You simply must clear your throat before writing one of these damn things. It goes without saying. Here’s something: some time ago a student turned in an essay to me with (respectfully) the greatest all-time end-of-paragraph transition ever: “Let us begin.” Yes, let’s.
Still, these commercials are totally fucking gay. And to understand why, I need to take you on this brief detour.
In Anchorman, Will Ferrell plays Ron Burgundy, the affably-misogynist 1970s news anchor who, along with his team of (partially gay) male reporters, is having a hard time adjusting to all the changes in gender equality sweeping the world of broadcast journalism. When he’s forced by PR-sensitive network execs to team up with a female co-anchor, hilarity and hijinks ensue. I love everything about this movie.
Why? I shan’t count the ways. I’ll tell you this, though. The movie isn’t hilarious just because it features virtuosic, improvised performances by a cast of strong actors. It’s also hilarious because the form of masculinity it ironizes has a special relationship to the college-age bros who are its target audience: none of us sincerely buy into that kind of blatantly misogynistic masculinity any more, but we all know someone (probably an uncle with a non-ironic moustache) who does. Ron Burgundy’s inappropriate comments sound an awful lot like something our Dad’s old college buddy might say before offering us a light beer while Mom’s not looking. That is, Anchorman is a send-up of a version of masculinity that is no longer, as of like right now or so, culturally viable for young men. When we laugh at Ron Burgundy, then, we are laughing at our fathers’ manliness. If I were one of those sick fuck psychoanlysts I’d say something about cutting off yr Dad’s phallus. Gross though. The point: Anchorman’s irony doesn’t cause us to feel ironic distance from our own masculinity. That would be gay.
Leo Bersani, in his wonderfully-titled essay, “Is the Rectum a Grave?” (don’t tell me if it is—I haven’t finished the essay yet!), helps us to understand why. Writing about the vexed way in which homosexual identity and desire rub up against each other (PUN INTENDED), Bersani argues that
An authentic gay male political identity…implies a struggle not only against definitions of maleness and of homosexuality as they are reiterated and imposed in a heterosexist social discourse, but also against those very same definitions so seductively and so faithfully reflected by those…male bodies that we carry within us as permanently renewable sources of excitement.
Homosexuality is rejected by “heterosexist social discourse” (the way that straight people think and talk about the proper objects of desire [also see link to Bud Light commercial above]), and therefore identifying as a gay male involves a struggle against the very “definitions of maleness and homosexuality” that heterosexist social discourse creates. But you can’t totally reject maleness, because, as a gay male, you desire other males. You “identify,” claims Bersani, “with the object of desire,” even as what you identify with depends on a version of masculinity that rejects homosexual desire.
So, to sum up: gay identity involves both identification with, and rejection of, heterosexist masculinity. Not being gay myself, I’m not in a position to evaluate this claim. However, since it gives some theoretical gravitas to my otherwise impertinent little analysis, I’ll stick with it. Or, as the song goes, I’ll “Stand by [my] man.”
Well now, let’s turn to our first set of commercials: the recent, absolutely hilarious, line of Old Spice commercials. I’ll just ask you to watch two for now, but you really should watch all of them.
In preparation for this blog entry, I’ve watched these commercials probably at least ten times each, in addition to experiencing them regularly as part of my normal routine of watching a lot of TV. And, like Anchorman, they continue to tickle my funny bone every time I see them.
Broadly speaking, their humor works within and against the same set of assumptions as the ironized masculinity in Anchorman. We see an extreme form of manliness that is packed with so much of itself and nothing else that it’s nearly impossible to take seriously. It’s not like the Man in this commercial, played by ex-NFL defensive end and linebacker Terry Crews, is so strong that his muscles have muscles—he actually just does have muscles on his muscles. His manly rage causes him to scream uncontrollably sometimes, and it even breaks through the closing segment of one commercial, extending it in order to display his manliness more fully. And if you don’t think these commercials are essentially about manliness, I’ll just go ahead and ask you to watch one more:
That’s one “man” every 6 seconds, in addition to the “Smell like a Man, Man” tag line at the end. Ok, and just for the sheer pleasure of it (I’m getting worked up into a sweaty lather of manliness), one more:
At this point it seems excessive even to say it, but…Old Spice leaves little to the imagination: they are selling something that is so essential to being a man that it is virtually indistinguishable from manliness in its purest, most unadulterated form. Obviously this involves heterosexual vitality as well—hence the address to “Ladies” in one commercial, and one dude making out with a total babe in another.
