It does a one minute historical survey of home appliances. The point, of course, is "We've sure come a long way." A celebration of progress.
I beg to differ.
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1918: The beginning of this "history" begins with two women in the kitchen, one preparing food, the other drinking tea. They could be related, or just friends, (most likely related) but they clearly don't feel the need to have male company in their territory. The kitchen is also brightly decorated with mustard yellow paint and pretty plates hung on the wall. The "first electric refrigerator" is behind a practical yellow cupboard, and gives additional color to the already colorful room. The floor is a practical tile, which also adds color and interesting design to the room. The women are dressed possibly according to the time of day and the chores they're performing, but they still have elegance.
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1929: The "first room air conditioner" gives a couple of young girls something to get excited about. They are in pretty white frocks, with their hair loose and feminine, and they have with ribbons around their head. The living room has splashes of color, with the turquoise from the cushion and curtains matching the thin bands around their dresses.
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1950: An industrious housewife nonetheless manages to look good in her kitchen, which is designed in contrasting yellow and green. The cherry wood cabinets give additional color. It looks like the woman has already prepared her food in the oven, and is expecting her husband back home for dinner any time soon, dressed in an attractive dress with a pretty apron to cover it for light mishaps.
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1965: This bright blue kitchen is plainer than the others despite this explosion of (a single) color. The man in the kitchen is probably not preparing food, but using the ice maker. This is a manly enough activity and gives him a good enough reason for being in the kitchen. Although the woman is wearing a frock, it is baggy and formless. And although it has some print on it (it looks like small flowers), it looks drab and uninteresting. She's probably dressed to ward off summer heat, but there are many to do so without putting on a sack-like dress.
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1970: For some reason, the 70s look more colorful and design-friendly than the 60s. I think this is an off-shoot of the psychedelic sixties. Despite the pattern on the wall, and the younger woman's patterned dress, we are not in an earlier era. For one, the woman has on pants, which wouldn't have occurred in the fifties. And they are not the baggy pants of the sixties, but tight, form-fitting ones. Men still don't do household chores, but women can now act like men.
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Contemporary: The stove is in full use, but the cook is the man. The family is eating informally in the kitchen. The dinner is cooking in the sophisticated oven. Is that the incentive to get the man in the kitchen? But the woman "owns" the place. She hands out the dishes but the man waits on them. The kitchen is clean and spacious, but it is sterile and colorless (lifeless?). The family is dressed in the baggy, sloppy clothes of our era. The woman is wearing the pants metaphorically and literally. Both she and her husband look like they're wearing the same clothes: tan pants with blue shirts. I don't think (yet) men will be wearing women's clothes, so this sartorial decision is clearly hers. And the daughter looks like she's in her pajamas, while the son is in a baggy sweat shirt/jacket. I wonder how much of an internal/marital conflict there is under all this sterile happiness?
Below, the woman is patting the man on the back for a job well done, and he is smiling contentedly. Is this how he behaves towards his colleagues and bosses at work? But he's probably one of those "house husbands," and his wife is his boss. Again, I wonder how long this will last, and they will just be another modern statistic of divorced (and remarried) couples with children strewn around.
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We think we have come a long way, with our modern life, but any alien civilization looking in at us will notice the lack of color (or joie de vivre) our modern era exhibits, and will wonder if we're mourning something.
Below is a screen shot of the uber-modern cooking range. Is this what encourages the man to enter the kitchen, all those gadgets? Still, it seems to be working.
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Efficiency with the dishwasher. I wonder who puts in the dishes?
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And the fancy Frigidaire fridge (not fully viewed in the video, but below is a sample from Productwiki), with double doors, a freezer at the bottom and an ice maker for all those cocktails Mr. Domesticity can provide for his over-worked wife:
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Full video of the ad below: