TWITTER POETRY (TWITTETRY?)

• 20:47:19: Hey baby, do you, uhh, do you like...dark meat?
  
• 20:47:42: I mean, like on a chicken?
  
• 20:48:11: I'm sayin', I'm cookin' up this chicken over here. You can have some if you want.
  
• 20:48:31: Yeah, it's, uh, it's a sex chicken? I'm talking about doin' it.
  
• 20:48:44: No but seriously I can't eat this whole chicken by myself.

No Homo

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.

I’m a big fan of commercials that only care about one audience: men. Dudes, you know what I’m talking about (sorry ladies). The two categories of product that are most dependent just on talking to men are obviously beer and deodorant. These commercials are regularly hilarious (opinion), and always relevant to understanding masculinity today (fact). Well, I’m going to tell you a big secret about these commercials: they are gay. Possibly the gayest thing in the world is to fuck another dude. That’s why I’m constantly telling my girlfriend she’s gay. Another pretty gay thing is to be singularly obsessed with just dudes. I mean, I guess it’s not actually gay, but everyone has questions, and even your parents sort of know that the Big Confession is coming soon. And so, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that mancentric commercials go out of their way to establish the unquestionably absolute boundaries of heterosexual desire. It’s like, if you “accidentally” sit down on a couch too close to your bro, you have to move immediately, otherwise no no homo. This is both humorous, and emphatically not gay. When you amusingly activate the shared (hetero male) experience of wanting to have close, non-gay-seeming relationships with other bros, it goes without saying that selling product just to them becomes a lot easier. Just like I don’t want you to walk in on me while I’m taking I crap, I in the same way want to enjoy a totally straight alcoholic beverage with you. This is called logic.

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.

Jesus Loves the Little Children: An Exposé

I was talking to a friend of mine recently when we somehow landed on the topic of Catholic symbolism, especially the representation of Christ. Actually, what we were really talking about was how he had never been in a Catholic church (I know!), and therefore never witnessed the sublime sexuality of Jesus’s abs and his coquettishly-hung loin cloth—which is the way life-size Jesus is depicted as he suffers on the cross in every Catholic church I’ve ever been inside of.

It’s always been interesting to me that this supposedly horrific event, which is also supposedly the greatest dispensation of holy grace ever, would be depicted with such raw sexuality, especially considering that this is something that, as far as I know (and, having gone to Catholic mass for at least 10 years of my life, I’m pretty sure) is never explicitly acknowledged by the church in its teachings. For a while I thought I was alone in thinking that crucifixion-Jesus is kind of hot, in a torture porn kind of way, but it turns out that everyone I talk to about this subject shares my perception. That loin cloth is hiding a massive snake—a kind of Satanic presence if you will, tempting the viewer to guess at what’s beneath it—and it’s totally hot.

But it didn’t occur to me until recently that the depiction of Jesus in the Christian tradition might shed some light on the appallingly widespread sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church. Because, so what—Jesus looks hot as he is dying: that could make you gay, and possibly serve as an early introduction into the pleasures of auto-erotic asphyxiation, but not something that turns you into pedophile, right? But wait! Doesn’t Jesus also supposedly have a special relationship with the children? Perhaps even a peculiarly emphasized one?

Check it:

Jesus loves the little children. I can’t remember what I knew about Jesus or Christianity more generally before I knew this. And when I was younger (and still a believer), I did a paint-by-number that is still hanging in my old room (several states away, unfortunately, and therefore not available to be photographed) that essentially repeats the same strikingly sexualized scenes of Jesus “lov[ing]” the little children as what you’ll see below.

This next one is almost too pornographically obvious to even need the type of second look that this post is encouraging.

So, that little boy’s curved finger, hanging stiffly in his mouth (which, because he’s on his knees leaning over Jesus’s lap, is inches away from his crotch—the only thing closer to it is the boy’s right hand, which Jesus is gently directing towards his pleasure center) as he stares with rosy cheeks and intense eyes into Jesus’s relaxed face—that’s supposed to make us feel safe when we leave our children with the servants of Jesus? What message does that send to priests, who spend their lives pretending they don’t need to have sex? It’s not even barely sublimated sexual desire. In fact, I bet it was an artistic, and sexually-frustrated priest who came up with this one.

