Taco Mac – Built Environment Description #3

Taco Mac is a chain of sports bars with many locations throughout metro Atlanta. One of those locations, here in Atlanta, is in Philips Arena. It is has an entrance on the north side of the arena. When you walk in, you get greeted with the savory smell of fresh burgers and wings, while being drawn to the countless, large tv’s strategically positioned all over the restaurant. During any major sporting event, the restaurant will be jam packed and insanely loud.

However, Taco Mac is a very gender-ized space. It leans very much so to the male sex. It is a relatively dark or dim area. This is due to the color of the building, which is just a plain matte black. Then each and every table and chair is made out of very dark shaded wood, resembling a maple tree. The colors of the environment create an ambiance like you are in a cave. This is then connected to a “man-cave” which fosters a competitive environment that is strongly associated with males in our society.

Also, their most popular food item is their chicken wings. Chicken wings are a very messy dish because they are to be eaten with your bare hands. In our society, the absence of eating utensils often gives the connotation of barbarianism. Our barbarian ancestors are described as being heavily savage in their every day lives. In their society, it was a very male centered and driven society because the men would hunt for the family and provide the food. Whether people realize it or not, chicken wings bring about our ancestors savageness to an extent, and the relation of chicken wings to the male gender is thriving in our society. If a man is seen eating chicken wings, no one thinks twice about it, but if a female is eating chicken wings, they are often viewed as being un-lady like or man-ish. The popularity of their wings helps foster the male driven environment of Taco Mac.

The main events that happen at Taco Mac are watch parties for major sporting events. Sports are very gender-ized in our society today. The main events that attract the masses of people are football games, which has been argued to be the most barbaric sport in our society. The opposite end of that spectrum would be the WNBA, and to be honest, I do not believe any WNBA game have ever been on the main tv. Taco Mac is a very politicized area due to the many factors that generate a heavily gender specific environment, in favor of males.

Political Ad Class Prep

This is one of Donald Trump’s tv campaign ads where he tries to use Hillary’s comments on his supporters as being “deplorable’s” against her.

One aspect about the ad I found interesting was that they used a female voice instead of male voice for the voice over. I believe they did this to provide an almost comforting tone. A woman is culturally associated with being more compassionate and caring than a male, so they used a woman’s voice to console his supporters in a way. It paints Hilary is a very monstrous light, so using the woman’s voice is kind of like saying, “come here, everything is gonna be ok, she is just a bad person” to all of his supporters. A male’s voice would not have accomplished the same goal because men are culturally supposed to not show as much emotion as woman, and suck up their feelings and just move on.

Another thing I noticed was they tried to include as many people as possible. While showing the speech in which Hilary made the comments, they showed the clip of her listing off all of the groups of people she called deplorable. In stead of leaving it unspecific as just “Trump Supporters” they choose to add in all of the groups she named in hopes of getting people to feel more passionately about it. They also kept repeating the word ‘you.’ They did this again to try and draw as many individuals in and make them feel like she was personally attacking them. One final time they attempted to appeal to everyone, they said, “hard working people like you.” Again they used the word ‘you,’ but they added in ‘hard working people.’ Basically every adult has some sort of job or work to provide for themselves and their families, so this was another attempt at trying to draw in everyone as possible to feel threatened by Hilary’s comments.