Superbowl & Commercials
Feb. 8th, 2010 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomikritzerI watched the Superbowl last night; it was a really excellent game, thanks to the Saints, who had clearly decided that as long as they were in the Superbowl they were going to either win, or go down in a blaze of glory.
The commercials mostly ranged from so-so to appalling. The big ad trend of the year, apparently, was MANLINESS, but more specifically, manliness that is diametrically opposed to anything those icky, nasty, cootie-ridden GIRLS would like, want, or do. It's weird, because the traditional vector of ad-world manliness in the past has been more the "live the fantasy!" ad in which guys suddenly find themselves surrounded by hot women because apparently they all have Bud Light in common.
This year we had:
1. The Dockers ad, which was mostly funny on TV (because, let's face it, men walking around in underwear are kind of inherently funny -- even more so when you have TWO men-in-underwear ads back to back) but ties into a pretty gross print ad series about how men have been all emasculated and need to take back their rightful supremacy! (And WTF, wearing DOCKERS is now the epitome of manliness? SRSLY? What Dockers say to me: "my office frowns on blue jeans but doesn't require suits.")
2. The Dove ad, which was actually mostly funny. (Memo to Dove: your soap is as girl-branded as a soap can get. You might do better starting a spinoff brand called "Eagle" or "Raven" or some other less-girly bird.)
3. The FloTV ad about a man who's being forced to go shopping. (Are there any real women, anywhere, who actually drag along unwilling men to shop for women's clothes because they are too lazy to carry their own purchases? Where this is not some sort of out-of-the-house playtime for an ongoing D/s thing, in which case he's probably not ACTUALLY unwilling and hopefully has a safeword anyway?)
4. The Bud Light ad about the guy crashing the book club, although honestly that one struck me as mocking the man (he's going to be a clueless knob because he's desperate for that Bud Light!) almost as much as the women.
5. The nadir of the evening, the Dodge ad which took as its premise that it is horrifyingly oppressive for a man to have to walk his dog, go to work, and put his underwear in the hamper. Those vile, emasculating women are FORCING these hapless males to be grownups: it is all the fault of the vaginocracy that they don't get to spend their lives as happy-go-lucky teenage boys! By rights, they should be living in their mother's basement with the Swedish Bikini Team, dammit! It was like Nice Guy (tm) ism turned into a car ad.
Now, by contrast --
I thought the best ad of the night was the Google ad in which an unseen person searches for study abroad programs, Paris cafes, advice for flirting with a French girl, advice on long-distance relationships, a job in France, a church in France, and finally... "how to assemble a crib."
The thing that is interesting is that this ad is ALSO telling a story about someone becoming a man -- it's a story about someone growing up. He leaves home, travels far away, explores a new city on his own, falls in love, immigrates, marries, and becomes a father. But it's an ad that separates "man" from "boy," rather than "man" from "icky girls." Moreover, the story it tells is about the joy of growing up, rather than treating adult responsibility as something everyone (of course!) wants to flee desperately at the first opportunity.
There were also a lot of ads that were just stupid (beaver violinists for the WTF?) or somewhat creepy (giant mechanical claws grabbing Beyonce!) and a few other clever ones (I also liked the "bachelor party frees killer whale" ad in part because I recently read through this site, and seeing Letterman, Leno, and Oprah side-by-side gave us a nice collective double-take). At least nobody laid off a robot this year, although an Intel robot rolled off in a huff of hurt feelings. And where the commercials sucked, at least the game made up for it, at least the second half. On onside kick, a two-point conversion that almost wasn't, an interception, dodge, and touchdown ... awesome. At the very end I started shouting at the TV to show me the French Quarter, which they finally did. Awesome.
The commercials mostly ranged from so-so to appalling. The big ad trend of the year, apparently, was MANLINESS, but more specifically, manliness that is diametrically opposed to anything those icky, nasty, cootie-ridden GIRLS would like, want, or do. It's weird, because the traditional vector of ad-world manliness in the past has been more the "live the fantasy!" ad in which guys suddenly find themselves surrounded by hot women because apparently they all have Bud Light in common.
