Last night, I settled in front of my TV, excited to spend three joy-filled hours fast-forwarding through the Super Bowl to get to the commercials. Even though a few had popped up online in the days before the game, I avoided them to make sure I could have the “proper” viewing experience. I even made sure to have my 3-D glasses ready to go. I was all set for an evening full of awesome and needlessly expensive new ads, but then something weird happened: they all kind of sucked.
I honestly don’t even remember most of what I watched, since they were just so relentlessly mediocre. A few, however, stood out. The Alec Baldwin Hulu commercial, for instance, was hilarious. It, in fact, was the only ad I truly loved. I’m not here to talk about that though. What I want to talk about is the really messed up Doritos commercial that aired in which a man uses the power of Doritos to take off a woman’s clothes in the middle of a busy public street.
For those of you who missed it or need a refresher, here is the ad in question:
Generally speaking, I’m not a member of what Jezebel calls the Feminazi Bonerkiller Squad, but that Doritos ad disturbed me. It’s one thing to have a woman in a commercial wearing a skimpy bikini, or a woman in a commercial wearing just her underwear — both scenarios have been used for decades to sell products having little or nothing to do with women, bikinis, or underwear. This, I find silly instead of insulting.
However, there is something different about an advertisement for a snack chip that involves the public and forcible removal of a woman’s clothes. Yes, the woman in question is wearing very expensive-looking matching lace black underwear, complete with garter belt and thigh high stockings, and she doesn’t seem overly upset about the turn of events, but does that make it okay? Does the fact that the director told the actress to make her expression say, “Oops! I appear to have lost my dress again! Silly me!” make the image any less creepy?
Because that’s what it is: it’s creepy and distracting. The fact that the man in the commercial made the woman’s dress come off using the power of a Dorito is supposed to be silly and ridiculous, which in turn makes the fact that this woman is in a street with no clothes on silly and ridiculous. But for me, it doesn’t. At all.
Maybe I’m looking into this too deeply, but the one thing that struck me as I was watching this ad last night was that if what preceded the clothing removal was any different; if, for instance, he ate a chip and then ran over to her and physically tore her dress off, then we would be looking at a completely different image. All of the sudden, the fun silly commercial would be a lot more dark and sinister.
The man, of course, does not physically remove her clothes though, and the entire act is glossed over by sillier images of cash flying out of an ATM and a police officer turning into a monkey. I was so distracted by the woman losing her clothes, that not only did these subsequent images barely register with me, but I completely missed the end of the commercial in which the man runs out of chips and gets hit by a bus. The hell?
I have no idea what the point of the commercial is supposed to be, but what I got from it is that Doritos turn you into a borderline rapist, but only until you finish a bag, at which point you will meet a violent death. Yummy?
You can see all of the Super Bowl ads here:
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on Feb 02, 2009 @ 17:00 EST5EDT
This ad didn’t bother me at all.
Upon watching it again, it didn’t seem like he knew what he was doing in the beginning, so did not remove her clothes on purpose,not that I think it changes your point at all.
hmmm, I can’t really say. I think it’s a little weird and creepy (then again so is the monkey transforming cop). I feel as if the directors or writers were bored or desperate and couldn’t think of anything else to grab people’s attention so they decided to appeal to the sex level. After all, assumedly, guys & superbowl = sex selling. It’s probably because it’s so out of left field without some type of build up that makes it seem odd. Overall, I just feel that this commercial (& most of the other SB coms), is just a huge waste of money and a total lack of innovation -
This commercial kind of reminds me of the short story Freeze! by Etgar Keret. I mean, am I right, people, or am I right???
But, seriously, I don’t understand what the hell this commercial is trying to do. But I do not want a dorito. Not even a cool ranch one.
I work across the street from where that commercial was shot. I see people shooting stuff there all the time. The important question is: why wasn’t I there to see the nearly naked woman?
Hulu doesn’t have the High Life ad :(
Well, lets see…wasn’t it Diet Coke that had women visually stripping some dude to his bare chest on a construction site?
And wasn’t there a beer commercial some years back that had the same premise? Drinking the beer made them take their clothes off or something.
I wouldn’t worry too much about it. It’s so embarrassing to think of the poor bastard who ran out to buy chips thinking it would cause girls to lose their clothes and their DUI busters to turn to monkeys. And ya know, there probably was at least one dude who did.
Interesting that the only part which bothered you was the undressed woman. What about turning the cop into a monkey? That would be a much more distressing fate, I think.
Yes I think you are reading way too much into it. It’s pretty obvious from the directed facial expressions that the first “dorito effect” (the woman losing her clothes) was a surprise, IE unintentional.
Its completely reasonable to think the commercial is stupid or otherwise not care for it but if the first thing you think of is rape, you probably need to spend a little more time analyzing yourself and your own personal issues, and a little less time worrying about a silly and relatively innocuous doritos commercial.