For some pseudo-intellectual “analysis” of last night’s Super Bowl ads, hop over to the NYT: Super Bowl Ads of Cartoonish Violence, Perhaps Reflecting Toll of War.

The basic hypothesis of the piece:

No commercial that appeared last night during Super Bowl XLI directly addressed Iraq, unlike a patriotic spot for Budweiser beer that ran during the game two years ago. But the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this year’s commercials.

First off, if the point of comparison is one ad from two years ago it would seem that perhaps the notion is strained to begin with.

Second, the notion that “ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of” this year’s ads is based on that fact that there was some slapstick violence in some of the commercials (because Goodness knows that never happens in American commercials):

More than a dozen spots celebrated violence in an exaggerated, cartoonlike vein that was intended to be humorous, but often came across as cruel or callous.

The horror! For example:

For instance, in a commercial for Bud Light beer, sold by Anheuser-Busch, one man beat the other at a game of rock, paper, scissors by throwing a rock at his opponent’s head.

Well, that seals it: many people pronounce “Iraq” as “I-rock” so obviously the commercial last night was a manifestation of the war.

And the parade of insanity continued:

In another Bud Light spot, face-slapping replaced fist-bumping as the cool way for people to show affection for one another. In a FedEx commercial, set on the moon, an astronaut was wiped out by a meteor. In a spot for Snickers candy, sold by Mars, two co-workers sought to prove their masculinity by tearing off patches of chest hair.

There was also a bank robbery (E*Trade Financial), fierce battles among office workers trapped in a jungle (CareerBuilder), menacing hitchhikers (Bud Light again) and a clash between a monster and a superhero reminiscent of a horror movie (Garmin).

They seemed like, well, typical goofy commercials–at least to me. However, I am apparently out of touch, as the piece’s author goes on:

It was as if Madison Avenue were channeling Doc in “West Side Story,” the gentle owner of the candy store in the neighborhood that the two street gangs, the Jets and Sharks, fight over. “Why do you kids live like there’s a war on?” Doc asks plaintively. (Well, Doc, this time, there is.)

During other wars, Madison Avenue has appealed to a yearning for peace. That was expressed in several Super Bowl spots evocative of “Hilltop,” the classic Coca-Cola commercial from 1971, when the Vietnam War divided a world that needed to be taught to sing in perfect harmony.

I must admit: the West Side Story ref doesn’t do it for me, and only seems to be inserted here as a means of getting the word “war” into the piece. And the ref to the 1971 Coca-Cola commercial is just Viet Nam era peace-movement nostalgia.

Of course, the author rightly notes:

To be sure, sometimes “a rock” is just “a rock,” and someone who has watched the Super Bowl XIX years in a row only for the commercials may be inferring things that Madison Avenue never meant to imply.

Gee, ya think?

For me, my favorite was the Letterman-Oprah bit and the Robert Goulet Emerald Nuts piece.