Brawny adverts subversive?

So you might have seen the recent Brawny paper towel television adverts featuring the Brawny Man come to life. They’re actually quite funny, for what they are. However, something has been striking me odd about them — I mean beyond the usual oddities and absurdities of the commercial world. Wasn’t sure what it was, but I think I might have a bead on it.

One of the first of the ads show the Brawny Man performing a number of “manly” outdoor tasks — chopping wood, feeding a sick animal, fixing a car, etc. — all performed in an over-the-top deadpan that is way funnier viewed than described.

Anyway, it occured to me after seeing the ads a few times that what was odd was that nothing was going wrong.

The axe head didn’t fly off into the forest as he swung. The animal didn’t freak out and attack. The car didn’t start rolling away down the hill as he closed the hood. I think I’ve been conditioned over the years to expect mishap in commercials.

Then the slightly less shallow thought came to me that really I had been conditioned to expect the male in commercials to screw up. The father is always overweight, balding, and dense as a chopping block — even if the rest of the family is good looking and healthy. He either screws up something trying to fix it, or is sitting on the couch watching the game while his handy wife takes care of it.

And here was a guy actually doing things. He didn’t screw them up, and he wasn’t suffering a bunch of pratfalls and other slapstick.

Of course, just as soon as I started thinking this might be a pretty subtlely subversive advertisement, the truth dawned with their next ads — the Brawny Academy, a sort of advertisement-meets-reality-show where eight husbands are sent by their wives to what amounts to man boot camp, to be taught how to do manly things and be men in manly ways, while remaining thoughtful and sensitive. It’s hosted online, and I trust Google will guide you to it quite easily if you so desire.

So much for being subversive. ;D

Still, the ads are funny.