configuration, with her husband and son sitting in the row behind. Naturally, her husband is not amused to see her clinging to a stranger, leading to some awkward conversation. In an attempt to meliorate the situation, the wife proposes that the family goes off for funnel cake. Her seatmate is not invited. The closing voiceover? “Hairpin turns have a way of bringing people together.” In some ways, “Embrace” solves the problems of “Language Barrier” in that it bothers to suggest that there is a park outside of roller coasters by including the funnel cake line towards the end. The spot is also less overtly racist, though it helps all the featured actors are white, giving the spot less ability to encode stereotypes through its portrayal of ethnic minorities. This is not to say that the spot does not have non-white extras—five of the 18 people on the train are non-white. Of those five, four are in the extreme background of the shot, while another, an Asian woman, is three rows behind the lead actors. The non-white extras, barely visible in the background of four shots (this is counting shots with at least one non-white extra; only two shots have more than one non-white extras), are much less prominent than the white leads, who are featured in essentially every shot. The world of “Embrace” is a world where minorities exist but are nowhere near as relevant or important as whites, again upholding the dominant power structure in American society. More problematic is the spot’s portrayal of gender. While there are female extras who can ride GhostRider and chat lightly about the experience afterwards, the spot treats them just like set dressing. The spot’s central focus is on how the primary woman (the mother of the family of three) is scared and the man is not, on how the woman needs the man for protection and on how the man’s masculinity is upheld through the woman being scared. This upholding of masculinity is particularly conveyed by the facial expressions of the lead actors when the train pulls into the station. Both have their eyes closed. The man is smiling, looking blissful. He’s absentmindedly
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