Analysing Adverts

Analysing Adverts

Analyse the 2 children's adverts watched in class. To what extent do they conform to or subvert traditional gender roles?
Consider textual details (mise en scene, music, voice over etc) in your analysis.

The two adverts I am analysing are Ben 10 and I Love Ponies, both adverts for children's toys. Although the adverts are very different in many ways they both conform to traditional gender roles.
Ben 10 has many different textual details that we as an audience would link to boys, for starters the actors in the advert are both boys, so we see that boys are going to play with the product. There is a lot of green in the mise-en-scene, with green slime bursting out of the box at the beginning of the advert, this adds to the excitement of the product as it is eye catching and it portrays that with the product comes this “fun”. The advert is fast pace, with very slick editing, this is a traditional way to attract the young male audience because they do not have a very long attention span, so the fast editing will hold their attention for longer. By mixing shots from the cartoon and the real life it will attract the male audience who may wish to be a part of this “fantasy world”.
In the advert for my little ponies we can see the contrasting colour pink, rather than green from the boys advert. Girls stereotypically like pink and purple, they are also supposed to like hearts and flowers which are continually featured in the advert. The advert is a slower pace because girls have a faster attention span than boys. This adds a calm and relaxing mise-en-scene to the advert, something girls are much more like to want to do.