Author: Sam Byrne
The Super Bowl is over, the players have hung up their cleats, spectators have gone home and Packers fans have finally started to take down their celebratory paraphernalia. America as a whole is not quite ready to let go, however. Many football fans are still clinging on to one aspect of the final game — one that lives on via the Internet, glorifying the only part of the match-up that no one actually sees on game day — the part some say is even better than the competition itself: the banned Super Bowl Commercials.
What is less known about these commercials, however, is the disgustingly deliberate tactic the sponsoring companies take in making the commercials inappropriate. As a result, these companies are able to promote their ads under the wildly popular title of “banned Super Bowl commercials” to ultimately avoid paying the average $3 million in airtime fees, a tactic that is simply unacceptable.
These companies are provided free exposure for taking advantage of efforts by regulators to reward appropriate and thoughtful commercials with Super Bowl airtime, and are selfishly undermining progress made with Super Bowl censorship for their own profit.
Ever since the 2004 Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake scandal, in which Ms. Jackson indecently revealed herself to all of the American television audience during the halftime show, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) has heightened its efforts in censoring what airs during the game.
This effort seeks to ensure that viewers will never witness vulgar material of this sort again on the Super Bowl’s host network. Companies that knowingly produce crude commercials take advantage of the increased publicity when they are “banned” from the Super Bowl, as they recognize that viewers will have an interest in seeing what the FCC prevents them from watching. Companies also realize that any responsible organization would not have produced such an ad to begin with, which is exactly what motivates their commercial ideas.
Super Bowl XLV was broadcast this year by Fox, which rejected several commercial proposals from airing, including one from conservative comedy site JesusHatesObama.com. Only four days after the game, the brief advertisement had already received nearly 500,000 hits.
This particular ad is relatively uneventful (it shows a President Obama bobble head plunging into an office fish tank), yet it is sought out because it has the intriguing label of “banned commercial.” A commercial that attacks the president and has been excluded from televisions is inherently controversial and therefore spurs curiosity.
The consequences of this loophole in advertising are twofold: Companies that pay less and end up on the Internet have the potential to ultimately gain more exposure than the companies that pay to air their commercials during the Super Bowl, and the companies that do not pay are deliberately profiting off the loopholes that were created during the attempts to maintain the respectable values of the game.
The Super Bowl represents contemporary American society on the most grandiose level, and it is upsetting to think that these commercials are such an integral part of this nationally admired day. If the banned commercials receive more exposure than the game time commercials, then it is fair to assume that they are watched even more than the actual football game. If this is the case, then the Super Bowl’s goal of celebrating some of the finest athletes in America will have switched to paradoxically celebrating the most cleverly constructed crude advertisements and messages that America’s ever seen—in a strange transition from promoting America’s best to America’s worst.
But what America has failed to consider is that with this great economic gain comes cultural loss, forgotten morality and a young child who will likely stumble upon an alarming image of his President plummeting into a tank of water and getting gnawed at by fish. It is easy to say that organizations such as JesusHatesObama.com are not at fault because they are merely capitalizing on an opportunity for free advertisement. They should be held accountable, however, for the moral standards they are setting for our country’s uncorrupted businesses and organizations with the power to influence a nation.
Sam Byrne is an undeclared first year. She can be reached at sbyrne@oxy.edu
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