Unnecessary candidness in Super Bowl ads
Published January 27, 2004
Say what you will about erectile dysfunction--make jokes, sympathize or describe the condition with urological detachment--it's not a fit topic for polite company.
I don't want to hear about it at the next dinner party I attend. I don't want to back-fence it with my neighbors. I don't want to be around should it be used to substitute for "How about this weather?" as a small-talk gambit in the school vestibule.
And, thank you very much, I really don't want to discuss it with my kids.
Not that it's a shameful condition. It's simply a personal matter--intimate, sexual, graphic to imagine.
And I'm dismayed that three 30-second commercials for competing ED treatment drugs are reportedly scheduled to air during this Sunday's Super Bowl telecast.
Super Bowl parties are in large part family gatherings, the very definition of "polite company." They begin in the middle of the afternoon, dinnerlike food is slopped out at halftime and kids drift in and out of the TV room depending on their level of interest in the game.
The crowd tends to go silent during commercial breaks because of the well-deserved reputation that the Super Bowl has for showcasing the latest and most creative offerings from the advertising industry.
I suspect I'm not the only parent in America who's not looking forward to answering the "Daddy, what's Levitra?" question or the only middle-age man who's going to squirm as he carefully calibrates the quip he'll feel obligated to drop into the awkward silence to exhibit his lack of interest in the product.
This isn't a call to place a regulatory muzzle on the peddlers of Levitra, Viagra and Cialis, the trio of anti-impotence pills that industry publications report will compete for our favor during the Super Bowl. These companies offer a legal and apparently safe product that meets a profound need, and they should be allowed to tell prospective customers about it.
It's a call for restraint. It's a plea for decorum, the sort of time-and-place discretion about sub-optimally functioning organs and mucous membranes of all sorts that polite people employ. The National Football League opened the door to the coming ickiness about a year ago when it lifted its longstanding ban against pharmaceutical companies as corporate sponsors. Others still banned by the NFL include purveyors of hard liquor, tobacco products, firearms and fireworks.
Major League Baseball inked a deal with Pfizer Inc., makers of Viagra, in 2002 similar to an existing sponsorship arrangement the company had with NASCAR. Then just last Friday we learned that the PGA Tour's Western Open in suburban Lemont will for the next three years be known as the Cialis Western Open.
Cialis is the latest anti-impotence drug--the one that began advertising during the NFL playoffs with spots showing a man and woman relaxing in side-by-side bathtubs. CBS is happily selling a Super Bowl forum to Cialis, yet has refused to sell time to Moveon.org and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals on the grounds that ads on "controversial issues of public importance" would be inappropriate. The PETA spot starkly though humorously suggests that a vegetarian diet is a cure for impotence, and I'd agree with CBS' statement that the ad "has strong potential to offend significant numbers of viewers."
The Moveon ad, though, is a tasteful but pointed series of scenes of pre-teens at work that concludes with the question, "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion debt?" CBS spokesman Dana McClintock said the network has not to his knowledge received any complaints from viewers about the veritable film festival of erection-producer ads coming up Sunday.
To me, this means either that nearly all of us have given up the fight against this particular brand of rampaging frankness, or that nobody wants to risk being thought of as a starchy prude with no sympathy for those in physiological distress. But I'm not afraid and I'm not giving up. These sorts of ads belong on late-night TV and on programs and in venues aimed at grown-ups, not at the ballpark, not at the racetrack, not at the golf tournament and not, by God, at the Super Bowl.
I'm just sorry I had to bring it up in this polite company.
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