Super Bowl Ad Tracker Roundup: What the Super Bowl commercials say about us

Read more at: LATimes

A question popped into my mind sometime during the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday night. Around the time Usher descended from the heavens as a lip-syncing deus ex machina to save us from Fergie’s howling screech, I tried to imagine if anthropologists in the future got their hands on a tape of last night’s game.

What would they think of us?

What would they think of those spots that cost $3 million per 30 seconds? If anything, those market-researched masterpieces reflected quite a bit about our culture: We love a laugh; we love innuendo; we love it when we are in on the joke. We are addicted to technology. We love car commercials that make us proud of America. We love chimps in suits. We either cannot have fun or are testy and violent until we have alcohol. And a Pepsi Max crotch shot to a grown-up frat boy — it doesn’t get any better than that.

Some of us are postmodern and ironic, and are snobs about it. Others embrace the uncomplicated and unsophisticated, and are snobs about it too. The Super Bowl forces the two to come together. Some laugh at the joke, others are laughing at the ones laughing at the joke.

Last night’s commercials aimed both high and low. Many missed the mark or stirred the pot. Reading the Show Tracker comments on the ads, a bevy of them were racist, sexist, too violent, too stupid. But, hey, that’s what makes us buy things.