And this one, too:

Nice ass, kid. I “love” you, no homo. Time to find out what’s hidden beneath the ample folds of my robes. And the reason I think that a pedophilic priest must have come up with both of these is that—even more obviously in this one—the children (naked and clothed—which raises the question: why are some naked, some clothed?) are literally throwing themselves (or being thrown) at Jesus; one groupie/child even has to be restrained. It’s like the Beatles with women, only with Jesus and children.

Catholic Priest: No, I’m not Jesus per se, but I know him better than most people. Do you want to come up to my room?

This next one is ingenious because it coerces the child to play along, and buy into the acceptability of these sexual episodes.

I found it on a website that had a whole bunch of “Jesus coloring book” images free for download. As your child colors it in—or fills in the paint-by-number blobs, as in my case—he comes to accept that it’s ok for a little boy (hey, and his sister) to stand with his face close enough to Jesus’s crotch for him to reach out with his hands, place them on top of his and his sister’s head, and pull them in closer (like the girl’s face towards the flower).

I just love the faces worn by Jesus and the girl in this next one.

His face says: Shit, you caught me—but it’s cool, because I’m holy, right? (as he slowly backs away)

Her face says: What? You knew I wanted it, and so did he. (Those are her parents in the background, looking on approvingly.)

And, finally, this last image needs no explanation whatsoever.

So, basically what I’m saying is that we all need to stop being surprised that pedophilia is a transcontinental problem in the Catholic Church. The imagery of Jesus has been blowing that whistle for a while now. We just need to become better readers of the world we live in—barely better. Because, seriously, how could you miss the pedophilia in these images? No, seriously—how could you? To my eye, it’s so obvious that it overwhelms the primary meaning, so that “Jesus loves the little children” becomes “Jesus loves the little children” almost without any possibility of alternative interpretation. The meaning has been totalized by the in-plain-sight sexual misconduct.

If you are turned on right now, you are going to jail.

Some Aspects of the New Zealand Sky

Staying the Same

I’d like to begin at the intersection of rarefied metaphysical speculation and blandly platitudinous insignificance. Like if Heidegger was secretly a woman and Bill Gates impregnated her (in my mind he never takes off his Cosby sweater during the do), only instead of a child they bestowed an opening paragraph to a blog post onto the world. I want to talk about technology like that.

Technology, we’ve all thought some high time or another, is frightening and inspiring. I, at least, tend to think of technology as a somewhat independent force that ushers the present into the future with increasingly vertiginous speed. We may be approaching the technological singularity, the world-historical moment when profoundly life-altering technological change becomes a constant part of everyday human experience. But probably not. Or, if we are, mostly we don’t think of it that way. That’s because while the future that technology brings to us is unknown, it is easiest to think of it as somehow better (and usually more neon). In the utopian fantasy of 1980s power-metal pioneers Helloween, this “Future World” is a place where “life will be glorious.” Helloween beckons, “come with me [to] Future World,” but unfortunately they don’t tell us how to get there. Still, I think it’s pretty obvious: we use technology! Think about it: what was life like before iPods? We’re all old enough to remember the experience of being a person before laptops, before the internet—before text messaging. Other glowing (and “glorious”) rectangles, too, were not always a part of our lives. Do you want to go back? Fuck no. I mean, I’d go way back in time to hook up with Jane Austen or whatever in my pimped out phaeton

(remixed with some spinner rims of course), but there is no way in heck that I’d willingly suffer the pains of planning a road trip of even moderate distance without my GPS unit, or try to get together with my friends on a Friday night without the supplement of my cell phone. I think what I’m trying to say is that the pieces of a kinetic utopia are starting to come together for us, and I for one am just jazzed about it. Or, in the words of Squirtle, “Squirtle Squirt!”

So if technology is supposed to bring us the new, the unknown, the grand (or terrifying)—what’s up with technology commercials these days? They deliberately ignore both the utopian and dystopian possibilities of technology, opting instead for a picture of the world that is changed by technology only insofar as it becomes even more like it already is. Take, for example, these recent Cisco commercials starring Ellen Page.

