Let me be clear: I hate football. I find it boring, brutish, and slow. But every year I look forward to the Super Bowl for two reasons: my dad’s delicious homemade guacamole and Super Bowl commercials. The Super Bowl is when the advertising agencies debut their wackiest, wildest, and most provocative commercials to America, and I’m a ready consumer prepared to be dazzled.
The commercials this year had a wide range of quality. Some were charming, some were funny, some were boring, and some were just in bad taste, such as the Doritos commercial in which a man fakes his own death so he can be buried in a casket filled with Doritos. This year’s batch had no shortage of small furry animals and adorable babies. I was pretty grossed out by two back-to-back commercials consisting of nothing but gross people in equally gross underwear, and I still don’t know what type of person would be convinced by this horrific vision to buy a product. My favorite moment was listening to football legend Joe Montana endorse Sketchers Shape-Ups, thereby losing any bit of street cred he ever had.
Here are my picks for the top three Super Bowl commercials of 2010:
As an avid Simpsons fan, I was charmed by the Coca-Cola commercial starring the cast of my favorite TV show. Notoriously wealthy and miserly Mr. Burns loses his vast fortune and learns to appreciate the simple things in life: friends, smiles, and, of course, Coke. I thought the commercial was another winner in a long line of sweet, semi-nostalgic Coke commercials, as well as a moving testament to America’s longest-running sitcom which will never, ever end. Or I will cry.
For some reason, all the Internet compilations of the best Super Bowl commercials this year seem to have missed my next pick, the innovative ad for FloTV set to The Who’s “My Generation.” This commercial was a compilation of newsreels and TV broadcasts depicting defining moments in recent American history. Everyone in my room agreed that it was definitely one of the most interesting ads, although my friends harped on the fact that the zeitgeists of our generation seem to be SpongeBob and terrorist attacks. Regardless, I enjoyed the flashback.
By far the cutest commercial belonged to Google, although I couldn’t figure out why the ubiquitous search engine giant felt it needed an advertisement to remind people that it still exists. It was very simple, consisting of nothing more than a series of Google searches related to a man’s trip to Paris, his wooing of a French woman, and their eventual marriage. My friends and I had a collective “aww” moment after the commercial ended, and we agreed that it was a breath of fresh air from the cascade of trying-to-be-funny-but-not-succeeding beer ads and car commercials in the manner of overblown Hollywood epics.
My least favorite commercial was for Dodge, fittingly entitled “Man’s Last Stand” against the wives and girlfriends who apparently “oppress” them. While I guess this offers an interesting reevaluation of the relationship between gender and power in contemporary America, it was mostly a misogynistic attempt to label women as nagging and self-centered, and men as the selfless victims of their incessant lording. Clearly, I’ve taken too many FGSS classes. I’ll admit to laughing at the line “I will watch your vampire TV shows,” as the voice-over narrator uttered the word “vampire” with dripping disdain. I guess it’s also important to remember that a room full of college-age girls isn’t exactly the target audience for the Super Bowl.
The most controversial commercial of the Super Bowl generated a lot of hubbub weeks before the game even aired. For those of you who don’t already know, the pro-life organization Focus on the Family debuted a commercial starring college football player Tim Tebow and his mom. The story goes that Pam Tebow was advised to have an abortion for medical reasons while she was pregnant with her son, but she persevered and lo and behold! That very baby is now a football star. To be perfectly honest, the commercial itself was very tame. In my opinion, it read more like a mother taking out an ad in the high school yearbook for her graduating son than a political statement. Basically, Ms. Tebow referred to her son as her “miracle baby” and then out of nowhere Tebow launched himself from off-screen and tackled his mom to the ground. (I don’t know how the Tebows do things in their family, but in mine affectionate body-slams are not tolerated). The commercial ended with the URL for Focus on the Family’s website.
In my opinion, CBS’s decision not to air a commercial for ManCrunch.com, a gay dating website, was more questionable than their choice to air the Focus on the Family spot. It seems to me that if CBS will allow political opinions to get advertisements in the Super Bowl, then they should remain consistent. This controversy shows that politics are omnipresent, even at the level of mindless commercial advertising.
All in all, it was a pretty typical year for Super Bowl commercials, punctuated by current events. The Tebow controversy aside, this year’s commercials featured our usual dose of celebrity spots, Budweiser ads, and guys goofing around in the hopes of selling something. I look forward to next year’s Super Bowl, the only time of year I actually pay attention to the commercials.
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