{"id":294690,"date":"2010-02-08T10:20:12","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T15:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.35518"},"modified":"2010-02-08T16:21:03","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T21:21:03","slug":"what-the-super-bowl-ads-say-about-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/294690","title":{"rendered":"What the Super Bowl Ads Say About America"},"content":{"rendered":"

What did I learn from watching the Super Bowl advertisements last night? Men are turning into girls. It’s good to be green, but even better to laugh about environmentalism. The Super Bowl is an acceptable place to talk about baby politics and compoundable interest on the debt. Also, we’re all going to die, so we might as well drink Bud Light.<\/p>\n

Advertisements are an interesting reflection of culture. To be memorable, you have to shock without offending. That means you have to swim well within the the mainstream but also against the current. Here are the five ad memes I spotted last night:<\/p>\n

1. Don’t Be Such a Girl, Man<\/b><\/p>\n

Were Super Bowl ads always this
\nobsessed about men avoiding emasculation? Probably. But last night,
\nthree ads in particular were a parade of anti-effeminacy. First, in a FloTV ad<\/a>,
\nplay-by-play announcer Jim Nance advised a guy shopping with his
\ngirlfriend to “Change out of that skirt, Jason!” by buying a hand held
\nTV device — because what Real Men need is a mobile strategy for
\navoiding their girlfriends. <\/p>\n

Second a Dove body wash ad<\/a>
\nfollows a man’s life — from the moment of conception through marriage
\nchores — and concludes: “You’re a man! Now that you’re comfortable
\nwith who you are, isn’t it time to [buy male gender-specific Dove body
\nand face wash products]?” The implication was a little weird. Why do
\nmen have to prove that they’re comfortably manly to buy their own body
\nwash? Clearly Dove, nervous about their soft feminine branding,
\novercompensates a little here.<\/p>\n

Third, and most bluntly, a
\nChysler Dodge Charger ad stares into men’s defeated faces as they count
\noff all the ways they’ve promised to emasculate themselves to please
\ntheir bosses and wives. “I will be civil to your mother,” goes the
\nvoice over. “I will put the seat down. I will take my socks off before
\ngetting into bed. And because I do this, I will drive the car I want to
\ndrive.” And the words plastered over the awesome, manly image of a
\nblack Dodge zooming down the street: MAN’S. LAST. STAND. In other
\nwords: I will be miserable, and because I am miserable, I will drive a Chrysler. <\/i>No, thank you.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure what drove this particular bout of masculinity, but it’s an interesting reaction to Bush years when it seemed like every ad made fun of super-masculine men rather than rushed to the defense of guys who feel emotionally sterilized. I wish I could properly explain the trend, but all I can honestly do is note that I’m seeing it.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

2. Let’s Laugh at Environmentalists<\/b>!<\/p>\n

Mainstream
\nAmerica has a tortured relationship with going green. Many of us who
\nthink we should be more eco-aware also feel a little silly about
\nembracing environmentalism too strongly. This schizophrenia was on
\ndisplay in last night’s ads. First in a Bud Light ad where a man builds
\na home out of beer cans, a girl compliments him for using recycled Bud
\nLights to insulate his house. “Enviro-what?” he responds. “Oh they’re
\nnot empty…” In other words: Walls of cold beer! And the guys proceed to wreck the place in a thirsty
\nfrenzy. <\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

In
\nan ad for the new Audi A3 with clean diesel, a troop of “Green Police”
\nterrorize a town by arresting people for using plastic bottles,
\ninstalling fluorescent light bulbs and throwing out batteries. So we’re
\nadvertising eco-awareness by … mocking eco-awareness?
\n“Environmentalists can be so over-the-top ridiculous, right? Hahaha.
\nBuy our green car.” Funny, but weird and revealing. Is this country
\nreally so skittish about being green that we have to self-deprecate our
\nconcern for the environment?<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

3. Drink at the Apocalypse<\/b><\/p>\n

There
\nwere not one but two separate Bud Light ads about drinking in the face
\nof death. The funnier spot, cleverly pegged to the Lost premiere,
\nfeatured a haggard group of plane crash survivors who ignore a woman
\nplanning their escape when a guy finds the beverage cart: “It’s full of
\nBud Light!” Boozing ensues.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

In
\nthe other Bud Light ad, a group of scientists spot an asteroid
\napproaching and ring in their doom with Bud Light. As we’re coming out
\nof (and in many ways, still in) the Great Recession, I suppose that a
\nbit of gallows humor feels topical and ameliorative.<\/p>\n

4. Internet Memes are Mainstream Memes<\/b><\/p>\n

There is no way that my father or mother has ever seen the five-second YouTube clip of “dramatic chipmunk”<\/a>
\nturning to the camera over theatric, descending chords. But Carmax made
\nnot one, but two commercials of animals turning dramatically based on
\nthis clip. Spreading the joke out over two commercials — dramatic
\ncockatoo! dramatic monkey! — felt old almost immediately. But the
\nimplication was interesting. Along with the Vizio ad starring Beyonce
\nthat showed a machine dumping YouTube celebrities into the belly of a
\nphone, these commercials signaled that YouTube memes are now officially mainstream
\nmemes, too. I’d be interested to know how older viewers reacted to these ads. <\/p>\n

5. Politics in the Super Bowl<\/b><\/p>\n

Was anybody else
\nsurprised by all the political ads in the Super Bowl? There was that ad
\nabout the debt with children intoning scary things about compoundable
\ninterest rates. There was also, unfortunately, an ad from that
\ndebt-riddled government about the Census (as my colleague Dan quipped:
\nNice use of $3 million, gov!). There was the much-anticipated pro-life
\nad with college football star Tim Tebow and his mom (which I found very
\ntasteful, and you can watch below). And there was a FloTV ad for handheld television<\/a>
\nthat was basically a review of five decades in televised upheavel in
\nAmerica. Literally: Race riots! Impeachment! Wars! Timothy McVeigh!
\n9\/11! Katrina! “Don’t Miss a Moment!” Actually Flo, I would have liked
\nto miss quite a lot of that stuff…<\/p>\n

I’m all for bringing politics to the people, but I don’t think it goes down well with chips and light beer.<\/object><\/object>


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What did I learn from watching the Super Bowl advertisements last night? Men are turning into girls. It’s good to be green, but even better to laugh about environmentalism. The Super Bowl is an acceptable place to talk about baby politics and compoundable interest on the debt. Also, we’re all going to die, so we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}