In the first one, Ellen Page visits a classroom of mostly-white, bubbly young children who adorably claim they are “going on a field trip to China!!!” Yo, that sounds awesome! Page is confused, and a bit jealous. “When I was a kid we would just go to the farm.” And even though the kids laugh as the screen cuts away to show footage of a child (supposedly Page, I guess) recoiling in fear from the bushy head of an angry bull, the joke is really on them. Because they don’t even get to go to the farm. All they do is stay in their regular classroom and look at a screen that displays a nearly-identical classroom in another part of the world. The novelty of it all—OMG we’re looking at China!—is absorbed by a feeling of familiarity that you can only get by looking into a mirror. There are no differences (better or worse), only doubling. Doesn’t Page’s WTF-look (0:23) kind of register this sense of disappointment? She knows it, but the deluded children and the commercial don’t acknowledge it: this is the opposite of what we’re supposed to get with technology.

The same point can be made about the doctor commercial. Even when you are on vacation in Copenhagen, you never have to leave work. You can always be in your office, happily looking away from the novel into the familiar. “He’s such a workaholic.” Before, we would use that term for someone who checks his email or calls in to work constantly while on vacation—it suggested that attention was split between two places. Now we can use it for someone who doesn’t even get to see his vacation: he’s in the physical space of Copenhagen, but all he sees is his office.

Well, maybe that’s just Cisco. They are after all trying to bring the “human network” into living contact with itself, so, in a way, it’s not that surprising that their commercials would make you feel as if differences in location are insignificant or even non-existent. But, what about this recent “Healthymagination” commercial by GE?

So this guy is fucked, right? The only thing that technology achieves in this situation is the total eradication of hope. Sorry bro, we’re never going to figure out what your disease is. His real doctor says, “that makes sense” (0:34) after hearing from the peanut gallery, but, c’mon, how could you believe that? Really? it makes sense that all the ideas you just had are verifiably false? Yeah, nice, that totally “makes sense” that nothing you can think of actually helps you determine your patient’s mystery illness. And, while we’re on the subject, why the crap did you make him take off his pants to tell you about his head pains? There’s a lot about this commercial that doesn’t feel right, including the public humiliation that the patient is forced to endure. The commercial wants to sell a message about the potential of medical technology, but the patient’s look and tone suggest that that’s all a con, one he no longer cares to be mesmerized by. “Can I have my pants back?” He’s ready to leave. Because now he knows what before he just feared: this problem isn’t going to get any better. The message is clear: We just don’t know, but we know that for sure. Things are just going to stay the same.

Now, to a certain extent I realize that this message of hopelessness and undifferentiated sameness results from a decision on my part to examine certain advertisements over others. Nonetheless, doesn’t it kind of key into a central tension within technology itself? We are inspired by technology because it brings new and unexpected (and often downright cool) things into our lives, but we depend on it to make our lives more safe, to minimize the possibly devastating effects of the unexpected. That is, technology is in constant contact with the hitherto unknown in order to contain or manipulate its potential for our own purposes. I don’t think anyone has a problem with this (ok, lots of people do—but whatever, F them). It’s just interesting to me that even in the cherry-picked examples I’ve selected (which, let’s face it, since both Cisco and GE are huge players in the tech-market, they clearly tell us something about the way that technology is thought of today), the magical and aspirational—perhaps metaphysically inspiring—aspects of technology are not even downplayed; they are just not there. Even in the “Healthymagination” commercial, where imagination is specifically referenced, we don’t see anything like the Space-Age zaniness of yester-year. And I, for one, could do with just a little more of Helloween’s broad and vague optimism in my life. After the whirlwind democratic primary and subsequent presidential election of 2008-2009, which resulted in about 100 days of hope followed by severe and bottomless national depression, I think we all could.

It's a Miracle! or, Exploding Watermelon Babies

Everyone knows how easy it is to humanize non-human objects. In Castaway Tom Hanks smeared the crude markings of a face into a bloody-hand stain on a volleyball and we all went along with him in loving it.

