Everybody's Got Something to Hide

I love this commercial. It's pure genius. And probably not for the reasons it was originally intended for.

This commercial originally aired during the 2007 Super Bowl, an obviously coveted and expensive time-slot for commercials. The understanding of this ad depends largely on one thing: its intertextual reference to a Nelly video clip (I may have just gagged a little typing that). Anyways, for those who don't know what I'm talking about, the music video is below.

All right, so, what do a car commercial and a shitty hip-hop music video have in common? Almost nothing, but it's the reference between the two that gives the commercial almost all of its meaning. We start with the obvious. Both of them begin with an opening shot of a car rolling up to some locale; in the commercial it's as mundane as a crosswalk, in the music video it's a club of sorts. In the music video, Mr. Nelly gets accosted by scantily clad women who progressively take more and more clothing off, that is, until they hit the acceptable limits of nudity on broadcast television. In the commercial, the exact same happens - or well, not the exact same. The commercial's comedic element stems from the fact that it is women in the car, rather than a single man, and that men are rushing from everywhere to take their clothing off in front of the car in yet another parody of the hot-babe-washing-the-car-with-her-breasts gimmick.

This is where things begin to get interesting. Because of the intertextual reference between the two clips, most obviously the song of the first being an abbreviated version of the second, a little mental work is in order, as dictated by the clip. The car is the easiest place to start. Especially in our culture, and especially in advertisements, the car is a symbol for masculinity. That much is obvious. I mean, how many car and truck commercials have there been espousing some form of the perfect masculine man? Exactly - thousands. The commercial does this identification doubly; by alluding to the music video, it places the stripping men in the position of the stripping women, while placing the car, a simple surrogate, in the place of Nelly. So, right off the bat we have men racing over to strip for another man. I'm sure that this was all intended in the preferred reading. The queer reading continues throughout the commercial, climaxing at the end when showing a semi-naked cowboy coming up to play the guitar for the car. The cowboy has always been a rugged individual, a frontier man. His manliness is such that he's the basis for the hardboiled detective, another frontier, solitary man. Both of these archetypes hold the idea of masculinity very close to their cores, often being complicated when surrogate characters are placed in the role of the archetype. Regardless of all its history, the cowboy at the end has come to serenade the car, the central man, in his skivvies. The cowboy is also another intertextual reference, in this scenario, to the subversive cowboys of Brokeback Mountain, subverting further the archetype of masculinity held by the frontier man, in effect humanizing him.

The commercial also seeks to subvert certain racial tropes, though it does so less conclusively. Ostensibly, every kind of man is shown: the young white yuppies, Asians, a black man, an old man, a cowboy, etc. No man is apparently free from the allure of the car, regardless of where their parents decided to have too much wine at dinner. Here the commercial stands in contrast to the original music video, where only a certain type of black woman is shown: was anyone surprised by the fact that they were all curvy and at the very least good looking? The commercial however, makes no claims of the sort; the old guy is bizarre at the very least, and I'm sure no one is off to give themselves the low five when the fat guy comes on near the end. However, for all the good that the commercial does trying to blur the lines between racial stereotypes, the lines between class stereotypes are still well drawn. Obviously the car is aimed at a certain segment of the population, namely, whomever the fuck can afford it. Therefore, it would be totally out of place to show a homeless guy removing his rags as he approaches the car. Also, notice the Asians getting off a tour bus - these people are obviously rich enough that they can afford a pleasurable trip to the US. I'm sure Chevy is dying to get their Yen.

Before we start hailing the commercial as totally subversive, there are still several elements that still continue to do the work of the patriarchal capitalism which we seem to be so fond of. Notice when the men approach the car, the women inside the car lock the doors. They're essentially locking themselves inside the body of a man, confining the reality of their existence within the commercial to whatever defines the man/car in the first place. They can only go as far as the man exists, only see what the man sees, only hear what the man hears. This works so as to diminish the female figure within the commercial; she is worth only as much as the man allows her to be worth. Additionally, her economic worth is solely based on the attraction of other men and not women. Men stripping near the car translates into dollars and cents for the car, which in turn may trickle through to the women inside. It is very clear that in the commercial, the women's sense of self-worth is clearly defined by the car's worth. Furthermore, the car's worth in the commercial is shown to be measured sexually. The women inside the car are mere objects of an object, a sort of second tier object, and their definition can only come as objects of sexual desire. The commercial excuses its previously aforementioned homoeroticism by locking the women in the car, therefore giving the men a target. Within the realm of the commercial, the women are less than the car, which in reality is a man. Also, contrast the beginning of the music video with the beginning of the commercial. In the former, Nelly is alone, while in the latter there are three women. This equation further works to diminish the value of the woman with respect to the man; in this case, she is worth one third of what he is. Patriarchy reasserts itself once more. The physical strength of the women also comes into play when they lock themselves in the car. In the music video, Nelly has no problem dealing with the women all around him, making it so stifling that it forces him to remove his clothes, as well as those of the women around him. The women, however, need the protection of the man against the hoards of men coming at them. The swarming imagery shown when the camera takes a bird's eye view is reminiscent of sperm swarming around an egg. The sperm imagery is metonymic for the original erect phallus where it came from. The phallus in the commercial has so much power over three women that it requires another man for protection, which interestingly, in perpetuating the patriarchal position of the commercial, ends up alluding to the homoerotic undercurrent present. In the club, the phallus alone is able to deal with the women, commanding their appearances and emotions.

I'm going to go ahead and bet that the college student who came up with this commercial (it was the winner in a competition) had no idea what he or she was getting into. Ah, the subconscious is a wonderful thing.