Commercial Ad Ventures Just Keep Going and Going . . .

As a man who spends almost every evening drinking wine, eating microwave dinners and watching sex and violence on television, I am inevitably a victim of the TV commercial.

It doesn’t seem possible that day in, day out, any medium could be worse than situation comedies, but for sheer vulgarity, improbability and stupefying awfulness, TV commercials are unmatched.

I don’t object to the ones that exploit sex, as most do. The feminists keep complaining about those beer ads that show young men lying about on the sand drinking beer while shapely young women in bikinis drop out of the sky. A harmless fantasy.

I don’t even object to the perfume ads that show seductive young women in sheer negligees breathing through heavily lipsticked pooched-out mouths, tossing their hair and rolling their eyes about.

Even the male perfume ads are only mildly revolting, though I can’t believe that a perfumed male is irresistible to the opposite sex. Isn’t it possible that their perfumes would clash? Isn’t a good bath with a cheap bar of soap all a man needs to smell good?

The zenith in absurd male perfume ads was the one in which about 36 women screamed the name of the perfume, Egoiste, from the windows of what appeared to be an Italian apartment house. There were 36 windows, each shielded by a pair of shutters. First one set of shutters was thrown out and a sexy woman appeared. She screamed the word and slammed the shutters. Then a second woman appeared in another window, then more; Finally all the women looked out at the same instant, screamed “Egoiste” in unison, then withdrew, slamming the shutters.

I don’t know what we were supposed to think, but to me it looked like a bordello whose employees were all drunk, but synchronized.

Reader Joan Putt directs her anger at radio commercials: “Why,” she asks, “must they be so damnably dumb ?”

Putt says she has two transistor radios in her bathroom, so she can listen alternately to the news on KFWB and KNX while she’s making up. She switches back and forth to avoid offensive commercials, but she finds the same ones on both.

“My favorite hate-it commercial,” she says, “has a wife (presumably) rousing a sleeping husband (presumably); with ‘John, John, wake up! We’re being robbed!’ Said husband wakes up with a start, anticipating a burglar at the least, and is faced with a bedmate who proceeds to explain that their bank is paying them X amount of interest, while the First Great Western American Tomato Exchange is paying Y amount of interest. Instead of telling his bedmate to shut her trap, John proceeds to carry on a reasonable conversation about the advisability of transferring their account. Come on!”

As for TV, she is turned off by the C&R; clothing ads. “C&R; runs the same commercial over and over until I am so completely angry at the firm and all its outlets that I am no longer logical.”

Putt longs for the witty, intelligent, sophisticated commercials featuring James Garner and Mariette Hartley for Polaroid.

Jack C. Caskey says he would like to see me conduct a poll asking readers to nominate commercials for a “Hall of Shame.”

He nominated two candidates. First, the C&R; commercial deplored by Putt. This is the one in which a tall, solemn man with a long neck appears in work clothes and then in a C&R; suit while we hear, softly, “What a Difference a Day Makes.” He looks like a little boy who has been made to dress up by his mother, and he looks a lot better in his work clothes.

Caskey says, “C&R; Clothiers, which has ruined the song ‘What a Difference a Day Makes’ for millions of captive viewers, would qualify for No. 1.

“Our No. 2 vote would definitely be for Scope. Gad!” The Scope commercial, I believe, is the one in which four or five people--husbands, wives, lovers, whatever--are shown rejecting an early-morning kiss from their mates, pointing in revulsion to their mouths to indicate bad breath. Then after each has had a shot of Scope, we see them inviting their mates to pucker up.

I agree with Caskey. That one is almost too repulsive to watch.

But I rather enjoy the one that shows a mechanized bunny marching across the screen, interrupting another commercial, and beating a drum marked Energizer, while a voice says “The Energizer never stops . . . it just keeps going, and going and going . . . .”

I am turned off by the Volvo ads showing Volvos being smashed in simulated head-on crashes to show how tough Volvos are. I’d like to see one with a Volvo executive inside, instead of a dummy.

On the other hand, the Ray Charles Pepsi commercials are warm and exuberant. Uh huh!