When Wilson slowly drifts away to his death, it’s one of the strangest, saddest moments in cinema. You probably cried when you saw it happen. I’m getting depressed just thinking about it.

Somewhat less known is just how easy it is to believe that a man is pregnant. If you were to ask me the following question—“What do you have to do to make a man look as if he’s actually pregnant?”—my answer would be, “not much.” That’s because the lumpy baby gut is such a striking shape that we have almost no difficulty believing that even someone as manly as the Governator himself is pregnant, so long as he is wearing a fat suit underneath his maternity-store power suit.

That’s why I can’t help but think the creators of this recent commercial from State Farm insurance misjudged the power of their own fantasy. Or at least they want to appear as if what they’ve done is misjudged. More on that in a bit.

Seconds 0:23 through 0:28 are probably the most tasteless of them all. (Note: I’m not against the untasty. In fact, I prefer it. I’m just saying is all.) First, for about 2 seconds, we see the shape of a probably-real pregger (she could be an impostor, like Arny) right in the middle of the frame. She looks like she’s about to pop. (And yet she never loses her good-natured charm or easy sarcasm. This is how pregnancy usually works, no?)

But then, without apparent transition, we are looking at a similarly-shaped man, framed by the camera in a similar way. We never completely forget that his stomach doesn’t actually contain what will very shortly become a partial-birth abortion (metaphorically speaking), but it’s hard to completely displace our suspended disbelief once he hides the watermelon underneath his shirt, and the fact of the watermelon belly becomes a memory rather than a constant visual reminder. He wants to see what it feels like to lug around a heavy precious cargo for a few hours, and we can’t help but partially enter that fantasy along with him.

But then OH CRAP the watermelon / baby falls out and explodes all over the cement, exposing a shattered, blood-red interior. This image is not meant to mortify, but it does. Since the transition between the mother and father is so quick, and their framing and shape so similar, it is just as easy, if not easier, to experience the similarities in the images more than their differences. And even if we never completely lose sight of the light-hearted humor of it all, never forget that we are meant to laugh at a joke where the line between fantasy and reality is at least intended to be clear (indeed, is part of the joke), it would be hard to say that the commercial doesn’t accidentally blur those lines—that, whatever the intended purpose, the end result is one where the hypothetical horrors of a possible world are forced to overlap with the perception of the actual world. Dude, that’s your baby’s exploded form all over there. Nah, it’s just a watermelon.

There are some other considerations.

For example, if it’s true that this commercial is not actually trying to get you to think about violent baby-breaking and its possible consequences, then it’s certainly an infelicitous coincidence that it tacitly asks you to consider how you would pay for such an accident. Insurance salesmanship depends on highlighting fear in order to sell peace of mind. If the shit hits the fan, or, in this case, if the watermelon bites the motherfucking curb, then we’ll pay for it. That’s what it’s all about. Since this particular insurance commercial only explicitly tries to sell a “plan for the future,” it has to rely on its more implicit dimensions to show you what you are actually buying. And look at that woman’s face—her easy-going placidity exudes, or at least implies, confidence. Her “plan for the future” is not in doubt. That’s why she can laugh pleasantly at her doof of a husband, instead of throwing a fit. (How would most extremely pregnant women react if you created a lookalike pregnant belly and then crapped out an aborted watermelon in front of them? My guess: not well.)

But here’s the rub. This woman’s “plan for the future,” the very thing that the commercial is selling, involves making bank after the “miracle” of birth goes bad. You wonder how much a shattered baby will run the insurance companies. Your guess is as good as mine, but I bet we both think it’s somewhere in the range of: a lot. So now there’s a new miracle! Now we can finally afford to take that Carnival cruise we’ve always talked about, and even get one of the really nice suites. Have you ever popped champagne on a plane? I wanna make love in this club. And so on.

So basically what I’m saying is this commercial kind of freaks me out. The insurance companies are inseminating our minds with little whispering homunculi, little nagging Nancy’s with their little tickly voices—they’re always getting up inside of you, hiding their sinister Easter eggs every which way, only when you open up the prize, instead of money or candy, all you get is fear.

Tell me I’m not alone here.