males spoke to each other.  I suspect that it helped me get this larger role that I was wearing one of the Viceroy shirts at the planning meeting, and had taken to wearing one to work every day at that time. That didn’t mean that I was crazy about the commercials, or the shirts, but I wanted to keep the job.

The Fourth Commercial

As the only Black man working in advertizing, or any another position in the company that I had ever seen, I was summoned to the boss’s office and asked what should be involved in a Viceroy commercial appealing to Black men. Fortunately, I had heard through the company grapevine that such a commercial was a distinct possibility, so I came prepared. The boss at first looked a little uncomfortable telling me about it, but when I started coming up with ideas, she relaxed somewhat. I was wondering whether she had sensed some of my reluctance concerning the earlier commercials. She did sometimes watch me closely.

I told her that there could be two scenes. One would be at a club, where the person leading the show would be a well-built rapper. The part would be played by someone resembling Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson (I had to explain to her who he was), but not the man himself, as he is reported to be the highest paid actor in the movies. The people standing near the front of the stage would all be females, some Black, but some White as well. There would be males moving to the music as well, all wearing a variety of different coloured Viceroy shirts.

The second scene would be on a street where rappers would be performing on the street. All of them would be wearing Viceroy shirts, as would those standing nearby and dancing and gesturing to the music, White and Black people alike. I figured that the boss had never seen street rappers, so I had downloaded parts of episodes of Cold Case, which takes place in Philadelphia, and includes some African-American cultural scenes, both positive and negative.

You Got This

When the meeting was over, the boss asked me to stay behind for a few minutes. I wondered what this was about, not something negative, I hoped. As soon as the others had left she told me that she had been concerned at first that I wasn’t fully committed to the Viceroy message. A friend of hers had worked with the first advertizing firm I was employed by, the company that had fired me for my criticism of commercials exploiting women.

           Then she said, “I was worried about you for a while. But now I know that “you got this”. You have learned and accepted Viceroy culture”. 

           After I left the room, I told myself that I am not selling out. But I do wear Viceroy shirts every working day, although I really don’t think that I look good in them. Maybe I should start working out. Ka-ching!