From the White Mill to the Black Mill: this is why the commercial about separated parents is still a stereotype

It’s not a new mill. It is not the overcoming of a stereotypical representation of family. It’s a stereotype itself: apparently it’s the story of a family with separated parents, which (in itself) would be a glimpse of reality, a breath of fresh air, the media legitimization of other types of families that are not the idyllic one we are proverbially accustomed to: the famous “Mulino Bianco family”. Actually, follows the worst clichés about separation as a necessarily dramatic moment. The meaning of value, on separation as such, appears not without political implications: the emotional involvement of children as a glue between parents who no longer get along is problematic. But let’s go in order…

«Fishing» is the title of the new Esselunga commercial. In summary: a little girl takes a peach from the supermarket with her mother. The same peach will be used by the little girl to try to get her separated parents to talk to each other. In fact, the little girl will pretend that it is a gift that her mother sends to her father through her.

But what does this advert want to inspire in us? Which emotions, in which audience?

If it is addressed to united and happy families, the feeling will be one of pity and melancholic tenderness for the children who pay the highest price in the separation of their parents. A form, albeit benign, of stigma. And here the first, enormous problem arises: the equation

united family = happy family

The worst thing is the feeling that this commercial will almost certainly trigger in a disunited family, and in particular in a couple of separated parents: a ferocious, inhuman, judgmental sense of guilt. For choosing to end a relationship in a country incapable of separating the latter from the relationship instead of parenting that everyone has with their children.

There toxicity of this narrative consists in considering necessarily dramatic a separation which instead very often coincides with one liberationwith a decompression in marital tensions which (yes!) have repercussions on the serenity of children in everyday life.

In this sense, a “separated” family can be much happier than a claustrophobically, irremediably, violently “united” one.

(Incredible that we are still here having to defend divorce 53 years after the approval of the law that made it possible. This very effectively marks the thermometer of our country on the subject of family).

One moment deserves our attention most of all, throughout the short film: the poor father deludes himself that his mother could really have given him that “gift”. Dreamily he looks up towards the window where he presumably hopes to see her looking out, but there is no one behind the glass. Guess who the bitch responsible for the breakup is?

Not to mention the passage in which the little girl in the car remains silent, demonstrating disinterest in the day spent at school. Out the window: a traditional family. Now, let’s not say that a child cannot suffer from a separation. Let’s just say that companies, in 2023, could avoid stigmatizing what often constitutes a remedy for situations of serious oppression. And that the message that it is right to sacrifice oneself for one’s children does not get across.