Sorry, the Charger KICKS ASS!

And if my woman is going to make me pick up my socks and change my underwear, I'm goddam well going to drive one!

Ha ha. Whipped.

Nicfit, that's like me dreaming of marrying John Goodman.

You drive a car in the city? That's the really crazy part!

I think it's safe to say that the average Awl reader does not watch football the rest of the year.

@Abe: I don't think it was the masculinity that shocked people, I think it was the resentment of women bordering on outright hostility that did it?

The Chevy ad he does which ends with him smirking at the Honda lawnmower just screams "HONDA DRIVERS HAVE TINY DICKS!"

Which isn't that far off from the guy who l..l.lllllll...s his girlfriend but would LOVE another Miller Lite. Those have been running for months.

Women = Shrews.
Men = Cro-Magnons.

Again, this is a very regular theme all year long. All season Bud ran those terrible beer ads where the guy ditches his bitchy girlfriend b/c he loves his (cough pisswater cough) Bud more. What's more preposterous when I think about it is how this analysis of the ad content is insinuated to be the fault of the football-watching audience of men and not the result of some ad creative THINKING he or she knows what the football watching audience of men want to see. Because trust me, regular football watchers ridicule almost all ads that try reach some kind of deep psychological man-nerve.

Also, when she says "I actually know a whole bunch of strong, interesting, masculine, comfortably sexual men, who don't need to pretend to be 4 decades younger than they are, or look for secret (fetishistic?) escapes from the women in their lives." I know she is lying just like the Miller delivery man ads that pretend rich people are hoarding the High Life.

@grumplr: See? I still view both your and Abe's examples as different beasts (heinous and cringe-worthy, to be sure, but not quite the same). In each they riff on stereotypical male traits (competition/concern over penis size; fear of commitment) but the Charger ad? That was just, like, "FUCKING WOMEN RUIN EVERYTHING EVER" and that was WHOA for a bunch of people.

AGREED.

But also, remember: these shocked schlocks (meh, I'll leave that in) are the same people who think that tuning in to 4-5 hours a year of irrelevant athletic competition in order to SPECIFICALLY WATCH mediocre advertising that isn't being marketed to them directly (though now it somewhat is to an extent), entitles them to be experts critical of advertising directly targetting the target demographic that watches thousands of hours of the same athletic competition.

"I'm suddenly, and only recently, a part of an activity that I don't even really enjoy but for the things being sold to NOT ME, and my opinion is that the things being sold to the people who've been a part of this thing forever are being sold in a manner that emasculates those people."

Like going to a foreign country and being surprised things are different there "They wear hats on their feet and hamburgers eat people!" I'm a Canadian hockey fan. Like the superbowl, we are sold beer, TVs and cars, and it is done so by emasculating, and has been for decades, either directly or indirectly. "Are you one of us? If you are, you'll get this." Or "You ARE one of us, and we know it. We relate, and we're sure buying this will help you"

It may have been more extreme. But it wasn't that much different in overall tone than many many commercials. Those Sprint "they;re perfectly good minutes!" ads are a great example of wife/mother and horrible buzz-kill harpy. And there are even ones targeted at women that depict husbands as lazy asses who don't do anything and when they do they screw it up. Marital strife is a linchpin of not only ads but whole (popular) tv shows. Everyone Loves Raymond-style shows are all about how things are ruined by being married.

@Jolie: I'm fairly certain that in no way did the ad imply that "FUCKING WOMEN RUIN EVERYTHING EVER." It implied that RELATIONSHIPS are hard/ruin everything, AND was targetted only at Men. I think the lack of a counterpoint ad is where the offense is drawn. But (1) it's an ad for a sports car and (2) it's being aired during an important football game.

I like those ads for the Shake Weight (https://www.shakeweight.com/). The Shake Weight works out your entire upper body in just six minutes a day. My girlfriend tried it for 30 days and now she can benchpress 275 hand jobs!

They're two different means to the same ends. They're varying degrees of camp and slapstick cynically designed to reinforce the idea that men want beer football sexnotalk ham sandwich sleep now. Of course they play on men and women differently, but I don't think one is necessarily more offensive than the other.

That said, my roommate told me the Charger ad was a take-off of one of Dexter's murderous soliloquoys? Equating that with men freeing themselves from their stultifying relations with women could have been thought through a bit more.

Final point: Abe is wrong on one thing. The one where the guy ditches his girl for beer? And the other drops his grandmother/dog/girlfriend off a cliff for beer? BOTH MILLER LITE.

The ads don't even differentiate themselves anymore

@grumplr: Christ, you;re right. And I think this says something about the worthiness of investing tens of millions in a season-long ad campaign targeting football fans.

@djfreshie: Well okay! I took away from it a strong WOMAN RUIN EVERYTHING vibe (well to be clearer about how it hit me, a WOMEN MAKE EVERYTHING SUCKY AND NOT FUN) but your interpretation is probably closer to the intent. Though I think we can say tomato/tomahto to some extent I think.

To both your and Abe's points: I've not been in a relationship in a thousand years (YOU ARE SHOCKED, I KNOW) and so I think I often miss out on the relationships suck-angle because being beholden to another is simply not part of my world view anymore. But yes, that makes very good sense and of course goes both way in a thousand different aspects of popular culture.

@Jolie: I suppose I am a little lost at where the ad isn't a direct assault at all times at relationships, though I can definitely see the association to women; The ad shows only men, and refers to toilet seats being down...beyond those two points, the ad never uses the words: She, Her, Women, Ladies...there isn't a feminine word in the entire ad. In fact, had they just left out the toilet-seat part, it could easily have referred to same sex relationships as well.

