First, my take …
As I watched the commercials during “the game” last night I posted on Facebook: it’s sad that character education in America has been taken over by corporations, like corporations control the government and everything else. Coke will love you even when no one else does and Dove will take care of all your body odor needs making you as non-offensive as plastic and socially acceptable anywhere. (And with Coke’s sugar context and other additives, well, let’s just say that over time they will undermine you health and life.)
A friend I grew up with posted after the Always commercial “Like a Girl” – she didn’t like it. She was very active as a kid and gave the boys a run for their money every time. I wonder how many adolescent girls watching the Super Bowl felt comfortable seeing that commercial?
Linking character building to consumer products – and big corporations that can blow $4 million on a TV commercial so we will feel a positive an emotional connection to their products and given the choice will buy theirs – is problematic to me.
Character education, beginning with empathy, is for parents to teach, as well as schools and religious education programs. But the Diocesan Directors of Religious Education I have mentioned this to, well, they say they teach the Ten Commandments and that means it’s character education. No, it’s not. Character education is about human formation – being a decent human being and building the authentic Christian can only happen on the basis of good character education. Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense. I’d like to say that drinking Coke can make you a better human being but I don’t think so.
Of course I liked the Bud commercial (see below) but I cannot stand Bud. This nice Catholic couple introduced me to Chimay, a “Catholic” beer produced my Trappist monks in Belgium (it’s kosher – Orthodox Jewish folks like it, too). But it’s pricey so for special occasions only – like the Super Bowl. And Chimay tastes good – you can savor it. But Bud? Who ever savored a Bud?
Now that Nationwide insurance commercial aimed at scaring people into taking care of their kids so they won’t die, was kind of weird. Not sure I’d want to take out my insurance with them (oops ten people just lost their jobs for giving really bad advise.) The Dude omming was pretty funny. (Then he gave Samantha Guthrie a cranial massage on the Today Show this morning. A little weird, too, but oh well.)
I liked the synchronized parking but I want back that cute VW commercial from a couple of years ago with the little boy playing Darth Vader. One of my top five SB commercials EVER. And I will never buy a VW, I’m pretty sure. There were way too many car commercials.
Oh, and Carl’s Jr. lived up to it’s low level as always. If they don’t objectify women and equate them with a slab of meat, who will?
The high point was seeing an actress friend (shown here), Christin Jazek, in the GrubHub commercial! Not sure it was shown nationally but Twitter and Facebook took off when all her friends (including all the nuns!) and family saw her!! Not to worry, the actors were not hurt in this commercial – they acted against a green screen and the flying burritos were added after.
Take a look here at what Linda Holmes over at NPR had to say about the commercials last night:
After years in which the themes of Super Bowl ads seemed to be bikinis, high jinks and crude things happening to old people, what a surprise to find out that Sunday night, the theme was feelings.
Not regular feelings like the ones you have when something actually happens to you, but the feelings you have when, say, large companies pay millions of dollars to try to generate whatever emotional pull they can in 30 or 60 seconds. Budweiser’s most sentimental ad feels like it was sketched out in a brainstorming session that went: “Let’s make it about a dog.” “Who gets lost.” “And then a wolf tries to eat him.” “But then he’s saved!” “BY HORSES!” “Hey, can we get a nice cover of that song where the guy goes ‘da-da-da-da!’ ‘da-da-da-da!’, only it sounds like somebody is dying on the operating table on Grey’s Anatomy?”
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