Give Butterfinger Crisp the Finger - Part 2

Hey Folks -

Below is a posting from last May. Yesterday I got another good comment that set me to thinking - and since I still see the ad on the tube, I thought it worth bringing up again.

The latest comment is:

Anonymous said...
"Actually I think the girl in the commercial is super cute, her laugh is slightly irritating, and the commercial overall is stupid, but the girl is just too damned cute."

Well, I can't dispute that; she is cute; and she is an actor playing a role; so, I don't really want to slap HER. She - the real person - might not be as vapid, slow, lazy, self-centered, and judgmental as her character.

I'd like to slap her CHARACTER. As for the boys shown sprawling over desks in an unconscious stupor (in the longer version of the ad), a swift kick would do them (their CHARACTERS) some good. As for the hot-shot Ad-Biz boys who came up with this atrocity, they should be hanged!!

Why?

Well, let's look at the premise. The scene is a college classroom. A college education is expensive; someone is paying for it, or else building up astronomical debt via loans. Every "student" we see in the ad is either comatose or "bored" beyond listening (and perhaps so stupid or so used to tuning out as to be oblivious of any possible value being offered to them by the professor).

So, the "problem" is that the foolish university has hired a dweebish-looking prof to teach Miss Butter Finger's class (we don't know for sure, but possibly the "problem" is simply having to be in a classroom at all ). Damn!! Miss BF could be on her cell with her buds; the male slackers could be home sleeping in preparation for the evening's keg party. And whatever the professor is going on about has no relevance to anything important.

It seems pretty clear that the Ad-Biz boys are focused on the immature, infantile, lazy, selfish Id in all of us. Life should be easy and sweet - it should primarily "feed your appetite for fun," as it says in the commercial. It's not "a spoonfull of sugar helps the medicine go down." It's "Fuck the 'medicine'; feed your appetite for fun."

Now, that's a great attitude for a consumer-driven economy (check out the book Consumed by Benjamin R. Barber), but it doesn't do much for scholarship, citizenship, or committed social involvement. If selling and buying are the primary goal, fine; but, according to Barber, such a consumer oriented system results in "only one paradigm - 'Unfettered markets are deemed both the essence of human liberty, and the most expedient route to prosperity' - and hence but one value (profit), one activity (shopping), one identity (the consumer), one paradigm of behavior (market exchange), one life world (commerce) that qualify as legitimate."

Yep, the girl playing the bratty kid IS cute, but anyone who is unfortunate enough to get involved with a cute kid who actually IS a bratty Miss Butter Finger will need more than a candy bar to diminish the consequences of that involvement.

- Uke Man

(Here's the original posting and the link to the ad)

Hey Folks,

Does anyone besides me want to slap the Butterfinger Crisp girl?

Here's a short clip of the commercial if you don't know what I'm talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XiquTB8tmQ

If you've seen the whole thing, and if you are old enough to be paying your own bills, don't you think Butterfinger was better off with Homer Simpson and Bart pushing their products?

- Uke Man