Ad men

If beer is the nectar of the gods, brought down to we humans by toga-wearing deities – which seems about as good an explanation as anything else – then beer commercials are the work of the devil. Or whoever the bad guy is in Greek mythology, I forget. The Shredder or something.

That might seem like a surprising position given that I’m a dude. (I think “man” might be taking it a bit too far.) After all, I’m the beer ad industry’s target demographic: Youngish, male, breathing, and heterosexual. If the good folks at Anheuser-Busch were seeking out a focus group to screen their latest televised ode to booze-swilling masculinity, a guy like me would be the first one invited. Or maybe second, behind the burly fellow with the New England Patriots logo tattooed on his chest.

And yet here I am, impervious to the industry’s tireless exhortations that I drink more beer, eat more pizza and wings, watch more football, and scratch myself in more places. Actually, I’ll happily oblige that last one.

Now in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I’m the son of a former bar owner. When a bar owner sets about decorating his or her establishment, they buy a lot of beer signs and paraphernalia – calendars, lights and such – and tend to keep these nic-nacs in a somewhat fluid rotation, updating some items, retiring others, and maintaining a fresh look for their patrons. A lot of the retired stuff from my dad’s bar would find its way to a back room in the house in which I was raised – so I remember, from a very young age, walking into that room and seeing the detritus of the beer industry’s attempts at attention-grabbing: Giant cardboard cut-outs of gleaming beer cans straddled by scantily-clad women; mirrors with etched tableaus of Rocky Mountain vistas, often featuring scantily-clad women; and bulbous inflated balloons of gaudy beer blimps, sometimes decorated with – you guessed it – scantily-clad women. Come to think of it, my childhood was pretty sweet.

All that exposure to beer merchandise had a desensitizing effect, so that now, when I’m assaulted by televised ads depicting belching manly men living it up on train cars shaped like Coors Light cans, my guard is up. I know from childhood experience, of all things, what the beer barons are trying to do: Appeal to my masculinity. Beer drinkers, they reckon, are a hairy-knuckled, testosterony bunch, who eat a lot of meat and leave the toilet seat up, often at the same time. We wear sports jerseys and host barbecues, dopily rub our bellies and yell at television sets. And women, they figure, roll their collective eyes in bemusement, shrug their shoulders, and gamely join in the debauchery, kicking back a few brewskis while keeping their husbands’ unruly man-ness in check. That is, when they’re not playing volleyball in bikinis that would barely cover a box of Junior Mints.

Okay. So the ads aren’t all bad.

But they do reinforce some pretty lazy gender stereotypes. It isn’t even really the stereotypes themselves, caricatures that they are, which truly bother me. It’s the lack of creativity. They can’t portray the truth, of course; that would make for a pretty boring ad, as we the audience would be witness to a full 30 seconds of sad sack Harry Pitts sipping a can of Budweiser and farting into his couch. For a lot of us (i.e., me), that hits a little too close to home. Too dull.

But aside from Super Bowl ads, which are occasionally less than cringe-worthy, the alternatives offered aren’t much better. Here’s an ad the beer people may want to consider.

Popeye the Sailor has just seen his true love, Olive Oil, abducted by that old rapscallion, Bluto. Popeye follows his nemesis to the edge of a cliff, where Bluto threatens to jump with Olive onto a schooner waiting in the choppy waters below. Our plucky hero reaches under his shirt – which, in the world of cartoons, can safely house a coat rack, an old Studebaker, and a dead mongoose with nary a bulge – and pulls out a can of warm beer. Popeye downs the can in three quick gulps, his muscles start to bulge, he takes a swing... and misses Bluto completely, because he’s drunk off his animated keester. He falls off the cliff and onto the schooner, where he’s greeted by a throng of sailors toting cases of Schlitz. Bluto and Olive watch in confusion as Popeye downs a half-gallon of skunk beer, makes an ill-advised pass at the captain’s daughter, and then relinquishes his lunch to the sea.

It’s adequately goofy for a beer ad, and yet somehow real. Still, there’s something missing.

It’s Olive Oil. She should definitely be wearing a bikini.