Well, right off the bat, I have to tell you I'm not a Superbowl fan. It's not that I don't like sports; just not football. Baseball's my game. And regardless of the sport, I'm not happy about watching it on any screen - I much prefer watching it in person. Most of the time, I work when the Superbowl is playing - that way, if my teams make the World Series, I can get payback.While I was at work last Sunday, I happened to look up at the nearest screen - and I was appalled. It was one of the infamous Superbowl-mercials. This piece of ...um ...work involved some poor schmuck with a bra on his head being browbeaten by his significant other to the point where he couldn't watch the game. Huhhh?? A little later, another gem lit up the screens with the browbeaten men putting up with all sorts of horsesh*t just so's they could play in their man-car.
Really?!? REALLY?!? What the f*** is THAT?!? Just when I think we're getting somewhere in the equality area, something like this comes along. Now, to be fair, I pulled up the Super Bowl commercials and watched them - almost all of them - and I have to say that there were only a few like this group. One or two were even going the other way, and were disrespectful of men. Still, even one is too many.
In a time when rape and all other manner of violent crimes against women are up, wouldn't it have been more prudent, (and definitely more tasteful), to depict women and men having a good time without demeaning one or the other? Why does it have to be that women are either bimbos-without-brains or the scheming wife/girlfriend just bent on giving the poor man in question a hard time about doing whatever it is he pleases?
Greed, that's why. Airing dirty laundry, that's why. The rubber-neck syndrome: we'll all look when going past an accident - now, ask me why this is. Go ahead, ask.Hell, I don't know. In the multitudes of studies done on this very thing it basically comes down to we are attracted to the adrenaline rush associated with trouble/violence/death/destruction/chaos. Good things are boring, according to the studies.
Well, here's a thought. Maybe it's time to be bored. Maybe it would be better - especially in this time of rising societal unrest, (cool words; basically everything is screwed up and will be getting screwier), to have the good stories, the ones of humankind at their best at the beginning of the newscasts instead of at the end. There is a set of commercials I really like: it basically shows people doing some little thing for someone with somebody else looking on, and then that somebody goes on to do something nice, too. Why not more of that? Or at the least, some more funny ones about the duck and Elmer Fudd.
Or maybe I just like my fantasy world. Here's something, though. Changing our thoughts changes our actions. Change our actions and others may think about it, catch on and maybe change their actions as well. If enough people change their actions, the society and then the world will change as a result.
It would be a good start.
That's it for now, Susan
