"Our Car Distracts From the Joyless Farce That Is Life"

[l33tminion]

Overthinking It has some rather excellent (over)thoughts on advertising in the wake of last weekend's Annual Television Commercial Grand Prix (and Football Match). First, there's an article on a particular genre of ads, the commercials for which have a message of "bad things happen to you when you use our product". But the real brilliance is in this piece, analyzing the Dodge Charger commercial:

The motto at the end was “Man’s… last… stand!” but it might as well have been “Compensate… for… something!“ This is not, generally speaking, behavior that your audience is going to want to emulate. [...]

Are we to understand, then, that the add is targeting mid-life crisis sufferers who are so far gone that they just don’t care anymore? Or is it targeting aging hipsters who think that the crisis-of-masculinity is going to be the next trucker hat, making this the first ironic muscle car?

[...]

To sum up—the premise of the commercial, to begin with, seems like it would only appeal to someone whose basic attitude is “Look, honey, I feel emasculated, and want a big car to make myself feel better.” The specific aesthetics that they bring to bear on it makes the message even darker: “Look, honey, deep down underneath, I scarcely qualify as anything you’d recognize as human. The only thing that makes me feel alive is driving this car, and quite honestly, this persona that you think you know? The one that you were planning to introduce to your parents soon? Is a lie, and I only created it because it’s the most efficient way to trick society into letting me drive this car on a regular basis.”

Comments

[vaelynphi.livejournal.com]

LMAO