Modern Farming

            The ad created by Ram was in fact a very good one. They used pride and heritage to sell their product. They did so by glorifying the job of a farmer and portrayed the farmer as the ultimate working class person. They get up early, go to bed late, and work incredibly hard in between. They also, according to this ad, own this specific type of truck. By making it seem this way, more people will inevitably buy this product in order to feel as though they are hard-working, like those farmers depicted in the commercial. They also used religion to get their message across in this ad. They made it seem as though it was God’s will to have the farmer and all that the farmer does. It created a mood that it was God who needed the farmer and worldly success would’ve been unobtainable had the farmer not come around. This is also, without being actually stated of course, saying that it is God’s will for every farmer or even every person to have this truck. This ad is saying that if you are hard-working then you must have this truck.

            The parody of this commercial was very funny and incorporated humor a great deal, however it also had some very serious and important points to make. To start off, they used a fact about how farmers in today’s society make up a mere 1% of the population. This fact made it very clear that the real commercial was not actually targeting farmers with their commercial, but rather many more. A company would not waste its time and resources, especially with how much a super bowl ad costs, to advertise to much a small and seemingly insignificant chunk of the population. They were instead using the farmer as an object to invoke feelings of trust and hard work to many, many more in order to sell their product. From there, the parody highlighted the numerous backwards things that are now beginning and continuing to occur within the farming industry. It commented on the many pesticides now in use, the crowded livestock factories, and many other things that are now used. It also commented a great deal about the greed involved in today’s farming industry, with subsidies lobbying at the forefront. It made a mockery of how the original ad was using the farmer as an upstanding character, and everything that was wrong with that. It pointed out that there really aren’t many true farmers left, and they have instead been replaced by machinery, chemicals, and factories. It is a sad day for America when a farmer is no longer truly an upstanding person and must use such tactics, but it is inevitably the world that we live in today.