"Spray more, Get more"

Chris Schasse
TA: Laura Bennett



This commercial starts out with someone running through the woods, which right away captivates the viewer, setting them up for some kind of epic drama. Then it shows that the person running is a very athletic, muscular and skinny woman in a bikini, with a very determined look on her face, as if she were hunting something. The rest of the commercial is various other women, depicted like the first, all seeming to hunt the same thing, competing in the race to get there. Finally, they show what the woman are running towards, which is an average man, depicted as a god, spraying two cans of axe all over his body with a huge smile on his face. This commercial is doing something very interesting. It is sets up all the women as very strong and athletic and determined. But it is sets up this man as, through the power of this bottle, having power over these women. It is giving the viewer (a male) a desire to have many 'hot,' athletic woman flock to them by simply spraying a bottle.

The first thing this ad does is creates an "epic" mood; "epic" as has been defined over the years by Hollywood. They start out with just the footsteps of someone running, and go to show a woman standing tall in a forest as the music slowly fades in. The music I could best describe as the "screaming monks" genre, and gives this commercial a very spiritual aspect to it. The quick cuts and the good form of the women running and the first woman looking back constantly contribute to this "epic" feel. Chase sequences like this have been, since popularized in the 1920s by D.W. Wright, the most suspense and dramatic sequences in film. The woman is then joined with more women, and the camera keeps cutting from close-ups of individual woman (all depicted as strong and skinny) to long shots and extreme long shots showing the vast amount of women, all running in the same direction with the same determination. This is a technique of cutting from close ups to extreme long shots was again perfected by D.W. Wright back in the 1920s. The music builds through the whole commercial and climaxes at the very end.

It is interesting that the women in this commercial are depicted as strong and independent. This is a contrast from the 50s when woman were depicted as nice, submissive housewives or as conformists as with the dames. But the women in this commercial are all very diverse and of different ethnic groups. The fact that the "desired woman" has made such a switch since the 1950s is mostly because of the large feminist movement that has happened over the last century. But the women in this commercial, though depicted as very strong and individualistic, are put under a kind of "trance" by this man, and are perusing him with all their abilities because of their desire for him. So this man, who is not depicted as extraordinarily strong, has power over these multitudes of beautiful, sexy, and strong woman, all because of two bottles of Axe Body Spray.



This second commercial (Also by Axe) shows another phenomenon that is subtler in the first commercial. The man is walking around, seeing beautiful women walk by him, and undressing them with his eyes (the second time he looks at them they appear in a bikini). Each time he smiles at them and gets nothing back from them. Then, in a supermarket, he quickly sprays some Axe Bullet on himself and walks past one of the women he was previously undressing with his eyes. The woman stops and looks back at him, depicting the man in a leopard speedo (inferring that SHE had undressed HIM with his eyes.

What the second Axe commercial is creating is a desire much more subtle in the first commercial: the desire for a man to have a woman look at him the same way he looks at her. The man wants the woman to want him as much, or more, than he wants her. The man wants to be in control of the woman through this desire, and he wants to be in control of the strongest, most athletic, most confident and smoking hot babe (or, in the first ads case, multiple ones).

It is also very interesting how the men in both these commercials are depicted. They are not depicted as extraordinarily strong or very confident or well put together. They seem like pretty average dudes. But these average dudes become something greater when they spray the contents of this bottle all over them. The man in the first commercial is depicted as a man who has stumbled upon a magic bottle that makes him a god (this is shown by the way the light comes from above him in the very last shot, and the way he sprays the bottles, and his overall demeanor). The man in the second commercial is depicted, after spraying this bottle, as a pimp or a playboy, or someone who woman desire.

So, to bring this all together, these commercials depict the "desired" woman as strong, confident and individualistic, differing from the 1950s when they were depicted as submissive cookie-cutter conformists. But what these commercials do is tell the viewer (a male) that their product has the power to harness these beasts, to control them, so that they only submit to you. This fulfills the desire in men to be strong (by having a strong woman submit to them). Through these commercials, Axe is indirectly saying "Our body spray will make you desirable, and not only that, it will make you strong and confident, and not only that, it will make you a god in which woman flock to and worship.” The real question is if these commercials are more offensive to men or to woman, or if it is just offensive to society in general, or if they are sincerely good commercials, since Axe Body Spray is the most sold body spray, and the movie Idiocracy was a good prediction of the future of our society.