Bathtubs, Elvis and Guys named Ed

There’s always a risk when you want to discuss the absurdity of advertisers, especially when you write for someone who makes their money via advertising. While there are certainly ads that are due their adequate mocking, you never know what products might be advertised on a particular site or in a particular publication and if the advertisers get mad then they don’t pay. Within the world of writing for publications, online or otherwise, there is a definite trickle-down effect.

So, I will simply not mention the names of the products I am mocking here. If you have been paying attention to TV, you will automatically know what I am talking about anyway. But I feel something must be done about some of the ads that claim to help men with a certain dysfunction which has the first name of “erectile.”

There are several products out now that claim to help men with this particular product. They make their respective makers tons of money, but those makers have a problem. You can’t show erect male genitalia and you can’t show people engaged in anything close to sex, which is really all of these products are selling. Hey guys, having trouble getting ready for the little woman? We have a pill that can help with that.

Americans are very strange when it comes to sex. We love sex as much, if not more, than the rest of the world but there are so many people who bend over backwards to try and shield everyone from anything that might look like sex. In other countries, the children’s hosts are strippers wearing pasties while they teach kids their alphabet. Here, if you show a pasty-covered nipple on the Super Bowl you end up with mass panic. At the same time, all of that repression and suppression has made America one of the horniest countries you are ever likely to come across. It must be our Puritan roots that make us so uptight about sex.

So, within the commercials themselves, you can’t really come out and say what the problem is. Sure, at some point one of the actors or the narrator will say the words “erectile dysfunction” but this is quickly followed by the admonishment that this is “also known as E-D.” I have no idea what this does for guys named Ed, but I think I would be rather angry if something that involves limp male members suddenly had my first name stamped across it. I don’t want to know any men who are suffering from “Bryan.” So, throughout the rest of the commercial, it is known as “E-D” and it gives people suffering from this thing, I guess, an easier thing to say to their doctor than the full medical wording.

The problem is, of course, and as I said before, you can’t actually show men getting excited and you can’t show a couple, even one that is married, having sex. This has created a series of bizarre, and stupid, commercials that try to imply things. If you were a foreigner, seeing television for the first time, for example, you might believe that the picturesque fields, mountains and cliff-sides of the United States of America each came with a matching set of claw-foot bathtubs.

Those tubs, in those commercials, would HAVE to have been there already, right? Who, after taking a pill to make them horny, would then load up a trailer or truck with two matching bathtubs and haul them up the side of a cliff? Where does the water come from? Why would you want two of those tubs anyway? Wouldn’t the sexier thing be to share a bathtub?

I have not visited every field, mountain or cliff in this wide and diverse country, so there may very well be a large number of claw-foot bathtubs out there, but I have my doubts. Wouldn’t they have animals and insects living in them once you got there if there were? Nothing spoils the mood quite like having to chase out a raccoon or kill a dozen spiders before hauling up the water so you can romantically hold hands between the tubs.

The other brand of drug that helps with this decides to completely ignore the idea of sex all-together. They go some other route and that is some kind of strange male bonding thing involving musicians singing an Elvis tune. This commercial is even more stupid because the song it so God-awful and the entire concept is more flawed than the idea of dragging two claw-foot bathtubs up a mountain.

It involves a band sitting around in a circle in a recording studio. One guy decides to sing this song he just wrote. It turns out to be a version of Elvis’ “Viva Las Vegas” with the words “Las Vegas” replaces by the name of this particular drug. We then get shots of these musicians happily laughing, playing their instruments while the guys in the recording room, in front of the control board, bopping along to the music.

Are they actually recording this? Are we supposed to believe those men are happy this idiot is wasting their studio time? Are they planning on putting this ridiculous song on their next album? Are they all going to be happy to be known as musicians who have to take this particular drug to get it on with their respective groupies?

My suggestions is to go with comedy the way the one commercial did with fiber that helps you go to the bathroom. They used subtle, and not-so-subtle, humor in the background. Show a guy in his condo, in front of a window, popping one of the pills while, behind him, a crane working on a building suddenly raises its arm to full height. Or maybe one with a guy popping one near another window where we see a flag on its mast go from half-mast to full-mast. The possibilities are endless.

Just leave the bathtubs in the bathroom and, for God’s sake, stop using Elvis’ music to sell your pills. Although “E” might approve his music being used by a drug company.

Bryan Alaspa is a featured writer for Xomba.com. Read the rest of his work here .