This year we had:
1. The Dockers ad, which was mostly funny on TV (because, let's face it, men walking around in underwear are kind of inherently funny -- even more so when you have TWO men-in-underwear ads back to back) but ties into a pretty gross print ad series about how men have been all emasculated and need to take back their rightful supremacy! (And WTF, wearing DOCKERS is now the epitome of manliness? SRSLY? What Dockers say to me: "my office frowns on blue jeans but doesn't require suits.")
2. The Dove ad, which was actually mostly funny. (Memo to Dove: your soap is as girl-branded as a soap can get. You might do better starting a spinoff brand called "Eagle" or "Raven" or some other less-girly bird.)
3. The FloTV ad about a man who's being forced to go shopping. (Are there any real women, anywhere, who actually drag along unwilling men to shop for women's clothes because they are too lazy to carry their own purchases? Where this is not some sort of out-of-the-house playtime for an ongoing D/s thing, in which case he's probably not ACTUALLY unwilling and hopefully has a safeword anyway?)
4. The Bud Light ad about the guy crashing the book club, although honestly that one struck me as mocking the man (he's going to be a clueless knob because he's desperate for that Bud Light!) almost as much as the women.
5. The nadir of the evening, the Dodge ad which took as its premise that it is horrifyingly oppressive for a man to have to walk his dog, go to work, and put his underwear in the hamper. Those vile, emasculating women are FORCING these hapless males to be grownups: it is all the fault of the vaginocracy that they don't get to spend their lives as happy-go-lucky teenage boys! By rights, they should be living in their mother's basement with the Swedish Bikini Team, dammit! It was like Nice Guy (tm) ism turned into a car ad.
Now, by contrast --
I thought the best ad of the night was the Google ad in which an unseen person searches for study abroad programs, Paris cafes, advice for flirting with a French girl, advice on long-distance relationships, a job in France, a church in France, and finally... "how to assemble a crib."
The thing that is interesting is that this ad is ALSO telling a story about someone becoming a man -- it's a story about someone growing up. He leaves home, travels far away, explores a new city on his own, falls in love, immigrates, marries, and becomes a father. But it's an ad that separates "man" from "boy," rather than "man" from "icky girls." Moreover, the story it tells is about the joy of growing up, rather than treating adult responsibility as something everyone (of course!) wants to flee desperately at the first opportunity.
There were also a lot of ads that were just stupid (beaver violinists for the WTF?) or somewhat creepy (giant mechanical claws grabbing Beyonce!) and a few other clever ones (I also liked the "bachelor party frees killer whale" ad in part because I recently read through this site, and seeing Letterman, Leno, and Oprah side-by-side gave us a nice collective double-take). At least nobody laid off a robot this year, although an Intel robot rolled off in a huff of hurt feelings. And where the commercials sucked, at least the game made up for it, at least the second half. On onside kick, a two-point conversion that almost wasn't, an interception, dodge, and touchdown ... awesome. At the very end I started shouting at the TV to show me the French Quarter, which they finally did. Awesome.
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-08 08:07 pm (UTC)I'm rather glad I saw the beaver violinist one first, though. Because one of the things that the giant mechanical claws grabbed (that was Beyonce? I never knew) was a beaver, and because I'd seen the first commercial, I knew it was an online site's mascot. Still, both were awfully dumb.
I liked the Google commercial a lot, too, though I think Google has done commercials along those lines before, so it didn't break any new ground. And the FloTV commercial was probably the worst of the night, but the same company also had a good commercial, with iconic images of the last several decades to some Who song. They should've just run that one twice.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-08 08:27 pm (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C7caO19sB4
Which could best be described as, "Rather than give up his BridgeStone tires, guy shoves his wife out of the car to be gang-raped by thugs."
The Dodge ad was horrible too--dear lord, those lifeless, defeated eyes on all those poor men who have to WALK THEIR OWN DOG, which we all know entitles a person to look more miserable than a war refugee--but at least it didn't suggest that the men involved would give their wife to a post-apocalyptic gang of thugs for a set of tires.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-08 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-08 08:35 pm (UTC)When the channel 9 news came on I flipped over to CBS in time to catch the end.
my office frowns on blue jeans but doesn't require suits
Date: 2010-02-10 09:39 pm (UTC)Re: my office frowns on blue jeans but doesn't require suits
Date: 2010-02-10 09:44 pm (UTC)