Before we get to what really mattered last night—the advertisements—I must admit to taking some small amount of pleasure in the Patriots beating Atlanta in a way that almost perfectly mirrored the manner in which Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton. Lord knows, I'm no fan of either the Pats or the Donald, but after hearing all the stories about how Tom Brady Is Bad Because He Likes Trump And We Should Denounce Him Because That Is What Righteous People Do And No Good Pats Fan Can Cheer For Dastardly Republicans, well, you know. It was amusing, is all I'm saying. If you turned sports into a proxy battle over your political discontent—as if the NFL were the WWF and the Patriots were the Iron Sheik and the Falcons were Sgt. Slaughter—you kind of deserved what happened last night. I'm just surprised Roger Goodell didn't send John Podesta out to hand over the trophy.
But let's not kid ourselves. The football is the least important part of the Super Bowl, which is actually about crass commercialization and captured audiences forced to consume advertising one time per year. It's all part of the entertainment package, all part of getting as wide an audience as possible to watch the game: "Sure, you might not like football," the Super Bowl's programmers say, "but for you soulless monsters we have the halftime show (more on that in a moment!) and all those ads to give you something to talk about at the Keurig machine on Monday as you slowly pass the time until you're dead and in the ground!"
Sadly, this year continued a trend we've seen for a while now: the decline of the hilarious Super Bowl ad and the rise of message-sending tripe stuffed with pseudo-poignancy. Before the game, a lot of people on the right got upset about Budweiser's paean to immigration, but, at the very least, that spot had something to do with the product it's selling. Plus, I'm not sure "Immigrants: They make terrible, watery crap!" is really a selling point on bringing more over. Has anyone done an esoteric reading on this one yet?
Many people, myself included, weren't annoyed at Budweiser per se so much as at the fact that companies feel the need to preach to us rather than entertain. It's just bad advertising! A funny ad will stick in your head for days and become something people share and enjoy. You don't even have to forego your dumb message, necessarily; for my money, one of the best spots last night was this one for a hybrid car starring Melissa McCarthy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jtnsrDjr8M
Light, funny, and containing an important message: the environment is trying to kill you at all times, so make sure you kill the environment first.
The final few seconds of this ad for avocados also prompted an irl lol while I was watching last night:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VneoEvAJX0g
(Unfortunately, I couldn't find the 30-second version of this spot that aired last night, but the extra minute makes the payoff even better, in a way.)
The trophy for Most Annoying Bit of Sodden Virtue Signalling* is shared this year by Audi and 84 Lumber. Audi used their spot to highlight the myth of the wage gap and suggest that Americans do not value women as much as men. Now, to be fair, the ad is entirely appropriate, as the only way I'd buy an Audi is if it were on the market for 78 percent of the cost of a BMW.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6u10YPk_34
Amusingly, this bit of virtue signalling was met with criticism from the left:
Audi, new champion of women's equity at work, has no women on their board pic.twitter.com/y32FVAr6eP
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 6, 2017
The lesson, as always, is that you cannot win with these creeps, so corporate America shouldn't even try.
Perhaps even lamer than the Audi ad—which at least featured some sweet-ass stunt driving—was the 84 Lumber spot, which, as best as I can tell, was an ad for illegal immigration?
As one Internet wag put it last night:
The wall just got 10 feet taller after this ad
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) February 6, 2017
$5 million is a lot of cash to burn on lazy virtue signaling when you can get the same benefit for free on Twitter. Every time I see an ad like those I'm all:
Or, perhaps:
(See, I told you we'd circle back to the halftime show! I have no thoughts on it except to say that Lady Gaga's performance was a million times better than Beyonce's incredibly boring show last year.)
*"Virtue signalling" is one of those terms that has lost some of its meaning due to overuse—pretty much any time you say something like "Wow, that Trump thing was stupid" or "man, maybe you shouldn't attack someone for their appearance" you're certain to get assailed with tweets condemning your "virtue signalling." Indeed, criticizing someone's "virtue signalling" is its own signal now. Indeed, pointing out that criticizing someone's virtue signalling is virtue signalling itself is probably virtue signalling now. The internet is basically just virtue signalling all the way down, at this point.