still more faulty parallelism

[Parallelism isn't exactly the problem with this sort of thing...but the two run parallel, you could say.]

(click to enlarge)

These two ads capture the thrust of this ad campaign. The horizontal ones running near the ceiling of the subway car submit ironic theories about Jameson's appeal, and the vertical ones by the doors reply, "It could just be the taste." The cleverness of the ads lies in their use of the pronoun it—more specifically, in the ads' refusal to provide a clear pronoun reference and, in so refusing, their ability to assert, without being so specific as to be refutable, that Jameson is...what, universally beloved? And in fact they kill two birds with one stone because the very not-stating of the claim makes the claim seem even greater—some combination of a kind of mysticism wherein the greatest thing cannot be spoken and a "No soap, radio"–style fear of being left out of something it seems everybody else already is in on (like, wait, what's this thing they're saying about Jameson? I'll just nod and act like I'm cool, too). Of course, you wouldn't want to give these ads too much credit: they don't really add anything substantive to "Maybe It's Maybelline."

Well, the one thing they add to "Maybe It's Maybelline" is the joke, the ironic theories. But now they've blown that. I wish I had gotten a picture of this, but yesterday I saw one that said, "Maybe there's something to this whole triple distillation thing." O.K., let's see here. Irony, when it isn't junk irony, actually has a certain logic to it, so let's follow this through and see where it gets us. 1. Jameson actually does advertise itself as "Triple Distilled." 2. All the other "Maybe it's..." ads are jokes, ridiculous propositions ("Perhaps the ship on the label reminds people of travel. And who doesn't like to travel?"). 3. By association, this ad implies that the "Triple Distilled" claim—"this whole triple distillation thing"—is meaningless, or rather at least that you aren't supposed to pay too much attention to it or to take it too seriously. It would be a little bit like a Verizon Wireless ad in which the Verizon Wireless guy is presented as a total jackass or buffoon—although even that wouldn't be too weird (in our past-loathing culture) because it would just represent a changing of the guard,* whereas Jameson still has that claim on its label...**

It comes down to a kind of Frankfurt-style bullshit, where truth and reality simply have no relevance. This is the essence of advertising today: it's not about lies or deception anymore so much as it is about the total annihilation of truth as a factor.

* The way MTV and VH1 at some point started mocking Vanilla Ice as though they had never had anything to do with him in the first place.

** Also, while both "Triple Distilled" and that actor are advertisements, only one of them is a claim. Is it triple distilled, or isn't it? Does that mean something, or doesn't it?