With the Super Bowl coming up on Sunday, and two weeks of constant game analysis and predictions and Taylor Swift chatter behind us, people have started to focus with anticipation on the really important issues, like the halftime show and the commercials. And speaking of the commercials, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that this year’s crop of ads is facing a really tough challenge: to be funny and memorable without offending anyone.
Good luck with that!
Modern America is a pretty hypersensitive place, and trying to avoid offending anyone may just be an impossible task. If you think about the famous Super Bowl ads of the past, like the weird Apple 1984 ad, or the Mean Joe Greene jersey-tossing Coke ad, would they have met the totally inoffensive to modern America test–or would someone, somewhere have been upset by the notion that our country had turned into a dark and dystopian Big Brother society, or that Mean Joe at first was gruffly dismissive of the Coke-bearing little kid? Can any commercial’s language and phrasing actually survive minute dissection for potentially offensive elements? Would Spuds MacKenzie or the football-kicking Clydesdales be well-received–or would some organization argue that they unfairly exploited animals?
Part of humor is surprise–even shock. And when you surprise people, you might also upset them . . . and a perception of offensiveness could follow. In a world where some people evidently believe that Taylor Swift’s relationship with Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs is some kind of deep-state “psyop,” all bets about where the “offensiveness” line really lies are off. Why, it makes you want to watch the Super Bowl just to see how the ad makers try to rise to the challenge and thread the needle–if an eye of the needle even exists.
Webner House 