Thursday, January 18, 2007

Is the caveman married?



The question goes to the heart of who we take the caveman to be. Readers, I invite -- no, beg, you, to post a description of the caveman (his likely hobbies, politics, personality etc.) according to you in the comment section. Or send me an email at mary.carey@att.net and I'll post it. Remember, this isn't totally frivolous. It's like a Rorschach test, and if a few people get in a discussion it can reveal some of our personal assumptions and prejudices.


I think he is not married, although he could just as easily be married -- to a tolerant, forward-looking woman who doesn't worry too much about what other people think of the way her spouse looks.


It's pretty clear he's a sound technician, maybe someone in a job where eating lunch in swanky restaurants, traveling via air and occasionally getting asked to be a guest on a talk show would be all in a day's work. (Not MY day's work, mind you. Swanky restaurants never come into it!) Could be, he's NOT a white collar worker but finds himself in these situations as a caveman spokesman.


I see him getting less likely to become emotional when he confronts or talks about the discrimination cavemen face. He gets it that getting too bent out of shape the way he does when he's interviewed on TV doesn't serve him well -- which is why he is more contained at the therapist's.


2 comments:

Brian said...

In response to your search for more info, I saw the airport commercial again last night that he is carrying a tennis racket (so he likes tennis and is evidently on vacation, said Watson; unless he is a tennis pro or employee said Holmes...), and wearing a sweater around his neck in a stereotypically well to do fashion (emph. on fashion)...also one usually needs a good income to indulge in mother-dwelling therapy...The actor in this does a great job by the way, I'd say (e.g., head gestures that help communicate in spite of the dense facial makeup)...Is this like studying Madonna (popular culture as its own self evident justification)???

Scott said...

Interesting comments in a recent TV Guide column about how the Geico Caveman is part of a trend to showcase bad people. "This year I found myself rooting for the bigamist family in Big Love, the dope dealer on Weeds, Michael C. Hall's serial killer on Dexter and even the angry caveman from the Geico ads (Hey, cavemen were famously unkind to cavewomen.)... My point is, these characters made me see a good side of supposedly bad people."