Tuesday's SVU

I'm going to do something a little different for this blog. I am going to write about about the commercials that I see during the episode.
Here is a little synopsis of all the commericals I saw:
Commercial set one: AT&T cell phone, Dodge Journey, French's Spicy Brown Mustard (This one was interesting. It had a "male" mustard bottle and a "female" hotdog and the "male" is talking about his day and says the "female" hot dog "never listens to him." The "female" is reading a woman's magazine and is imagining the "sexy" French's Spicy Brown Mustard running towards her.), Aleve (woman zoo keeper), Royal Carribean Cruises, iMac, and Powerball.
Commercial set two: OnStar (911 operator is a woman), Target, Remax.com, Sprint, Vive Shampoo, Pledge (It is a woman and is the one who has to be cleaning. The dust is her concern and it is something she has to worry about.), Pizza Hut and NBC promotional ad.
Commercial set three: Hyundai, "There's a reason why it's called the curse. Reverse the curse: Midol." Enough said about that one. Dove, NBC promotional commercials, local news commercials, Eugene Ballet, Toyota and Les Schwab Tires.
Commercial set four: iMac, Chilies, Aflac, Nissan, Capital One, Nikon, commercial for Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and ER.

There was a wide variety of commercials shown during this episode. They were directed towards both men and women. However, it was very gendered advertisements. There were ones about cars and computers and buying a home which all featured male actors and the ones about pain relief, clothes and housecleaning all featured women. It was pretty interesting to really look at how the commercials were set up and who they were targeting.

This episode was very disturbing. The focus of the episode was the sexual abuse that female inmates endure while in correctional facilities. The end of the episode was very graphic when the corrections officer was attempting to force Olivia to give him oral sex. It was very scary. The idea that this kind of activity is happening in prisons is absolutely revolting. The violence against woman and the degrading treatment of women in prisons is something we don't really hear about. This is the first time I think Law and Order has taken up this issue. Overall, it was a very unnerving episode but I think it would be great to analyze from a feminist perspective. Maybe we can discuss it in class?