OPERACIONES EN ESPACIOS CONFINADOS

Chinese society and gender concepts have changed rapidly in many ways over the past decades. A clear example of what is referred to as the 'empowerment of Chinese

women' can be seen in many contemporary commercials (Liu et al., 2017). The McDonald's 2017 advert Taste of Home is one of the best examples.

McDonald commercial Taste of Home shows us the changing process of a typical modern Chinese family's structure. The advertisement starts with a retrospection of the female leading character's childhood memories: 'When I was a kid, we always ate red bean soup when dad was leaving.' (Figure 8-1). This 'leaving' could be interpreted from the father's stuffed backpack and his whisper to the young female leading character. The certificates and the printed calendar with the character 'fortune' hung on the wall provide a look at a typical Chinese family atmosphere in the 1990s.

In this scene, 'dad' connotes 'leaving'; he is 'leaving' to the public arena, and going out to work to support financially the family. The image of 'mother' has been blurred into the background board and materialised into a symbol of the domestic area. These images of housewives and mothers were formed by specific historical conditions in the patriarchal social discourse. According to Thompson (1996), women have been limited within the domestic arena for a long time in the history of advertising in a global area. For these characters, the happiness is achieved by a happy marriage and a happy family while the role the advertising designed for them is to devote themselves into the family to realise the life values of themselves. During the past few decades, feminist critiques of the advertising representations of these stereotyped gender roles have been accepted by the mainstream social view in many countries, and representations of women have changed as a consequence.

Figure 8- 1 'When I was a kid, we always ate red bean soup when dad was leaving' in McDonald advert Taste of Home

Although recent advertisements are still filled with a large number of symbols of wives and mothers, today, an increasing number of women are entering the public area, and the idea of new independent woman is gaining recognition from the society. Similarly, symbols of women in television commercials are not only limited within the area of families:

'Now I am leaving [...] sweet red beans taste like home, which never change.' (Figure

8-2)

In the next scene, the grown-up female character says goodbye to her parents. She sits in the coach with a backpack on her knees. The symbol of the backpack has been transferred from the father to the daughter over twenty years in this commercial. In this case, the backpack not only symbolises 'leaving', but also represents the changes of family members' positions, which could also be proven by the regulation of the female character's physical perspective - from looking up to her father to looking down on her parents - that implies the change and transformation of the power structure and economic responsibility in a typical Chinese father-mother-child family model.

Figure 8- 2 'Now I am leaving [...]'in McDonald advert Taste of Home

Food is the key element relating advert characters to the image of the family in the commercial; it also offers evidence of the decades in which China went through a period of transformation under the influence of globalisation and capitalism. 'When I was a kid', the food is a bowl of homemade red bean soup, but 'now', it becomes the branded, industry-produced red bean pie. The line 'sweet red beans taste like home, which never change' is subverted when the advertising slogan segues into a familiar and impersonal myth: the overwhelming spreading of global capitalism, dawning brand consciousness, and the homogenisation of the consumer society. The commercial uses the 'same' taste of home to make emotional connections with consumers, and the focus is on 'never changing'. Our understanding of gender in popular culture, however, is undeniably changing. The representations of the new women draw from a popular discourse through describing the phenomenon whereby women have become intelligible and independent in contrast to 'the past', where the latter is a mythical and stereotypical construct of traditional image of 'mother'. Although the female character was represented through the shifting power structure and position within the family, she also relates to a commercialised gender discourse concerning women's new power, the rising social status and the increasing economic ability, which gives birth to the liberalisation of the new woman in Chinese society.

This kind of new female group will be further discussed in Chapter 9. British McDonald Advert Dad

Similarly, the British McDonald's commercial Dad also frames a narrative around a family. This advert is about a single mother telling her son stories about her husband and seeing the father's shadow in her son.

At the beginning of the advertisement, a boy turns over his father's relics and asks his mother: 'What was dad like?' Hearing this, the mother stops doing housework, looking sad while being slightly surprised (Figure 8-3). The mother takes the boy out of the house and tells him on the road: 'He was big and cuddly, your dad. Tall as a house, and big, big, hands.' (Figure 8-4). The boy stops and looks at his own hands. They continue on the road, and the mother said, 'He was never scruffy, always smart.' The boy stops and raises his trousers. The mother sits with the boy at the playground for a while and continues to tell him about 'his shoes, so shiny you could see your face in them' as the boy looks down at his dirty shoes. Then they pass by a group of teenagers who are playing football. The boy asks, 'Dad played football, did he?' and the mother smiles and recalls: 'Yeah, he was good. Captain, I think.' The boy clumsily kicks the ball which is off the field back to the court. They walk to a river and the boy throws a pebble into the river and asks: 'he liked techno?' The mother sits on the railing on the shore and smiles, replying: 'Yeah. He was a right catch, your dad.' They pass by two teenage girls; the boy shyly smiles at them, but the girls take a glimpse and ignore him. The mother continues to describe the boy's father: 'A 'wow' with all the girls.' The boy could not help but look back at the two girls who had left.

Figure 8- 3 the mother stops doing housework in McDonald advert Dad

Figure 8- 4 'He was big, you dad' in McDonald advert Dad

Subsequently, the mother and son arrive at a McDonald's outlet. The boy asks, 'Did he have blue eyes, like me?' The mother smiles and touches the boy's head, saying, 'No. Brown.' The boy follows his mother go into the restaurant with disappointment. The boy brings food over to his mother who is sitting at a table, and the mother watches him unwrapping a hamburger. Suddenly, the mother says: 'That was your dad's favourite too.' She looks out of the window and murmurs 'tartar sauce', and, turning back to her son, watches the boy accidentally spill sauce on his chin. She continues: '[...]all down his chin.' The mother looks at the boy and wipes the tartar sauce away from the chin, showing a gratified smile (Figure 8-5).

This advert actually contains three characters: the mother and son, as well as the father who appears through the dialogues between mother and son. The sign of the mother in the British McDonald's advert, on the one hand, assumes the obligations of household chores in the private area. On the other hand, it also bears the social responsibility of supporting the family and raising children in the public arena. The mother is invested with an emotional role and the image of the fosterer of the family in this advert. The image of the father (which has not directly appeared in the advertisement) can be regarded as a functional symbol that symbolises the family that is once 'complete'. The boy asks about the father's image, constantly compares himself with his father, and desires to grow up and to perfect his self-recognition by imitating his father. Food is the significant sign for the boy to reach a connection with his father in this advertisement. Through the action of the boy eating the hamburger, the mother sees the shadow of her husband in the boy, thus again making the family 'complete'.

Figure 8- 5 the mother in McDonald advert Dad