Either way, I think Abe makes the correct association...the Everybody Loves Raymond/According to Jim analogy is bang on. I'd argue the men in the Charger ad are all fairly attractive to an extent, sort of mirroring the Courtney Thorne-Smith/Whatever Raymond's wife's name.

My issue is that, like those sitcoms, these ads are shit. Nobody in the world at any time should be saying "You know what a positive, amazing, fascinating addition to humankind is? American Superbowl adverts." And I think the people that tune in to watch them specifically with the sole intention of being entertained by them are deceiving themselves into thinking the ads are going to be entertaining. Ironically enough, a lot of those types (I'm generalizing) are people in relationships trying to find reason to share a great event with their significant other, but are unwilling to make an effort to enjoy the actual thing, so they make up some other reason to watch it. Which is EXACTLY THE AD'S PROPHECY YADA YADA YOU DESERVE A DODGE!

"Regular football watchers" who write for NYC-based literate news commentary websites? I KID, I KID.

@djfreshie: I didn't say it wasn't an assault on relationships. In fact I agreed with you, no? But I'm not going to keep arguing this, because you'll just keep mansplaining to me that I am wrong to think that the ad is more hostile to women than others of its ilk, including ones you and Abe cited.

@Jolie: Sorry, you did agree with me, and I'm sorry I didn't at all mean to be mancusing you in the last thing of anything; I'm not looking for an argument or an agreement of any kind. What I meant was that I was a little confused at the shock towards this ad...I'm flabbergasto still at how we can be surprised when advertising - not exactly the highest form of art, and not meant to be anything more than a sales tctic usually - doesn't accurately depict something.

@freshie: (Can I call you freshie?)
I'm not sure that I fully buy your folks-gotta-understand-that-these-commercials-aren't-targeted-to-them-because-they're-for-"Football People" point. In fact, many people, as has been mentioned here for sure, tune into the Super Bowl only for the commercials. The fact that advertisers know this is why they're willing to buy ad space for a bazillion dollars a second.

So the very fact that they're not making commercials that are any different from regular season football commercials -- as Abe said -- is what indicates just how out of touch they are. You can't indict the viewing public for not realizing they're supposed to be watching the Super Bowl for football when it's rather universally acknowledged that that's not completely true.

@djfreshie (which pee ess is HILARIOUS to write while discussing something relatively serious): Gotcha. The point I was trying to make in my original comment was not so much that people were shocked that a Super Bowl ad was misogynistic but rather that there was a level of palpable hostility and a sense of male victimhood that went beyond what we've (sadly) all grown accustomed to. That is, I think, the reason for the strong reaction to the charger ad.

@Mantooth (Freshie is fine)

It is a fair point, (one I thought I conceded before, but I'm lazy and stoned and scrolling up is hard work...)either way, I concede that advertisers SHOULD absolutely reckanize that there is a brand new, much wider market for them, but I feel that is not relevant to a beer, or car, or dick cream advertiser. Special K advertisers do NOT take my interests in mind when they talk about all the health benefits for women that Special K offers (which is ironic, because I loves me some special K!) I don't give a shit about tampons...but if I'm watching the series finale of Desperate Housewives, do you honestly think tampon advertisers are going to take the fact that Husbands all across America are also watching the tampon ads? No! But I'll bet some beer companies figure "hey waitasec, yes the market for this show is women aged 30-50, but I'll bet a lot of husbands are watching..."

So while the budget may be higher for superbowl ads (Michael C Hall for the voiceover) it really doesn't make a lick of difference to the actual content if women are also watching, or perhaps it does and they were expecting this public response(?) thus getting themselves even more press...if the goal is to have as many men as possible watch this ad, they succeeded even moreso, given we are still discussing it, and watching it.

and@ Jolie (But DJ Freshie is my real name! It's dutch!) I see your view...here's my problem I think with relating, and I think maybe it's totally my own fault:

I am incapable of seeing advertising as entertainment. I always have and always will, despise ads. I have never laughed, cried, been made to think or feel emotions by a consumer good-related ad. So the idea that something meant to sell a product or not could evoke some form of reaction...alien. I get annoyed, it bothers me at times when ads just aren't even smart enough to get their market right.

This one...I dunno, either it fails or it doesn't. It's job wasn't to entertain everyone watching the superbowl. Maybe it should have. But it's an investment by a struggling (assumed) American car company to try and relate to potential customers and create brand awareness. In this case, maybe Dodge failed. Well fine. Maybe they succeeded. Fine too. Did they do anything wrong? Did they try to sell a dangerous or personal subjective ideology to the masses? Toilet seat down?

I shouldn't reply after partaking the bud. Re-reading, a lot of the above doesn't make sense. Also I'm trying to drown out the sound of my girlfriend telling me to eat more fruit and take out the garbage by revving my engine.

Hey, Freshie!
I think we've probably already dissected all this crap to death (or maybe it's just the alkeehol making me sick of thinking about it anymore), so I'll just ask: revving your engine is totally a euphemism, YES?! (As is eating more fruit???)

Agreed; it is; and eating fruit is actually also a euphamism for something horrible too!

But is his Charger painted like the General Lee? Because maybe things aren't so bad, then.

It's white, and he lives in Detroit. So he does have a lot of reasons to be sad. He also put himself into the category of men who try to cheat on their pregnant wives. He was very nervous when I friended his wife on facebook.

Pseudonym. Her real name is Buzzkill Harpy.