Holy shit balls. Does Fancy Feast really think this is their female consumer’s fantasy? If they’re right, it just validates my theory on why men should never date chicks who are into cats.
If you identify with the guy in this spot and you’re reading this post, haze yourself immediately. Consider your man card forfeited. “Will you marry us?” What the fuck does that even mean? Is there some kind of beastiality thing going on here? Any douche bag who uses a cat to propose to a chick needs to grow a fucking pair. What you’re basically doing is letting your chick know that you’ll happily play the bitch role in the relationship by taking back seat to a fucking cat. When did men stop being men?
Going forward, whenever you hear the phrase “dumbing down of America,” this spot should serve as its visual:
When this commercial first aired, the Gossip Industry was all abuzz over the fact that Old Navy featured a Kim Kardashian look-alike in one of their commercials. This chick does look a little bit like Kim Kardashian, but go to a club in any major city on a Friday night, and you’ll see an army of Kim Kardashian look-alikes. The fact that Old Navy intentionally or unintentionally searched for someone who looked like Kim Kardashian shouldn’t be the main reason why we’re talking about this spot right now.
For quite some time corporate America has been exploiting the shit out of young girls. Yes, parents should do a better job of parenting, but it’s a two way street. For those of you not watching cartoons these days, this is about par for the course:
It’s almost as if each company that markets products to girls passes some kind of slut baton off to the next company at each stage of their development. When sex gets bottled, packaged and sold to young girls we shouldn’t be shocked when the next generation thinks being porn stars is a viable career. Old Navy’s commercial isn’t overly gratuitous, but it’s the fact that everyone is focusing on the irrelevant peripheral elements of this issue and overlooking what’s really going on that’s troubling… putting a young, suggestive, auto-tuned valley girl at the forefront of your advertising campaign is the norm. I’m just glad I don’t have a daughter.
Two decades of schooling has drilled three rules into my mind: Everything is connected to race, white people are generally oppressors unless they show sufficient guilt for the sins of their past, and to question either of these first two laws is to be a racist. “Celebrating Diversity” has become a pejorative in my mind if only because the slogan has been choked down my throat from the day my 1st grade class reenacted civil rights marches until a graduate school professor was lambasted by a student for not including more “ethnic authors” into his curriculum that semester. (He blithely pointed out that whites do have an ethnicity.) The point here, however, isn’t to pick the low-hanging fruit by attacking political correctness run amok. Hell, I had fun singing “We Will Overcome” and marching around the neighborhood with my six-year-old friends. Instead, I’d like to thank decades of private and public school education for robbing me of my ability to enjoy stupid Super Bowl commercials without deconstructing the politics of color.
Take the following Pepsi advertisement for example:
I’d like to enjoy this on the level of The Three Stooges and simply chuckle at some girl being hit in the head by a can of soda. Thanks to liberal guilt, I can’t. What I see is a racially loaded commercial in which the aggressive and pushy black woman is outraged that her man is looking at a white woman. I see a hate crime. I see black female fear that their black husbands secretly harbor a desire to be with white women, and I see that whites have become the one ethnic group that are deemed legitimate to villainize.
Remember The Sum of All Fears? Tom Clancy’s original novel imagined Palestinian terrorists detonating a nuclear device in Denver. The film couldn’t demonize a minority so the bad guys were hamfistedly changed to rich white Neo-Nazis bent on world domination.
Back to Pepsi though. The problem with seeing everything as inspired by race is that it’s a crippling mindset. How can some sort of victimization be avoided in this instance? Make the girl Asian and it reminds too many people of the Los Angeles riots. Make her Hispanic and the spot mirrors some very real and very uncomfortable tensions going on throughout the U.S. Make her black, and the NAACP cries from the rooftops that Pepsi is making light of black-on-black violence. Even changing the couple’s ethnicity either creates issues surrounding of interracial marriage or simply insults various ethnicities by simply omitting them for your campaign altogether. Ultimately, I’d like to just see this as a husband with a wandering eye for pretty girls but thanks to my unwavering “celebrating of diversity” I can’t.
My own personal hell was further stoked with Kia’s spot that sets up a very intriguing hierarchy of power.
From least to most powerful, that list goes:
1. Criminal
2. Traffic Cop
3. Supervillain with Helicopter
4. Supervillain with Helicopter’s Boss with Bikini-Model-Filled Yacht
5. Poseidon, God of the Ocean and Earthquakes
6. Martians with City-Sized Spaceship and Tractor Beam
7. Aztecs (or Mayans, I’m no Mesoamerican scholar.)
Really? Aztecs? Apparently piercing ones genitals and human sacrifice can create wormholes that rip through space and time, but they can’t defeat three boatloads of Spaniards? I watch this spot without knowing beyond any sliver of a doubt that the hucksters over at Kia thought this might be a nice sly wink towards the U.S.’s booming Hispanic population. I can see this ad running in Mexico or Central America where the descendants of the civilizations still live, but most Hispanics that live here are as closely related to Cuauhtemoc as I am to Alexander the Great. Again, years of celebrating diversity take what should be some great special effects and a cute story, into Kia throwing their weight behind The Reconquista of Aztlan. (Thank you very much Carlos Fuentes.)
I’m not sure if this is what my teachers and professor had in mind with their attempts to hammer home diversity, but my brain is permanently warped.
