Chrysler soars with a hymn to Detroit, Pepsi tells us we're a bunch of craven dopes
I operate on the premise that we can learn something about the state of the American mind by watching the annual Super Bowl ads. Our corporations spend enormous sums of money for a 30 second spot, and the nation's creative advertising firms give it their best shot. So I think it's fair to assume that at least the ads tell us what the corporations and the ad companies think about the state of the American psyche.
So what did the advertisements shown in Super bowl 45 tell us about ourselves? Until the third quarter: In my opinion, just about nothing. Most of the ads were boring, disorganized, and lacked any coherent theme. Almost none of them did what the best advertisements do, capture a previously unrecognized aspect of ourselves, or our ideals, and play with it a little, light it up. But one or two really did it right.
A notable exception to the general tackiness: A clever Stella Artois ad pitted a clutch of grieving women against a mournful French singer, played by Adrien Brody, who wasn't lamenting the loss of any of them, but rather the draining of his Stella Artois Beer. A nice riff on love and loss.
The most evident theme in this years super bowl ad display?
People getting hit.
With, among other things, Pepsi Max cans.
For no good reason, in vignettes with utterly stupid and confusing mini story lines.
All this against the backdrop of football players getting hurt, leaving the field cradling an arm. First Shields then Woodson of Green Bay. There is something so vulnerable about that stance of a man cradling an injured arm. We see them run off to the locker room. The announcer mentions that Aaron Rodgers has had two concussions this season, and is trying out a new helmet.
There were more movie ads than I've seen before, and of course most of these include people getting hit, shot, crushed etc. We're so used to that it doesn't even count. But Pepsi cans hitting people, and then a couple running away so they don't get caught? The picture of us as craven and casually violent is not attractive.
I was left with a malaise, a sour feeling that not only didn't I get entertained, or struck by a moment of excellent commercial art, but also I was soaked in meaninglessness, which I have started to think of as a public health epidemic.
Here's a question-why would Pepsi cola chose to market its new product by crafting a couple of vignettes in which people hit other people, sort of accidentally, sort of not, with Pepsi cans, and hurt them.
OK, I take it all back. It's a couple of minutes into the third quarter. I just saw a magnificent ad for the Chrysler 200--an homage to Detroit, with Eminem at the end saying "this is Detroit, this is what we do".
The ad was a rousing multi-racial hymn to the American worker, to American design, to culture, recovery, strength. It was the perfect melding of commerce and ideals. It would be nice if this mixture would sell better than inane bopping people in the testicles with a pop can. It made me want to go out and buy a Chrysler.
