Ian Gabriel Breaks Gender Stereotypes
Giant Films’ Director Ian Gabriel worked on an eye-opening commercial campaign for Carling Black Label in which the brand raised the question of what exactly it means to ‘be a man’.
Take us through your thought process behind the concept for Carling’s latest campaign. It’s very bold for a man to have directed something like this and to speak openly about what’s wrong in society.
During the brief for this commercial, we were asked to devise a ‘problem and solution’ approach to the overall issue of toxic male behaviour and its effect on society. I knew from the outset that we didn’t want to preach about these issues which are obvious enough to see in society. Our thought was that we needed to see dominant male behaviour reversed at key moments in the ‘dialogue’ (or lack of dialogue) that is ongoing in society. Our thinking was that it was important to target the way in which people are trapped into toxic behaviour by pre-existing patterns and to suggest points at which those patterns could be reversed.
The agency liked this overall conceptual approach, which we then applied to the storytelling. I also wanted to highlight the way in which diverse personalities might look at this discussion and bring their own point of view to bear on the topic, knowing that even though we all largely pay lip service to the same basic societal values, there are often big gaps in interpretation around what one person says and another’s apparent agreement with that statement. In other words, I didn’t want to be saying that we were all in unquestioning agreement on the topic we were dealing with; the objective was not to preach but to encourage a conversation. I think everyone — male, female and non-binary can subscribe to that idea.
What was it like executing this ad, from casting the right people to taking it through to post?
Most important for me was to find the lead narrator figure who should feel like a modern empathetic man openly exploring an idea. A lot of presenter commercials adopt a very ‘all knowing’ attitude in performance. I wanted to find an actor who could feel like he was learning truths and sharing them as he went along.
When I interviewed and worked with Pallance Dladla, I felt like I could get him to evoke what I believed was the right balance of certainty and ‘discovery’ in his performance. It was important to see an empathetic male discussing the issue of ‘maleness’. I also wanted to be sure that when I cast the woman activist speaking to the crowd that we cast someone who really had the requisite passion for the subject. I thought that as we were dealing with such intimate views, we should be truthful rather than merely ‘performing’ what the roles required.
Once everyone involved with the production understood and felt the extent to which we were going for authenticity, the excitement and faith in what we were doing spread through the production and post work. I think (and hope) that that honest passion shows in the end result!
What were the main messages that you needed to get across to the audience?
One of the first visuals I came up with was the notion of the burning pram. This was clearly not intended as a literal idea but as a projection of the notions of parental denial and neglect, and what harm that can affect across a lifetime. There was a fear that this idea might be too controversial and not be understood as a symbolic portrayal, but it seems like everyone really got to understand the idea clearly enough.
We looked for, and expressed other life-affecting assumptions, dominant fatherhood, male rivalry, etc. — some of these are ancient tropes frequently dramatised in the arts through the ages — others were more recent manifestations, like the frequent and expanding misuse of contemporary social media to promote misconceived behaviour patterns. In contrast, we also wanted to celebrate positive acts that always occur, so balancing the burning pram motif with the motif of a son carrying his father down the stairs was a key emotive gesture which I felt gave us the authentic balance we were looking for.
What does ‘being a man’ mean to you?
I think being an individual is the best each of us can hope for. What it means to ‘be a man’ I think, is a non-starting question based on role-playing, triggered by a binary definition that doesn’t really have a lot to do with the reality of what we should believe in and do from day to day. Each of us is an individual who I think is required to be bigger than that definition.
Your thoughts on the current state of the commercial industry?
There are many forms of transformation that need to continue to be focused upon — we’re not in a zero-sum game with one side the loser and the other side the winner. Racism, sexism, ageism, cronyism — there’s a long list of isms that we need to continually resist and work against so that the most important element driving us is expanding creativity and excellence in our work. If that’s our driving mantra and the industry remains genuinely open to those manifestations wherever they occur, transformation will automatically renew and recharge itself each step of the way.