The worst part about Super Bowl commercials these days is how the companies behind them appear to go out of their way to make sure they appeal to the lowest common denominator. Call it the LHFP (Low Hanging Fruit Principle.) There were 17 car commercials during the big game on Sunday, and one of them stood out for all the wrong reasons. Mainly because they zigged when others zagged (or at least attempted to zag). Rather than develop an original concept, the folks who came up with the Chevy Camaro spot decided to vomit all over themselves by revealing their concept was actually making fun of the fact that they didn’t really have a concept. Subsequently, we were all treated to a front row seat at a sausage making class:
When you compare this turd of an idea with the one Chrysler ran (see below), it makes the Camaro spot look even worse. It’s not like the Camaro is an unknown commodity. They’re coming from a position of strength. Chevrolet has an authentic story to tell and yet they still decided to mail it in in front of the biggest audience ever to watch a Super Bowl. The cherry on top: a tagline which reads, “Chevy Runs Deep.” Nice. And that is supposed to mean what exactly?
Groupon might want to revisit that buyout offer from Google because any goodwill they had with the American people just went straight out the window with this Super Bowl commercial. Let me get this straight… joking about the plight of Tibet is supposed to be funny? Really? I am at a complete loss for words with how this concept could have ever been approved. I’m a big fan of dark humor, but this isn’t that. This is simply shameful, especially when you think of what could have been.
Apparently the marketing wizards at 5 Hour Energy have zeroed in on their target demographic: 18-34 year old douchebags. In theory, it’s not a bad strategy, until you consider that your dickweed 20-something co-worker who shows up bragging about how much he drank the night before, has long since abandoned his morning cup of Joe for a Red Bull or Monster Lo-Carb. Shouldn’t you be targeting the energy drink companies, 5 Hour Energy?
Let’s get one thing clear: my morning cup of coffee isn’t a hassle, a wait, or a fuss. It’s probably the only part of my goddamn day that I don’t have to think or stress about. I mean, if pouring a bit of sugar into a coffee mug – an act that takes about .0002 seconds – is the most difficult part of my day, then I’d say I’ve got it pretty good. Furthermore, if you are stupid enough to carry a brown jacket to work over your black suit (on what looks to be a 70 degree day) all while holding your cell phone in you hand rather than your pocket, then yeah you may fumble with your coffee a bit like the guy in :07 of this clip.
But the ultimate part of this horrible commercial is the “lead” actor, who looks like he walked straight out of central douche casting. It’s one thing to tell me you like the product. But don’t give me a knowing shrug and then proceed to kick one leg up onto your breakfast table in an obscene spread eagle position while you read the morning newspaper. I mean, who even does that anyway? Even the hotshot boss from 80’s sitcoms would kick both legs up on the desk when trying to be a badass. But one leg up and one leg down? That’s just begging for a swift kick to the nuts.
Watching millionaires and billionaires argue over money makes me sick. That’s exactly what we have here. The NFL players union seems to think this commercial will bring the fans over to their side in their “fight” against the owners. Who is funding this god-awful spot? I’m assuming that it’s the players, and if that’s the case, what a complete fucking waste of their money. Given the lack of money management skills some of these players possess, they should have saved their pennies for the looming lock-out. The fans don’t care how these two parties resolve their differences so long as it’s not done in public.
In terms of the actual concept, it’s played out. We’ve seen this formula a million fucking times before. Like here for instance. It’s also a shameful lift from this classic scene (forward to the 3minute mark.) Because multimillionare players don’t have a say at all when it comes to reaching an agreement with their owner bosses.
When a perfume ad comes on I expect to watch 30 seconds of complete unintelligible absurdity. When Britney Spears acts, I expect to watch complete shit. So when this double whammy of a spot came on, I don’t know why I was still blown away by how bad it was (it’s not like this is the first shitty fragrance commercial she’s ever been in). It’s just that this one is so nonsensical, I want to punch something.
First of all, Brit sneaks out the side door at a premiere unnoticed. That never happens. Second, she’s walking down a cobblestone alley in 4-inch heels and doesn’t sprain an ankle. That definitely has never happened. Finally, her hair looks somewhat normal and her extension glue isn’t showing. No way that shit has ever happened!
Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me three times, I’m a simpleton tween who thinks a doublewide and Britney Spears products are the height of class.
Here’s what really gets me though… Britney initiates this transaction with the fortune teller, but gets all high and mighty and leaves saying she’s too good for that sort of thing. If I were that fortune teller I wouldn’t have let Britney off the hook so easily. I would have asked her what she was expecting to find walking into a mysteriously lit, crystal ball adorned shop with a sign on the front that said “Fortune”. I’d be pissed that not only did she waste valuable time that could have been spent with a paying customer, but that she also offended my craft. I’d then show her that I, in fact, controlled her destiny and would throw my crystal ball at her face.
Then again, if I were a gypsy fortune teller I should have been able to see that an indecisive celebutramp was going to wander into my tent and blow me off. If I suck that bad at looking into my crystal ball, I deserve to be abused.
My final thought is this: all the talk about fortune readings, controlling the future, and Brit’s final hair toss with simultaneous breathy line about controlling her own destiny, you’d think this perfume was called “Destiny”. No no, it’s actually called “Radiance”, and I have no idea what the fuck that has to do with anything I just saw for the last 30 seconds. Thank you Britney, every time you release anything, America becomes stupider.