But that’s precisely the point! The Old Spice commercials—again, without the slightest bit of subtlety—show us pure masculinity in a way that (1) shames us (for not being manly enough) before our “Ladies” (“Look at your man, now back to me, now back to your man, now back to me—sadly, he isn’t me”), and (2) makes us jealous (why not me?). Because, it’s not just the case that these commercials are using manliness to rope us in—they are selling it…to us. These commercials are compelling only insofar as part of what we see is desirable to us. Otherwise it’s simply farce, and it moves into the (respectable, but not commercially viable) realm of Anchorman’s anachronistic masculinity. We have to want to be like those men, in some way, in order for the commercials to have their full effect.
But at the same time, total identification with the men in these commercials is impossible. The joke extremity of it all causes us, not to “struggle” (in Bersani’s language) against the manliness, but definitely to reject it as much as we accept it. The thing we desire to be is also something that is alien from who we like to believe we are (that is, men, with other attributes not specifically gendered). Moreover, this form of manliness rejects us as much as we desire to embody it. Because even as these commercials sell a utopian fantasy of purified masculinity, they acknowledge all along that the gap between who we are and who they are will never be closed. “Sadly, he’s not me. But…he could smell like he’s me.”
That’s Bersani’s gay predicament, bitch.
Enough about that, though. I don’t care if you believe me. In anticipation of your probable skepticism about the argument I’ve just made, let me attempt to forestall any objection you might offer with the following most-time-tested of responses:
No offense, but, stubbornly refusing to see they gay in these commercials kind of makes you look like a closeted homo. That’s a pretty clear symptom. This blog post is actually an intervention.
For those of you who haven’t been unhorsed by my poison-tipped jousting lance of an objection, let me offer your brain machines some more material to chew on like cow cud or a stick of Wrigley’s. (I would ask you to pardon my mixed metaphor, but, honestly, aren’t all metaphors mixed? That’s what a metaphor is, bro.) (PS, here’s a joke I once told on Twitter: “My doctorate prescribed a strict literary diet of meataphor.” HA! When the fuck is the world going to wake up and acknowledge my singular genius???? I CAN’T SEE MY FUCKING FACE!!! AHHHH!!!!)
And we’re back. Back, that is, to what I was talking about: some more stuff to convince you that modern masculinity is totally gay. I’ll ask you to examine the following two curiosi closely. The first item, which I’ll produce presently, comes straight out of the venerable American-advertising tradition of using hot babes eagerly, sensually—even perversely (see the suggestive hose pose)—washing a car with all kinds of frothy white soap and sloppy wetness flying every which way…to sell something (anything).
Bud Dry? Personally, I prefer my beer drinks to be wet and slippery. Well it doesn’t matter because, on the basis of the testimony that the hotness of those women implicitly gives for the tastiness and sexual status of said brewsky, I’m damn thirsty for a can of Bud Dry. Pshht. Ahhhh…
Number two:
I hope that it goes without saying that the last 30 seconds of your life were gayer than you expected. A beer like Budweiser is supposed to be about dudes and bro-related things like women, cars, and having sex with women in or because of cars. It’s “The King of Beers” after all. What’s more manly than a king? I guess I can see how under normal viewing circumstances, when your commercial goggles are on, something as gay as this Budweiser commercial could slip under your gaydar. You see Bud, you kind of assume it’s about kingliness or bros or women or cars or something, and you just let it pass through you—like so many glasses of apple juice—without picking up on its clear and in-no-way-understated worship of hot, sweaty cock. It even has a frothy climax at the end. It’s as if the hot, soapy, and clearly straight, sexual energy of the 80s Bud Dry poster has been retained, but converted into love of enormous glorious man cock. It even uses a tracking shot—moving slowly from the bottom to the top, the better to take it all in—traditionally associated with checking out an attractive woman. Only, instead of the stereotypical shape of a woman
we get (it can’t be emphasized enough) an unambiguous phallus, dripping wet and exploding.
