IGF CultureWatch

I've been watching with interest the uproar around the (now pulled) Snickers ad that appeared during the Super Bowl.

You know the one: two men are in a garage; one guy, who is hungry, I guess, from slaving over a car engine, pulls out a Snicker's bar and starts eating; the other, looking at it lustfully, starts chomping from the other end, until they end up in a liplock worthy of Lady and the Tramp.

After a brief-but endless-pause, they jump away from each other, and one yells, "Quick! Do something manly."

So they each rip out patches of their own chest hair.

Gays and lesbians-led by our tigers at GLAAD-weren't pleased by this ad. Nor were folks on the Right, who protested because they found it homoerotic.

Honestly? I found the ad funny.

I mean, not funny in a laugh-out-loud kind of way, but funny-cute. And funny-sexy. And funny-interesting. It was something that caught one's attention, which is the point, really, of ads.

But most people just found it uncomfortable and not funny at all.

Which is telling.

To me, the Snicker's ad was not making fun of gay men as much as it was making fun of homosexual panic, that strange mental condition that forces otherwise sane, rational men into making fools of themselves in order to prove that, really, they're not gay!

"Those silly men!" the ad exclaims. They're so cuckoo that they'll mutilate themselves--or drink engine oil, as they do in an alternate ending-in order to avoid the appearance of enjoying the lips of another man. But we're not fooled, because that second of lust, of erotic interchange, seemed so real, that we know they're trying to blind themselves to the obvious. After all, they don't wipe their mouths. They don't spit. They don't even look disgusted, or shamed---just shocked.

So maybe they're not gay. But for that one moment, each of them sure was turned on by another guy. And we were turned on by them being turned on-which is why anti-gay groups had a problem with the ad.

So why did gays and lesbians have a problem? Hmmmm.

Well, sometimes, I think that we gay and lesbian people can be a little-shall we say-defensive. As soon as something seems kind-of-gay, or sort-of-lesbian, our antenna go up. We watch more closely. We look for others' reactions. We wonder: What should I think about this? What is this saying? Is this good for our community, or is it bad? Is this pro gay or against? How will it affect how the culture sees us? How is it playing in Peoria?

We have good reasons to think this way. Our American culture can be homophobic, as we all know. And that homophobia can turn to violence and discrimination, which are the twin devils we are really concerned about when we splatter the H word around in the media. Here, though, that sensitivity is misplaced.

The real problem with the ad was not the ad itself, but the Snicker's website, which for a while showed videos of famous football players watching the ad and wincing when the men kissed. In some ways, of course, these clips just reinforced the ad's point-straight men are pansies when they see men kissing. They can't handle it, it makes them act stupid and immature, and that's a crazy and strange reaction.

But what those added materials really did was completely subvert-that is, turn around-the ad.

The ad by itself? Actually pretty gay positive.

The ad with the additions of squinch-nosed football players? Clearly not gay positive at all.

This makes me think that the ad in itself was gay positive enough-and uncomfortable enough-and ambiguous enough-that someone at Snickers thought that we ought to be told how to feel about the ad. Because otherwise we might find it homoerotic.

So they put in these clips of football players-real manly men, as we all know-making disgusted faces. That way, it would all be clear. Snickers wasn't for men kissing! Snickers thinks that men kissing is goopy! Blech!

I wish that Snickers would have pulled the video clips of the football players and kept the ads. The clips told us what to think. But the ads spark an important discussion. And we should have let that discussion happen.