Codes of Gender and a Korean Air Commercial

This is a 30 second ad for Korean Air, I viewed a similar ad for them on CNN. The ad mainly consists of beautiful women, with men only showed twice. These people are at each of the destinations that Korean Air goes to and can be seen as a good case study for what was talked about in the Codes of Gender video that we watched in class. In most scenes the women are seeing lounging, eating food or staring off into space. The commercial starts off with a woman laying on her side caressing the cloud dreamily, then moves on to a woman twirling a parasol and staring off into space, while lounging on rocks. These scenes tie back to what was said in the video called Code of Gender, the women are paying no attention to the surroundings. They are either daydreaming or so focused on one thing that they do not care about their surroundings. There is also a beauty aspect that plays into two of the scenes. One scene is where a woman with her arms open wide and another where a woman is putting on lipstick to go out. The woman who is with her arms open is looking ahead but her arms are pulled back holding the fabric and probably would not be able to move her arms fast to stop an attacker. The other is a woman is wearing a lot of bold makeup on her eyes and this could be seen as women are not naturally beautiful and need help from cosmetics and a short skirt.

When the first guy does appear in the commercial, though both the woman and him are walking towards each other in the same way. His arms are lower and closer to his sides, unlike the woman who is walking toward him with her arms in a perfect line. The guy’s arms are closer to his body and if he were to have an attacker coming towards him then he would be able to defend himself better then the woman. The other time a man comes into the picture is when they are on the wings of a plane eating dinner. The man as his arm on the body of the plane and seems more stable, while the woman is not supporting her self and looks more like she is going to fall forward while gazing into the man’s eyes.

The commercial also uses more flying imagery with the use three airhostesses walking in tight skirts and highs heels on a tarmac with there legs crossing each other so it is not an exact line. This is not a natural walk and seems to be accentuating their natural curves. Airhostesses in a post 9/11 world need to be tough and defend the captains and the plane from attackers. The way they are presented is as a sexual docile female. The commercial ends basically the same way it started, but with the logo and “on a plane”. It ends with a woman holding a snow globe, lounged with her high heeled feet on the side and her back resting against traveller the other side gazing out the window at the clouds, which also has the airlines logo in the sky. Since she is lounged in this position she is portrayed as beautiful, docile and submissive. Though I have no clue what the beautiful female portraying these messages at each of these destinations has to do with the airline, besides that they fly to these destinations. This commercial also airs on CNN and is most likely trying to attract business travelers who go to these areas to fly on this airline and probably not the random vacation.