“Sometimes, it’s just expensive”
There’s a Hardee’s/Carl Jr. commercial that’s really been bothering me lately. It’s been around a while, but I saw it again recently for the first time in forever, and for some reason it struck me much more this time.
Screen grab from Hardee’s “Cheater” commercial
The ad involves a young, attractive guy waiting around a car repair shop while his classic car gets a working-over. The car, we see from several quick, close shots, has apparently been attacked by vandals—there is spray paint on nearly every body panel. Our hero, though, seems unperturbed; he eats his french fries and burger eagerly as he looks on with a smug, even amused, expression on his face.
We wonder about this guy’s sense of calm and humor about the whole thing; how can he be so cool when someone trashed his beautiful car? Though the connection is not initially clear, the narrator tells us, “Sometimes, having three girlfriends is great.”
Then, as Joe Burger finishes his sandwich, the narrator continues, “other times, it’s just expensive.” At this point, we finally see the bigger picture of the damage: scrawled across the side of the car is the large, angry word, CHEATER.
In this moment, we are united with Joe Burger in his amusement about the clearly hysterical woman who has done this to his ride, and how much it must have been worth it, though the woman is obviously devastated. By this time we’re thoroughly identified with Joe, so we think, Oh man. Bummer, but that’s the tradeoff you signed up for. The camera cuts to one of the men buffing the car, who glances up at Joe and shakes his head with a smile. Boys will be boys.
Isn’t it interesting that Hardee’s chose this kind of situation for viewer identification, while the absent woman in the ad is dismissed as, at best, unimportant and, at worst, maniacal? The word on the car makes an unmistakable accusation against Joe, which the narrator confirms as true, but he nonetheless remains the sympathetic figure, and rather than wondering at the circumstances—whether he broke her heart or gave her an STD or maybe just made promises he never meant to keep—instead we feel united in our understanding that men will simply do whatever they must to obtain frequent and varied sex, and that women do be crazy bitches. How funny, we think; he is such a typical guy, and her response is just so female.
My husband reassures me Hardee’s never intended for viewers to think so deeply about the whole thing. Of course not: if you think too much about it, the ad won’t work. It relies on our identification with Joe, and an instant, unthinking solidarity with him. Why would Hardee’s use a lying philanderer to represent their product unless they expected you to relate to him rather than judge him? You are like Joe, the ad trusts: you’d like to have as many women as possible; maybe your own girlfriend goes a little nutso sometimes, but it’s nothing to get too worked up about—a good burger and a new paint job will make the whole thing a minor amusement.
Thankfully, they seem to have misjudged at least a few of us, since there has been some amount of backlash to the ad online. (For example, YouTube user Caprese7777 comments that “The subtext is that it’s cool for young men to ‘consume’ women the same way they’d enjoy a burger, without regard to the women’s feelings, which can be wiped away like so much paint.”) Still, the fact that this goes over as well as it does is a fairly sad statement on our lingering ideas about gender norms and relationships.
But this sort of thing is especially sinister, I think, because ads like these don’t just rely on shared “knowledge” about gender and culture—they create it. How do we know that men are hopelessly promiscuous and women are hysterical over-reactors, except that we’ve seen it on TV? Have you ever known a jilted woman who actually trashed some guy’s car, aside from fast food ads and Carrie Underwood videos? Our culture establishes certain “truths” as commonplace, and then uses those same “truths” as an easy way to get the viewer to relate. It’s a fantastically successful tactic; I saw the ad maybe ten times (with the sound off, admittedly,) before I moved past amusement and started to be annoyed. But the success of these ads is unfortunate, because, in the end, it’s not just burgers they manage to sell.
Tagged as: advertising, analysis, media, pop culture, gender norms, TV
