Because give me too much time to think about it and I will start ranting about literally anything.
Look, I get that they're trying to sell me a mattress, so I have to actually be able to SEE the mattress. But that doesn't mean I don't get just a little grossed out every time a commercial comes on in which a shirtless man and a woman in white spandex shorts and matching sports bra (because that's what we ladies sleep in, dontcha know) are smiling in their faux-sleep as they rub dead skin cells and self-tanner all over their giant unwashable $800 investment. The only places you'll consistently find people sleeping on uncovered mattresses with no pillows are mattress commercials and crack houses. I find that strange.
But put the uncovered mattress
in a sparsely decorated room together with the permanent sleep-smile
that whoever's directing these commercials seems to insist his
models wear and the creep factor is instantly multiplied by at least
a factor of ten. And they are ALWAYS doing the “No, really, I just
smile in my sleep because I'm so damn happy with my mattress”
routine. There has to just be one super weird guy making the same
commercial over and over again for various companies, because every
manufacturer is guilty of it. Which only makes it worse, because the
more you see it, the weirder it becomes. The satellite cut out
during a President's Day mattress sale commercial recently and the
image froze on these two overly tanned, underly clothed people
smiling placidly as they lay unmoving on my screen. It could just as
easily have been a commercial for cyanide capsules. I defy you to
find a mattress commercial in which the shot of two people sleeping
on a bare mattress couldn't just as easily pass for a scene from a
movie about a serial killer who places his victims' bodies in model
homes. I half expect a seasoned and brusque older detective and his
inexperienced but well-intentioned young partner to burst through
the door at the end of the commercial, guns drawn, and lower them
with a sighed “Dammit, we're too late” as they lay eyes on the
unmoving couple.
I don't know why these commercials don't
just show the mattress with no one eerily occupying it, then use a
different take with people “sleeping” the way people actually
sleep, with sheets and a pillow at least, to show how comfortable it
is, which I can only assume is what they're attempting to convey
with this epidemic of half naked possibly dead people arranged on a
pillow-top altar. Or they could just show a picture of the mattress
with “IT'S COMFY AS SHIT”
superimposed in bold type on top. Hey, don't underestimate the power
of straightforward advertising.
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