[Author's Note: The following is mostly a technical analysis of TV commercial humor and is not specifically a humor piece itself, so read it at your own peril. However, hilarity may ensue in the comments if offended feminists start dropping by.]

Via Right Wing Nation, I found an offended feminist complaining about this Carl's Jr. commercial wherein Dr. 90210 recommends breast augmentation... the punchline being that he's talking to a chicken, and chicken sandwiches are what's being advertised. But yon offended feminist claims that it's not "just a commercial"

It's not "just" anything. It's an ideological piece of propaganda designed to justify two things: the annihilation of chicken's lives and the annihilation of the human female's self esteem.

Gotta disagree.

(continued in extended entry)

Here's what the commercial is designed to do:

Sell chicken sandwiches.

But what the hell does a cosmetic surgeon have to do with food?

Here's the deal - prior to about 1950 or so, advertisements took the direct approach. They told people why a product was good and asked them to buy it. Maybe they threw in a jingle to help folks remember the product's name.

But somewhere in the early 50's, marketing researchers discovered that listing the features and asking for the sale wasn't necessary. Just the jingle. Because people don't choose which products to buy for logical reasons, they buy them for emotional ones, and make up the logical ones afterwards to justify it.

Ultimately resulting in marketers designing ad campaigns that went straight for the emotions.

The way they do this is to spend the bulk of the commercial using sensory stimuli designed to put you into a particular emotional state - usually a positive one - and then telling you what they want you to buy in the hopes that the product will become associated in your mind with the positive state.

Does this mean that every time you pass a Carl's Jr., you'll slam on the brakes and zombie-shuffle into the store to buy a chicken sandwich?

No.

But if you're hungry and you're driving around and you see a Carl's Jr. sign, when you ask yourself "should I stop here?", a quick mental Googling of your inner database will turn up a response of "I've heard of Carl's Jr. and my general feelings toward it are more or less positive".

You may stop at Carl's Jr., you may not. But the commercial upped the odds somewhat.

But why would Carl's Jr. advocate murdering chickens and demeaning women in an attempt to make people feel good?

They. Didn't.

It was a joke. It was funny. Here's why:

In order for something to be funny, it needs both truth and exaggeration. If it's only exaggeration, it's just a lie. If it has only truth, it's a physics textbook. You need both.

However, if you don't have any truth handy, a popularly accepted stereotype will work almost as well, since a stereotype is something that's true for a significant portion - but not all - of a given group of people.

In this case, the stereotype is that women are insecure about their physical appearance, and some will seek to correct that through breast augmentation. The exaggeration is that this would apply to a chicken.

Throw in a pun on the word "breast" and you have humor. Which is designed to make you laugh so that you feel good so that you'll associate Carl's Jr. with that good feeling and stop into one of their restaurants to spend your money which they'll spend on more funny commercials.

Thus completing the Circle of Corporate Life.

The next logical "offended feminist" question is, "But doesn't it say something about the corporation that they chose to joke about women's breasts instead of, say, professional football, like in those nice Creepy-the-King burger commercials?"

Probably not. It's more likely that it's just what came off the top of the ad agency's head that morning.

As a self-described humor writer, I know how the creative process works, and it's something like this: you pick a topic, you free-associate some facts & stereotypes, and when you find one that takes you off on an unexpected tangent, you make a punch line out of it.

In this case, Mr. Ad Man had to make a chicken joke; thought about feathers, beaks, eggs, farms, and roosters before the idea of breasts; then - knowing "sex sells" - connected it to human female breasts, and eventually decided to use breast augmentation surgery as the segue between the two.

A joke was made, people laughed, a commercial was produced, and chicken sandwiches were sold by the ton.

Except to offended feminists, who will never go to Carl's Jr. ever again, on the assinine assumption that Mr. Ad Man's first thought was "How can I demean women today?" and not "How can I make a joke about chicken?"

But that's how it goes with humor. When you use stereotypes instead of truth, the joke will fail for the people to whom the stereotype does not apply. One man's funny is another feminist's annihilation propaganda. So when you write, the best you can do is aim for the bulk of your target audience, ignore the offended, and hope that next time you have to write a joke, the truth or stereotype you base your humor on is more universal.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go assuage my hunger with a Carl's Jr. chicken breast sandwich.

Heh. I said "breast"

*snicker*

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