avablog » TV

Stop the Charmin bears

map — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:08:54 +0000

Listen, we’re friends, OK? And if you like the Charmin ads featuring the adorable bears running around, picking clingy pieces of TP off each others’ asses, that’s fine. Just don’t tell me about it. I don’t want to know. I don’t want that information to color our relationship. Let’s just agree to disagree at the outset.

Leah will tell you: I talk back to the TV. A lot. And especially at ads. It makes me feel like I’m not just a passive consumer being force fed the propaganda on these products, like I’m going down swinging. And the ad I hate more than any other right now — indeed, more even than BK’s insanely stupid and offensive Spongebob Sqaure Butts ad from last year — is the current Charmin ad with the Dingleberry Bears. My hatred is easy to define: I resist, firstly, that Charmin is using bears to sell toilet paper. Even, and especially, cartoon bears. Secondly, I’m incensed that the makers of Charmin don’t follow through on the comedic promise inherent in their script and have the afflicted bear pick up a “Charmin rabbit” to wipe its ass with. Do not leave that card on the table. Lastly, who is the audience? I mean, obviously, people who’re using TP that clings to their butt after wiping. I get that. But (sorry) how are those people identified? If someone has seriously been lamenting how much toilet paper sticks to his butt, surely he’s not going to have an epiphany upon seeing this ad and realize that Charmin is the answer to all his troubles? I just hate those bears, and I hate that Charmin makes me hate them. ESPECIALLY when, at the end of the commercial, there’s a short ad-on plug for a moisturized wipe that’ll really solve your problem. Why not just advertise that product at the start?

Either life is too short for this kind of inane obsession, or this kind of inane obsession is what life is all about. I’ll think on it….

Hope

map — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:19:43 +0000

This is not a political blog.

I’m not talking about that most fragile of all kinds of hope, the kind that you put in a man to end the appalling policies of his predecessor on unlawful detention and torture. I’m talking about that larger hope, that hope that the next generation — and all generations thereafter — are going to somehow be OK. This video feeds that larger hope; I hope it does for you, too.

I never tire of this stuff

map — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:32:04 +0000

If you hated the Dallas thing I put up recently, don’t bother viewing this; you won’t get it.

This story’s got legs

map — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:40:31 +0000

I cannot pretend to be offended by these ads. Young men are coarse, callow, emotional imbeciles with suicidal dietary habits. In other words, from a marketing perspective, these ads are perfection itself, practically verite. Meanwhile, if I put on my magic deconstructing spectacles, I can see neo-feminist subversion in these messages. Note the tagline of the Padma Lakshmi commercial: “More than a piece of meat.” This was the cri de coeur of feminism back in the day, and though it refers to the burger, it is also a tweak of conscience to males slobbering over the accomplished actress-author-chef. Take that, you objectifying pig.

Have you seen it?

map — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:09:11 +0000

I mean, really. WTF? Leah and I saw this last night and couldn’t believe our eyes. Is there a target audience here? Why is an ad for a kid’s meal running at 10 p.m.?

Kid’s meal? Sir Mix-a-lot? Baby Got Back? What the hell’s going on around here? EDIT: My indignation and anger increase each time I watch this. Am I making too big a deal out of it? I’m having trouble envisioning the kind of family that’s sitting around with their kid’s-meal-age kids at 10 at night, watching this and thinking, “Aw hellz yeah! That ad is TIGHT! Big asses and burgers, baby, ALL NIGHT LONG!” Gah! I hate you, Burger King. An ad with Spongebob Squarepants alone would’ve been objectionable enough, but the dancers in booty shorts just puts this over the top, and NOT in a good way. Where the hell is Tipper Gore when we need her?!