coupla fuckin' ads

(1)  I was watching TV with a buddy last night and saw this grotesque commercial in which we start out looking at this cute girl who's got this adorable contented smile on her face—or rather it appears to be a contented smile, but turns out to be a horrible vacant smile because as the camera slowly moves around and behind her, we discover that the Littles have hollowed out the back of her skull to have a rock concert in it.  Truly the stuff of nightmares...

(2)  Twice now in movie theaters I've seen that Dove commercial about "soap scum."  I have three things to say about this one.

    First, that if there's one thing more despicable in advertising than the invented need, it's the invented fear,* particularly the invented fear of being disgusting to the sexually attractive (which, I forget whether I've mentioned before, is a greater motivator than the fear of grievous bodily harm: reportedly the reason spray cans sometimes warn against "facial disfigurement" is not that they actually might cause facial disfigurement, but rather that warnings about brain damage do practically nothing to stop kids from inhaling the stuff to get high—which is also why it's effective to tell kids that marijuana causes acne).

    Second, relatedly, my friend Dr. Math (who's been very quiet lately) pointed out that the soap scum they show you to scare you into using their product is identified at the bottom of the screen as an "artist's representation"—in other words, they're not even showing you something real and making it look grosser than it might otherwise be: they're showing you what it might theoretically look like.  And since the whole point of the ad is that you're supposed to think, "Yuck, I don't want that on me," this effectively amounts to a lie (especially since the artist's representation just happens to look like something that shows up visibly under a certain kind of revealing light—a vague concept presented as a hidden truth: very sneaky).

    Third, consequently, this ad inspired me to boo in the movie theater—and let me take a second here to encourage everyone to boo at ads in movie theaters, particularly if one really annoys you.  I've said it's sort of a shame that people don't boo anymore, but of course one reason why not is that we're too polite, which isn't necessarily a bad thing; however, if there's one instance in which we shouldn't have to worry about people's feelings, it's this one.  Some would say that artists and entertainers deserve to be torn to shreds by critics for having the gall to put themselves out there; that's fucking stupid—but it's sure as hell true of ad companies and corporations who are basically swindling the public every waking hour of every motherloving day.  You don't have to be monomaniacally anticorporate to agree: think of it as a service you're providing to the corporations and the free markets, voting not with your wallet but with your voice.  BOO!

(3**)  This is one of a whole series I've seen lately on subway platforms in New York, N.Y.:

(click to enlarge)

Like the HSBC ads (ah, forget the link, just enter "HSBC" into the search field), this campaign makes no sense except insofar as it panders to New Yorkers, or tries to.  The formula is this: "Special deal we are telling you about?  Great.  So what about stereotypical problem that New Yorkers also want solved?"  Of course what's going on is that (a) the construction suggests that Bank of America has now effectively solved one major New York problem with this special deal (freeing us up to concentrate on the others), and (b) we're supposed to say, "Hey, I identify with that, my neighbor's dog barks all the time!"—i.e., we're supposed to be fucking idiots.***

    P.S.  That guy's a douche.  I know fashion is fashion and taste is relative and one man's awesome is another man's lame and all that—not to mention throwing the first stone and glass houses and whatnot—but can I just say, the extremely popular, ever-so-carefully tended-to facial hair that is meant to resemble careless inattention to grooming—like, oops, I just haven't gotten around to shaving for a few days—is by definition pretentious.  I don't have nearly as much trouble with the beards that are regularly trimmed down to stubble (although I don't love it, either), but the combination of keeping it real short and shaping it so lovingly kind of drives me up the wall...at least when it's done by ostensibly heterosexual men.  So, OK, yes, I'm a bigot. [Never mind: that's not nice.]

    P.P.S.  Back to the ad: I'm not going to bother researching the deal, but I notice that it says the offer expires in Jan. 2009—and unless what expires in Jan. 2009 is the ability to sign up for this promotion, then the very most you could get back is $30 because no one needs to spend more than $81/month to use New York City Transit.  So—wow, $30, problem solved!  Thanks, Bank of America!

    P.P.P.S.  It's not a rhetorical question!  (HSBC has an idea.)

* The The Onion captured this concept perfectly in their brilliant and somehow forgotten Our Dumb Century^a (1999)—which you should buy or otherwise acquire—with their Dec. 18, 1923, headline, "Listerine Company Invents, Cures Halitosis."

** I use "couple" very loosely, to mean a few.  This is incorrect.  (Although, to be fair, that's why I chose the very slangy coupla, as in "I just almost got tricked by a coupla draculers.")

*** At first I wrote "fucking retarded," but I'm trying to wean myself from using the R word because even I find it offensive, or at least insensitive.  Ironically [also not quite the right word] idiots itself should be no less offensive because it used to be an official medical term for exactly what retardation also used to be the official term for...  But whatevs.

^a Last great thing they ever did?