Friday, August 30, 2024

The pointless single phrase in this Gorilla Glue Ad


So we see a guy having fun with his dog, playing tug-of-war in...um, the living room.  This is really stupid yet so typical of American television ads to watch a grown male with the means of possessing a large suburban home but not enough brain cells to avoid doing something common sense tells us not to do.  Surrounded by expensive furniture, with sunlight streaming in the windows, he's going to play tug-of-war with his dog in the living room because of course he is.

Naturally, the guy falls down and breaks something while doing this stupid thing because again he's a Guy in an American Television Commercial.  And then we get the pointless single phrase- an off-screen "What was that?" female voice because of course this doofus is married to a probably long-suffering woman who is somewhere else in the house trying to hold everything together despite her pathetically dense partner and his tendency to do damage every time she turns her back for fifteen seconds.  We did not need to hear from this woman.  She doesn't actually make an appearance.  The guy quickly uses Gorilla Glue to mend the piece of furniture he broke.  Maybe the message is that he would not have fixed the broken item right away if not prodded by the threatening tone of his female partner?  Maybe his quick action is motivated by sheer terror?  Maybe if that voice didn't pop into the ad we'd be wondering why he was in such a hurry to fix a broken piece of furniture in his own house (there's no woman in my house, so there's literally nothing BUT broken furniture here.  Why would I fix anything- I'm not afraid of anyone pointing out my inability to take three steps without breaking something?)

Now that I've done all of this analysis, I guess the "pointless single phrase" wasn't so pointless.  Watching this ad without sound, it makes perfect sense that this guy is playing with the dog in the living room instead of the lawn- he's a male, which means he's a moron, after all.  But we'd be totally confounded as to why he's so quick to repair the damage he does.  The off-screen female voice puts it all together and makes it all work.  Thanks again, Sexist American Advertising Agencies!

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