Bud Light Party Commercial

Guinness; a beer company known around the world, based in Ireland, for a great tasting dark beer. There vastly different breeds of beer commercials, whether it be Budweiser’s infamous horses, or the “Bud Light Party” commercials, one thing remains constant, they all have a place in memory. Guinness Beer decided to push the envelope, so to speak, and display something different. There are many classifications of the word different, yet it is the audiences job to determine their own classification. The commercial starts off with, in my opinion, a great representation of a wheel chair basketball game, among six players all in wheelchairs of course, overshadowed by sappy, corny, heartwarming background music. The background music is soft, is heartwarming,

is all of these things because the producer wants to draw in an audience, and wants to make sure the audience’s heart is happy while watching. The basketball game looks intense, it looks fierce. Sweat is dripping down from the players, grown men with soaked shirts turning them a shade darker. What was once six men in clean attire is now six men competing to win, through toughness and grit, which the commercial displays half way through. Three players are going after the loose ball and eventually become tangled up. One falls in his wheelchair and the camera isolates his situation. While gritting his teeth and displaying pure strength, the player uses his upper body strength to get himself back upright in his wheel chair and get back into the play. The men drive down the hard court which is now splashed with sweat, making and missing baskets when eventually one makes the final shot ending the game. As the muscular men are leaving, five of the six stand up out of their wheelchairs. This showed one of their friends does in fact have a physical disability and they were playing with him to include him. They all leave together as the narrator starts speaking in a deep slow tempo voice. “Dedication. Loyalty. Friendship.” A change of scenery is shown, as it is all of the friends together at a crowded joyful bar, enjoying Guinness beer with their disabled friend. “…The choices we make reveal the true nature of our character” are the final words said as the tagline “made of more” along with Guinness’ logo fades out and the commercial ends.
This commercial included a disabled person into the mainstream media, which is a positive step for the disabled community.

The commercial takes a turn however when the narrator begins speaking. Perfectly represented was a group of friends going to leave together after a game of wheelchair basketball, yet when the narrator speaks in his profound voice “Dedication, Loyalty, Friendship” the entire tone and message of the commercial changes. This is important to the disabled community because it shows that a disabled person is being used for displaying what able bodied people call “loyalty” and “dedication”. Objectifying, in a broad sense, is the act of treating someone as an object instead of an actual person or human being. Guinness is great at objectifying the friend in the wheel chair, almost as if they are saying “If you want to be a good person, go hang out with someone in a wheelchair!” As if the commercial could not get any worse, the narrator begins speaking again as the friends are in a bar drinking Guinness, and says that “the choices we make reveal the true nature of our character” while it displays the company’s slogan “made of more.” The brand’s tag line, which is shown at the end of the commercial, is “Made of

More.”
The tagline, “made of more”, obviously refers to the beer, however there is arguably a double meaning behind this phrase.

The first and main being, the company, Guinness wants the audience to feel heart warmed and cheerful. This is to ensure a positive ambiance among the audience and hopefully will make these viewers associate Guinness with those feelings. In effect, Guinness sales of beer go up and everybody is happy and now everyone will hope to find a disabled pal and go hang out with them. It is marketing, plain and simple. On the flip side the take away message is when an able bodied person befriends a disabled person, that able bodied person automatically is “made of more.” Automatically has more character, loyalty, which is not true. Your character is what matters. Character. Such a tossed around word indicating how “good” or “bad” of a person you are. What you do when nobody is watching. Who is the judge of Character? So if you hang out with a disabled person your character is automatically a good person? Oh, and you are automatically “made of more.” You as a person are not made of more just because you included your disabled friend when hanging out, just as all human beings do. Lydia Brown, a disabled writer and activist talks about how disabled people including herself are perceived in our society and how they are looked down on. “Our experiences and lives are usually described through a paradigm of grief, pity, shame, scorn, tragedy, and fear.” (Brown 42) Guinness

is acting like disabled people have such terrible lives, and are at such a discord that people should hang out and hangout with them to boost your character. The company acts as though life is a game and you must do “good” things, in the case hang with someone in a wheel chair, to gain those bonus points in the character category. As a culture, the perception of the disabled should change from pitying to accepting.