Commercial Anxieties

I’ve been watching play-off basketball lately, (oh, the exquisite torment of being a Pistons fan!) exposing me to far more television commercials, endlessly repeated and demographically focused, than I’m used to. Although commercials are designed to lead the public, they’re also broadly reflective of the national psyche, a sort of fun house mirror where current anxieties can be assuaged by, of course, the proper product. One of the more bizarre yet telling commercial series is the beer company’s "Man Law" ads wherein a circle of mucho macho dudes hash out how true men should act in crucial cases of etiquette concerning beer and "girls." Of course the mere assumption that laws need to be codified on proper masculine conduct reflects a deep anxiety about modern masculinity itself. Presumably these days even the most testosterone driven stud is in a quandary about how to act manly without the aid of "man laws" – long gone the days when a man knew how to act like a man because, well, he was one. (As the philosopher Iggy Pop wrote, "I don’t need no heavy trips, I just do what I want to do.") Somehow manliness is no longer inherent, but must be imposed from above. It all reminds me of the half-men of Dr. Moreau’s island who must constantly bellow out "Are we not men?" and "What is the law?" in order to reinforce their always tenuous humanity.

This anxiety is also reflected in the reactionary party’s (The Republicans in case you didn’t know) crusade to officially and eternally declare gay marriage illegal, immoral and against man law, in order to demonstrate how heterosexual and godly (he made ‘em, but he still hates ‘em) they are. Similar overcompensation can be seen in their leaders’ hyper-masculine posing, Bush’s cowboy bluster and tight flight suit and Cheney’s great white hunter sneer, as well as their mocking of their Democratic betters (you know, like Gore and Kerry, the guys who actually went to Vietnam while George played aviator and Dick made the world safe for young Republicans stateside) as unmanly for exhibiting qualities like intelligence and compassion.

Another issue derided by the ever wrong right has produced an almost subliminal anxiety reflected in several commercials. Both the soft drink commercial where the basketball court becomes a pool and the beer company’s "love train" series feature a bunch of really hot people who are miraculously cooled down. I don’t think I’m reading too much into it to see a fear of global warming at play here. Like Al Gore has been saying if we all get on the love train we just might be able to avert a hellish future, but it’s going to take a lot more than drinking the proper brew or following the macho man laws to do it.