Fairy Liquid and Narrative Theory

Fairy liquid has been a main household product for decades, and has been advertised on TV since the 1960's. The style of the adverts have changed dramatically after having fairly predictable content up until the 1990's, when there were two stock characters that follow a similar story line. In 2000, Fairy released an advert that showed a young Black mother and son, in an effort of combat problems with ethnicity and sexism throughout their older adverts they have continued this variation in style because of issues about the company giving typical gender roles to the cast.

This is the most recent fairly liquid advert, which was released in 2015. It shows three different characters two of which fit their own character functions. The main character in the advert is a young boy that wants to use the fairly liquid bottle. This typical way of showing a child (wanting to play) could be considered the hero role from Vladimir Propp's theory of different character roles, because we are hoping he is given the prize (princess) which is the bottle. The father gives the prize to the hero at the end of the advert. While there aren't an of the other character profiles throughout the ad, the mother is included so the advert isn't deemed sexist, but the father also does washing up for the same reason. This is different from older adverts when it was seen as the woman's job to be in the kitchen, which is why this advert from the 1970's only shows the mother and daughter. 

As it is a different style of advert, it fits with a different narrative theory, this time from Todorov, who explains that there are five different stages of a plot line. In this advert, the equilibrium is the mother and daughter talking and playing, the disruption is when the audience realise there are dirty plates. The problem is that the daughter has the fairy liquid, but the mother needs it to clean the dishes. The forth point is restoring the order, when the girl gives her mother the fairy liquid, so she can clean the plates and then finally the fifth point, the new equilibrium, is that the dish is clean. The rest of the advert is still very different to the it's modern counterpart. In the 70's there was a much more defined level of gender roles which is why there are no male actors in the advert. In the modern advert, the story line is predominantly male actors, but it includes a woman washing up so it cannot be labelled sexist. The selling point of the product has also changed. In 1970, what made the product stand out is that it is kind to the hands of the person washing up, however, now most cleaning products are so it can no longer be considered a USP. The new selling point is that it lasts for much longer, which is what the advert focuses on.