February 25, 2011

“Gendered Advertising Remixer” for Kids

Image: Jonathan McIntosh

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Are Disney princesses evil? Maybe not, but absurdly retro-gendered toy commercials might be. When boys’ toy ads promote battle and girls’ toy ads convey the importance of appearance, it’s small wonder that even kids raised in neutral homes buy into gender-appropriate colors and behaviors.

Political remix artist Jonathan McIntosh created the “Gendered Advertising Remixer” to make the divergent messaging so obvious that kids can see through it themselves:

Young people in the United States are subjected to an average of 25,000 TV commercials every year. Embedded in those advertisements are a very regressive and stereotypical set of social values about gender roles for boys and girls. So how can kids push back against a multibillion dollar corporate marketing machine? The goal of this project is to help empower youth of all genders to better understand, deconstruct and creatively take control of the highly gendered messages emanating from their television sets.

Want to give it a try below? Just swap out the audio with a track from an ad intended for the other gender. (My favorite combo so far is the 4 Ever Kidz Fashion Pets video, mixed with the Kung Zhu Battle Hamster audio track).

The "Gendered Advertising Remixer" app lets you swap audio and video tracks in a Web interfaceThe “Gendered Advertising Remixer” app lets you swap audio and video tracks in a Web interface.

And if you haven’t seen it already, McIntosh’s previous work mashing up old Donald Duck cartoons with Glenn Beck is also worth a gander.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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