And, at the risk of repeating myself and overstating the obvious, these Budweiser commercials—these ones specifically from 2009-2010, in addition to their approach to advertising more generally—are so specifically for and about just men, that several commercials market the Budweiser brand as “what we do” (italics in original):
Women are seen as outsiders in this commercial—they simply don’t understand “what we do.” And the men couldn’t care less either; as long as their “bro-hug double back tap combo” doesn’t come off as gay-seeming, they can go ahead and just continue to ignore the attractive women Others this commercial serves up on a silver platter in nearly every scene. What else do “we” do that attractive (probably straight) women wouldn’t understand?
Love of beer, it turns out, is quickly becoming a beard (The Bearded Veil of Closeted Obscurity) for hetero-seeming homosexuality (or at least emphatic non-heterosexuality—which, let’s face it, in the logic of how we perceive desire in our culture, amounts to homosexuality). See, for example, these two Miller Light commercials, which ask the suggestive question: “Do you love the taste of your beer this much?”
The “this” in “this much” refers to the non-forced choice of beer over beer and a hot girlfriend. I mean, I guess the guy in the first commercial is technically in a position where he at least has to say he’d prefer to save his girlfriend’s life instead of just one bottle of beer (even if he’s not straight…isn’t this kind of an obvious one?), but it’s not as if she’s asking him in that moment either to dump out his beer or forget about having sex with her ever again. Worst-case scenario, his bottle of Miller Light looks at him funny, without (much) understanding, like his dog. But no, possessed by some gay imp of the perverse, the dudes in both commercials stick to their guns—even though not sticking to them would require almost no effort, possibly even less effort—and choose just beer over beer and a hot girlfriend.
Both guys also seem kind of surprised, or at least confused, by the effects of their beer desire. Whatever it is they are feeling, it is barely emerging in the moments that these commercials give us access to—it hasn’t yet risen to the level of acknowledgment. It’s not exactly that they’re uncomfortable with having driven away their hot girlfriends—it’s just that they haven’t fully put together what the logic of “lov[ing] the taste of your beer this much” seems to require, namely, not having any desire left over for your heterosexual impulses (such as they are). But, precisely because they have the desired object—the precious single bottle of already-opened beer—to lend cover or distraction against such probing inquiries, they never reach a point when working out the implications of their desires would be absolutely and unavoidably required. Therefore, without having to make any great admissions to themselves about who they really are (if you actually choose a bottle of light beer over a girl who, the back story of each commercial seems to suggest, you have convinced yourself you are attracted to, you might want to go ahead and take a little you-time to think about the true nature of your sexual desires), the dudes in each commercial get to convert their emphatic lack of interest in having sex with an attractive woman into the ridiculous, and, again, non-forced choice of preference for beer taste over and above anything else.
So, without putting too fine a point on it, I guess what I’m saying is that modern masculinity, as it’s understood and represented by the necessarily insightful warlords of modern advertising, is totally gay. To buy into these views of masculinity, men must either identify with a form of masculinity that explicitly rejects and alienates them (formally gay), or prefer the taste of their dudely beer (and the decadently phallic shape of its bottle) to such an extreme extent that the preference itself begins to look like a symptom of some sublimated, emphatically non-heterosexual desires (actually gay). Not that there’s anything wrong with that. No homo.
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I think we already argued about this under the influence of delicious beer, but I disagree about the beer commercials in which bumbling men choose beer over women. The consistent theme in these commercials is that the man is unable to make himself correspond fully with the inscrutable desires of the woman, and that this prompts in him a deep loathing. The guy who won't save the woman over the beer has to ask his dog what the fuck is wrong with that shrew; the dude makes a Good Gaith Effort to Lie and say "I love you," which is what the woman senselessly requires of him at that moment, but is hamstrung by his innate sense of integrity; the dude scrambles for a reason why he loves his girlfriend, clearly feeling shamed and belittled to fail to meet her expectations, and can only muster "I love all your teeth!" These men scramble against the humiliation they know they're bound to feel at the hands of their disapproving banshee-termagants, and flee into the arms of frost-brewed, catatonia-inducing light beer. They enact a universal (in the sense of neither uniquely hetero- nor homosexual) fantasy of hatred of Woman as Other. It's not the man's fault that the relationship is failing -- he follows his desires in earnest. It is, rather, the woman's fault for having irrational desires in the first place. (cf. Zizek's notion of the "maternal superego": "arbitrary, wicked, blocking ‘normal’ sexual relationship (only possible under the sign of paternal metaphor).") The message is, "if you secretly hate the woman you're with, even if it seems like you don't have a good reason to, it's ok. Beer is here for you."
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