do you think the geico commercials make fun of cavemen?

Question

i know they are a parity or something but i think in a sick twisted way thy are trying to show how uneducated cavemen were while pretending to say cavemen are smart. if it werent for cavemen then we wouldnt have known things about art or fire and baseball might not have been invented (they had big sticks that we adopted for use in baseball)

Patrick C I was very offended by borat and i hope all sensitive people were as well

Answer 1

You know what? I do find the Geico caveman commercials unsettling. Obviously, this isn't because I think it's bad for cavemen or racist against cavemen.

On one level, it's a really great commercial. There is the real commercial, which tells the story of the Geico cavemen's frustrated attempts to be recognized as intelligent, well-adapted, normal people who just look different. Then there are the imaginary racist Geico commercials, against which the cavemen are rallying. It's a level of layering and sophisticated writing that you don't often see in commercials. On that level, they're just really brilliant commercials.

But, on another level, the whole Geico caveman story just comes off as tragic to me. When I suspend my disbelief, I feel bad for the cavemen - they're just trying to get people to stop believing that they're stupid and backwards. They play tennis, watch television, have refined culinary tastes, they listen to Royksopp, they fly on planes. The imaginary commercials depict them as stupid - and who'd want to be cast in that light? - and the real Geico commercials make the cavemen's frustration a point of comedy. The cavemen are totally justified in trying to improve their undeserved image, but dismissed by almost everyone, which is all too often the case in real life.

While the narrative of the Geico commercials is totally fictional, fiction is not created in a vacuum. Cultural anthropologists read fiction as cultural documents that reveal something about the values of society; literature scholars read fiction as commentary and theory. When you look at the Geico commercials through either of these two critically motivated viewpoints, what you see is a dis to any minority group that's ever been told to just get over it.

These commercials work. What does that say about us for thinking the cavemen's plight is funny? Poor cavemen!

Edit: Also, if you pay attention, everyone in the commercial, except the cavemen, are white. Structurally, this plays on an old dichotomy that we're familiar with in the US: the whites vs. the non-whites. What these commercials end up doing is using the caveman as a comic placeholder for X minority group. There is an implicit structural equation of cavemen with real-life minorities. This is not to say that Geico is saying that minorities share the qualities of cavemen. But they are selling us a story that is all-too familiar to minorities, but with one critical change: instead of a real minority group (which would make the commercial tragic), they use an imaginary minority group (which somehow transforms it into comedy).

Answer 2

I think the Geico commercials poke fun at the intelligence of the populace, not cavemen per say. To say "so easy a caveman can do it" only implies that if anyone has problems with with their Internet site it is because they are not computer savvy.

Answer 3

Who else are we going to make fun of?

Thanks to our litigious nature you cannot make fun of anyone or anything that has lived in the last 100 years...wait, make that 500...2000? Oh, come on!

As an anthropology major explained to me, if it would take more work and cause more harm to find and explain to (or in this case travel in time to find) the supposedly offended party how they were mistreated than any compensation they could get from it, then you might actually be cruel for forcing the information upon them.

Let's go kidnap us a caveman, and train him to understand English, what TV is, insurance, and commercials just so we can send him on a rampage for being insulted. Then he can get beaten up and locked up for assault...

Oh, wait I think I just spent a little to much time thinking about this already.

Answer 4

The cavemen are pretty stupid, but they're a funny kind of stupid. The gecko was really cute at first, but lately they've been trying too hard to capture this cuteness, which pretty much kills the intended effect...The gecko is cute and funny because he doesn't know he is! Currently, the cavemen entertain me more. But if I had to pick my all-time favorite, the first few gecko ads were pure genius.

Answer 5

Good grief! It is a commercial. Not a scientific documentary. And if you relax, realizing that there is NO ONE ALIVE TO BE OFFENDED by this, they are very funny!
If you also take offense at Borat, you need to force yourself to actually listen to what he is saying. Like the Colbert Report, he is mocking the side he "representing".
In life, things are not PC. We try to make them that way, which is nice, but not realistic. If you want to try and fix the bad things in life, why not try to fix discrimination against the elderly, or identity theft? A commercial about non-existent entities is not a good place to put your energy.

Answer 6

They are showing that Geico is simple and making fun of the PC craze at the same time.

Do you think they're over dramatizing the intelligence of lizzards by making one talk?

Answer 7

They're just emphasizing how simple Geico is to use. Sure cavemen were smart, but they lived simple lives.

Answer 8

Being a marketing/advertising major in college, many moons ago, I feel these commercials are just hysterical, while at the same time getting the point across of how easy it is so secure insurance coverage!!

My favorite one, is the 3-way news interview!!

BTW, I can't believe these morons who feel bad for the f*cking "caveman"!!!

Mr Happy
:o)

Answer 9

Compared to now aday's caveman probably have the brains of a 3rd grader. Personally I think you are thinking about this way too much/

Answer 10

you're thinking too hard, like why Yogi Bear has a tie, it just is, and the point of Geico commercials is it's so easy, the technologically retarded can use it.