The most sexist ad in the Superbowl….which one? The consensus seems to be Best Buy,but its a multiple horse race.A pile on. It seems the creative destruction intrinsic to the market based form of capitalism we have needs a rationale of invidious comparison to provide a context for advertisers. Ever since Edward Bernays devised his advertising campaign for cigarettes to women promoted under the banner of “torches of freedom” they have been constant and stubbornly effective foils and cannon fodder for an advertising seeking to only minimally adapt to social concerns while maintaining the structure intact. Making a profit from the spectacle of engagement with the consumer, the pretense of interest under the guise of the game: cheering your pathologies away. With the Super Bowl the great recession is over,in fact it never existed.
Read More:http://www.sportsgrid.com/media/adriana-lima-teleflora-super-bowl-ad/
Indeed. Not too complicated, bros. Give and receive. Give Adriana Lima flowers, and you will receive…delicious candy! …Nah, just kidding, she’s talking about sweet, sweet loving. And that has pretty much everyone – from our friends at Styleite and The Jane Dough to Jezebel – calling the ad sexist. And of course, the idea that the point of Valentine’s Day is to trade a bouquet for sex is ridiculous. The point of Valentine’s Day is for companies like Teleflora to make a boatload of easy money. Read More:http://www.sportsgrid.com/media/adriana-lima-teleflora-super-bowl-ad/
The Super Bowl is total ideology. The great American sense of disavowal. Its all about how money power asserts and denies its fetishistic attachment to money and how it embeds these attitudes in the metaphoric surface of the types of commodities it creates such as Super Bowl teams and Madonna as half time show. Momentarily, within this Disney style fantasy, in the ecstasy of the game, we harbor a lowering of hatred for the rich like banking executives and bailouts. The Super Bowl is Hollywood which has always had a lackey like relation to the conservative or liberal reactionary canons of American ideology. The Super Bowl is formula. Innocuous. Harmless. An ideological weapon.
ADDENDUM:
If CBS cares so much about women, an estimated 40% of the Super Bowl audience, why am I again writing about the blatant, juvenile sexism of the adverts that last year earned the network more than $200m in ad revenue? Instead of having a cute footballer tell women he doesn’t know how much he cares about them, perhaps Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network (airing the 2011 game) should screen out the mockery and derision of women that was again so explicit in the breaks between the on-field action. The theme this year: women are nags who don’t want you to have any fun, but through buying the right stuff, you can regain your manhood. Read More:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/feb/08/super-bowl-commercials
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