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11 Comments to "Burger King and Sex"

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1. Helen
   June 30, 2009 - 5:50 pm | Permalink

   You know what the worse thing about it is? It does just the opposite of what an advertisement is supposed to do! Like H-E-double hockey stick I’d order one now! I’d be wondering where it has been before me….

2. Helen
   June 30, 2009 - 6:03 pm | Permalink

   Oh yeah, and what self respecting heterosexual male is going to feel comfortable eating one of those after THAT advertisement. DUMB! Just really, very dumb….
   And for all I know, gay males might find it as icky as I do….Really….What are their marketing executives thinking? Are they thinking at all? Ugh!

   I think I’m done. For now…

3. Alexandra
   June 30, 2009 - 6:15 pm | Permalink

   Ugh I’ve seen this ad on other sites.

   And I’m with you, Helen, on not even finding the ad plausibly effective even if it didn’t offend most of its viewers. Obviously most women will not be like, “Wow, great ad, I’m gonna buy me a sammich now.” But basically the ad relies on men seeing it and not just finding the girl hot but…putting themselves in her position? Usually ads with such heavy emphasis on sex rely on the man putting himself in the implicitly masculine position, not the feminine. I mean obviously not many people jump through those mental hoops when they look at a stupid ad for a gross “restaurant,” but I do wonder about the most likely subconscious reaction to this whole thing.

   I guess maybe the intent was that the sandwich is, like, manly or something. “The 7-incher.” ok. It seems pretty basic to me that a key point of an ad that effectively appeals to idiotic masculine themes is that the “manly” thing must be something the man can be, or something that makes him manly when he consumes it — not something that the very act of consuming requires him to take on the feminine role.

4. Elizabeth
   June 30, 2009 - 6:27 pm | Permalink

   blech, I hate Burger King. I wouldn’t eat that crrrrrrap if they paid ME.

5. Rae
   June 30, 2009 - 8:16 pm | Permalink

   Good grief- Burger King probably has the worst marketing department ever. First it was the creepy “King” commercials now this?

   WTF!?

6. Bobby Bambino
   July 1, 2009 - 9:59 am | Permalink

   Oh my gosh… what the heck is wrong with these people? That is DEFINITELY something I would have eaten, but now I don’t think I can…

7. Helen
   July 1, 2009 - 1:35 pm | Permalink

   Wow! I’m surprised this post didn’t carry more comments…

   I’m, too sexy for this sandwich,
   too sexy for B.K.
   too sexy for marketing purposes….

   I dunno. Does that help?

   Yeah. I am not as wildly irrate about it as yesterday, though I still think it is D-U-M-B : DUMB!

8. the cape
   July 1, 2009 - 2:23 pm | Permalink

   Sex sells.

   Always has, always will.

   Subliminal, double ententre, to straight forward sexual themes.

   The hypothalamus must be answered too.

   Great interview of a women in prison, by Robert J.Averich.(Big Hollywood)

   This is the best part about being a Hollywood screenwriter: travel to exotic locations and mixing with beautiful, glamorous people. Well, every screenwriter but me. I get the scary stuff.

   Josepha is in her mid-twenties, she’d be pretty if she didn’t weigh over 200 lbs. and stand barely five foot one. Oh, and there’s the matter of the ink. Her body is a living canvas of lurid images. Some are of her Lord on the cross, suffering horribly, with copious amounts of blood spouting from shoulder to knuckle.

   Alongside the traditional religious imagery are gang tattoos, tagger images that are a blight on the Los Angeles landscape.

   I suppress the urge to inform Josepha that her images typify the worst of Early East L.A. Rococo, totally low-rent decadence, like Betsey Johnson—on a gallon of acid.

   And, oh yeah, the tats are not slimming. In fact, the opposite. Most unfortunate on a woman already grossly overweight.

   Anyway, back to Josepha’s confession:

   “I killed him by mistake.”

   Josepha is telling me about her husband, Silvio. “Well, not really my husband,” she admits. “I mean, it’s not like we wuz married in the Church or nothin’. Silvio, he says, what we need a piece of paper for? He says, we got love.”

   “Very romantic,” I say.

   Josepha smiles dreamily and lights a cigarette. It’s something I have to get used to in prison. The inmates smoke all the time.

   “Did I tell you how ol’ I was?”

   I shake my head.

   “Twelve.”

   I control the urge to scream.

   “You were a child.”

   Josepha giggles. She’s now in her mid-twenties, but when she laughs, she becomes a little girl.

   “Silvio, he was older, thirty-two, that was like part of the thing. My therapist, Mrs. Zuckerman, she taught me that because my Papa up and left and I grew up without a father, well, I grabbed on to Silvio as part husband and part father. Thing is, Silvio was full time bastard.”

   “Like I said, I killed Silvio by mistake. I caught him doin’ my bestest girlfriend.”

   “Cheating on you?”

   “Can we just say, duh.”

   “But you didn’t kill your girlfriend.”

   “Nah.”

   “How come?”

   “Women, we can’t control ourselves. With guys, it’s all their game. So I banged at Silvio.”

   “But you killed him by mistake. That’s what you said, right?”

   “Absolutely.”

   “Mind explaining?”

   Josepha examines the long ash of her cigarette. She takes a drag and blows a plume of smoke—right in my face. I cough and heave and feel a migraine blooming in the left side of my skull.

   “I shot him right between the eyes.”

   There’s a long pause. Her eyes take me in me. Measure me.

   Silently, I thank G-d for prisons.

   “I meant to hit him in the shoulder,” she says in a flat and utterly unconvincing tone.

   “Mind if I ask you how you felt?”

   “Felt?”

   “After you shot Silvio.”

   Josepha ponders a long moment. She’s genuinely puzzled by my question.

   I persist. “Did you feel guilty, did you feel sad, did you feel—”

   “Hungry. I was real hungry. I went down to the Taco Bell. I wuz supposed to be doin’ Weight Watchers, but I figured what the hell.”

   Usually, there are worlds within worlds. But sometimes there are no worlds set within other worlds, sometimes there is just a vast and awful emptiness.

   Now, about those cavemen.

9. Alexandra
   July 1, 2009 - 4:16 pm | Permalink

   Apparently this ad was run in Singapore, produced by a marketing firm other than the usual one BK uses (ie the ones who came up with that obnoxious and creepy king….thing? great firm). A spokeswoman for company said, “Burger King Corp. values and respects all of its guests. This print ad is running to support a limited time promotion in the Singapore market and is not running in the U.S. or any other markets. The campaign is supported by the franchisee in Singapore and has generated positive consumer sales around this limited time product offer in that market.”

   Kind of similar to the abhorrent Bacardi campaign ( http://jezebel.com/5296935/bacardi-ad-uses-misogyny-to-sell-alcohol-to-women ). The company was quick to point out that the campaign only ran for two months in Israel, by an “affiliate” since Bacardi Breezers aren’t sold in the US. I love the “What happens east of Maine stays east of Maine” vibe that inevitably results from these kinds of ads making their way into American media discussion. That excuse is almost always coupled with the standard “and PS we only did it for a few weeks anyway” plea.

10. Rae
    July 1, 2009 - 7:34 pm | Permalink

    I will say this- this is infinitely less creepy than the Burger King/Spongebob Squarepants/”Baby Got Back” disaster.

11. Helen
    July 1, 2009 - 8:23 pm | Permalink

    Alexandra,
    I now understand my sudden popularity. OOPS!