…and that that’s what men want.
Bitching about this Entourage ad campaign is part of my just-posted Week in Women column, but I thought it was worth repeating here, because of the coincidence that ads from the campaign have begun showing up at FlickFilosopher.com.
I’ve been seeing ads like this one all over New York City over the last few weeks: on subway platforms, on the sides of buses, on the few telephone kiosks left in Manhattan. And they have been driving me bonkers. I carried my camera with me when I was out for the evening in Manhattan on Friday night, hoping to snap an image of one of them, because I knew I wanted to include it in The Week in Women this week and I couldn’t find an example online. No such luck, however: I didn’t come across one of the ads where I could safely take a picture.
And then, lo and behold, the ads start showing up here on Saturday morning. Perfect!
Here’s my problem with these ads: The basic-cable network Spike is going to start running Entourage next week — presumably with major cuts and bleeps to accommodate the delicate FCC-mandated sensibilities of commercial television — and they want everyone to know that this means that
now every guy can get some
I’ve fantasized about cornering a Spike ad exec — I imagine he’d be a sleek, slick asshole who fancies himself God’s gift to women — and asking him, in all pretend innocence, “Get some what?” And I’d love to hear his explanation. Would he actually say: “Tits”? “Ass”? “Booty”? “Poontang”? “Snatch”? Would he actually admit that his ad is intended to liken watching this show with getting laid by the hottest pair of disembodied breasts a horny lonely dude can imagine?
I’m not sure which makes me more angry: the fact that this ad reduces women to body parts that men like, or that some TV viewers will actually be seduced by this.
(Why haven’t I turned the ads off? Well, it’s the attitude behind the ad that is offensive, not the visual itself… unlike the Evony ads I wrote about this summer, or the new Evony ads I turned off just this week that were even more obnoxious. If I turned off every ad that was backed up by an loathsome philosophy, I’d really be limiting myself. Though I’ll repeat what I said recently: If there ever comes a time when I don’t need to rely on ad revenue from this site, I promise to turn all the ads off.)
Par for the course for Spike, the network that for years thinks its viewers are idiots with testosterone. That either tells us something about Spike executives, or maybe it says something about the male population. Either way, it’s depressing.
Frankly, I’ve never understood the marketing impulse to insult your audience. It’s like those “iPhone-killer” phone ads that suggest that the iPhone is a stupid choice, but their phone is brilliant. Great, tell your prospective audience you think they are too stupid to realize they made a poor choice. And this is the group you want as customers?
I wonder how Spike viewers feel when they see ads such as these? Insulted for being treated like hormonally-addled teens? Or just happy to see some disembodied tits?
The sad thing, funWithHeadlines is that those audiences don’t even realize they’re being insulted.
Any guy with half a brain knows spike is stupid. Nobody likes being pandered to like they’re some desperate drooling moron.
The guys who want to watch it, will be happy to be pandered to. The guys who put it on TV … it would be hard to tell if they are like Erron exes who were caught on tape bragging about cheating grandmothers, or if they have convinced themselves that they are simply giving people what they want and that is purpose of capitalism. People can convince themselves of amazing things to keep from feeling guilty.
I have ignored ads for so long now that I don’t see them or react to them at all.
But Ad men, TV Executives (even on the good networks), and Mega-Corporations have one philosophy “If it sells well, sell more of it”
This is why people sell drugs, petro-chemicals, crappy movies, fast food, cigarettes and liquor. Nobody ever calls a TV “writer” up short for pitching a show called “Trollop Island” where half-naked women engage in faux-drama over men while scantily clad. Because they know it will sell.
I am surprised that we don’t cell nicotine burgers in a plastic box that makes them look like tits with a side order of Tequila fries. As long as the big guys are going to make money they don’t care about the harm they perpetrate.
And they should. And this is where the outrage should start. Someone at Spike needs to grow their brain past the brain-stem and start selling the smart humor of the show or the satire. They need to promote the success of the show on HBO or the insider perspective of the industry.
To sell it on “hur hurr TITS!” seems demeaning even for Spike.
Jay-sus! Don’t give them any ideas! :->
I think it is pretty well known that Entourage is a wafer thin show for failed Tucker Max-s who had to settle for marriage.
Maybe it’s improved, I dunno. Several times I have seen people admit its many failings but conclude “…but there sure are a lot of beautiful women on that show.”
Folks may or may not have seen this, which pretty much sums it up:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1914477
(I might have got this link from here in the first place)
As a member of the age group Spike is probably targeted to, I can say there is kind of a third group here, however sad it may be.
My friends and I know how stupid and ridiculous Spike is in it’s pandering, because all us guys love is tits/video games/beer. But at the same time, we’ll stop to watch a show like MANSWERS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MANswers) where the longest video clip is probably 4 seconds, and every 4th clip is a busty woman bouncing for no reason. I think it’s because it lets us for that little bit of time time be the dumb guys who love it, sometimes its funny, many times its dumb, but we do get to see boobs.
Not proud, but maybe some insight for people?
Looks like we’re well on our way to *Ass* winning Best Picture…
Next time you are in a bookstore, go to the magazine section, walk along the isle that caters to women and womens fashions, there’s more boobage there then in the men’s magazine section. Apparently the publishers of these magazines think the same.
Actually, I think the “Any guy can get some…” is a play on words. A double entendre, if you will. It means everyone with basic cable can see “Entourage” now, and not just those lucky HBO subscribers and sneaky downloaders! :D
It’s clever! Kinda!
And with regard to the question you’d pose to the ad exec: “some” in general use means “some sex” or “some pussy” or, more rarely, “some ben & jerry’s”. Come on now, everybody knows this.
Of course, I hate Entourage. It’s vapid and annoying and I don’t understand why people speak of it in the same breath as The Sopranos.
I have never watched ‘Entourage” or know anything about it. What I do feel is that any time a gender is being demeaned it is wrong. It appears that these ads are doing so to females and thus it is wrong. However, I also want to point out that males are demeaned in such things as mainstream films. There are many instances where male genital nudity is disembodied in such garbage as “Boogie Nights,” “Bruno,” “Serve and Report,” and “Walk Hard.” So, for me, any time it is being done to either gender it is wrong and HBO seems to be the worse for presenting these types of things.
Sigh… as soon as I saw Tim’s name, I knew where he was going. But I have a question, Tim: Wasn’t the whole point of Boogie Nights that it was wrong to exploit both men and women in pornography? I’ve never seen it, but that’s what I gathered.
Geez.
This broad needs to get some.
and there you go, gentle readers. “regular guy”… giving regular guys all over the world a bad name.