GEICO Caveman: A Contemporary Tale of Mediated Otherness and Political Correctness

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Title:	GEICO Caveman: A Contemporary Tale of Mediated Otherness and Political Correctness
Authors:	余季音;Yu, Chi-Ying
Contributors:	視覺與媒體藝術學系
Keywords:	GEICO caveman;the other;political correctness;pedagogical visual culture
Date:	2000
Issue Date:	2017-07-06 09:33:54 (UTC+8)
Abstract:	Since 2004, the insurance company GEICO has presented an advertising campaign centered on the idea of caveman living in the twenty-first century. The commercials, along with the slogan, “GEICO: so easy a caveman could do it,” constructed a fictional minority in American society, who are shown as both self-consciously irritated by the advertisements and as struggling against the discrimination they represent. This paper aims to understand the socio-cultural meanings driving and produced by the GEICO caveman phenomenon and the pedagogical implications revealed by the public's responses to and interpretations of it. From the cover of a fictional character in popular culture, the advertisements reveal the hidden fears and desires of the majority: the stereotypes that the majority tends to project upon the minority and the fetishism toward dominant values. Meanwhile, the authorship of the caveman is shared by everyone who is exposed to it. The caveman offer no less than a representation of representational otherness, a further othering act of the popular-cultural other. By in effect ridiculing the notion of political correctness, the GEICO caveman point out the limits of political correctness for effecting real equality and ultimately the paradox of attempting to achieve liberal ends by autocratic means.
Relation:	Inter-View 3卷5期 pp.1-8
Appears in Collections:	[Department of Visual and Media Arts] Periodical Articles

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