Full Frontal Football Commercials
If along with 100 million other Americans you watched the Superbowl last night you got to take in the spectacular win of the Saints (yay Saints) and a lot of expensive commercials that Monday morning quarterbacks always punditize for what they say about now and future marketing. I was there, at the TV, with my Canon in hand. Leaving aside Betty White (the so-called nostalgia factor), and Oprah refereeing between Jay and Dave, I noticed a lot of green themes emerging, indeed right from the pre-game show, when the bankers gathering for lunch (left) after giving money to start-ups with apple trees and chicken crates in the yard had the happy smiles on their faces of people who, well, have done the right thing, and now are about to eat in peace. Never mind that subsequently the fuchsia-feathered prince (an African-American man), enjoying his $5 fast food feast, was followed in unironic succession by the grim white guy advertising Lipitor. Now that guy, far from thinking about his castle in the throes of his heart attack, was thinking about his wife in the emergency room. They're back antique shopping thanks to the drug. And the car manufacturers appear back in the business of employing a lot of people, whether that's true or not. Teamwork, fellas. I know the Republicans were watchign but I don't know if they took the same message away as I did. Such as: who got us into this deficit mess to begin with? Don't even get me started on the oblique meanings in the Focus on the Family ad, in which the Heisman Trophy award winner's mother reflects on how tough it all was, leaving unsaid the question of whether the issue was whether to have him in the first place. Bam bam, I love you Mom.
Meanwhile, for all you boys out there far from the wild, who have not had your spines removed (ick to that one), delivering a breech tiger is no small matter in feeding consumer desires, right up there with knowing how to say, "I surrender" in 
Japanese. It's "Akirameru," if you plan to encounter a sumo wrestler in Akasaka. How do I know that? (Husband lived in Japan, and no, we are not the target demographic.) My personal favorite was the Coke ad which borrowed liberally from Island of the Dead meets Robinson Crusoe, and gave us blue lit hyena, leopard, transformation, and all. The shamanism of drinking Coca-Cola, well, don't let it escape you as we all have had, as noted in none other than that mainstream media bible a week ago, our eco-psychology robbed at the wellspring. The multiplicity of messages included the great Doritos dog unleashing itself from that shock collar. Would we could all read between the lines and, well, do just the same.
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