TITLE    : Phallic Ads
STORYID  : phallic-ads
SUMMARY  : Advertisers are getting in our faces with phallic displays.
AUTHOR   : Cal Y. Pygia@lit
DATE     : 2009-07-30
CATEGORY : reviews-and-essays
FLAGS    : 
TAGS     : |penis|sociology|balls|phallic symbol|advertisement|


According to Sigmund Freud, not only milady's dildo, but anything else that's cylindrical (except Freud's own cigar) can be a phallic symbol or, to put it bluntly, an artificial penis. (Rather than to be thought a cock sucker, Freud said, of his cigar-smoking ways, "Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.")



Most people don't put a lot of stock in Freud's preachments anymore, of course. However, they once made the display of male genital substitutes seem as if they could, maybe, be somewhat respectable, and, until something better comes along, writers and other artists are ill advised to give up psychoanalytical support for the use of phallic symbols, questionable though it may be.



Advertisers certainly haven't. Many ads, especially of the printed sort, suggest that their products are stand-ins for the penis and the testicles. Apparently, they think women (and maybe a few queer men) are as interested in surrogate cocks as they are surrogate motherhood. (They aren't. In fact, if we can trust the ladies at Cosmo, women are more interested in men's butts than they are in men's penises.) Nevertheless, quite a few fake pricks do appear in printed ads.



Beer ads feature beer bottles in this role. In one such ad, for Miller MGD, a man's fist grips a frosty one, much in the manner that men, since the hairy palms of our Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal forebears gripped their own cocks, have always done, in the process obliterating all but the legs of the man who stands behind the raised (that is, erect) bottle-cock, clad in Bermuda shorts and flip flops, next to a bikini-clad babe. The caption reads, "Cold filter what you don't need [competition from other men]. Keep what's good [the cold cock, with which you're eliminating the competition]." This ad, like most, uses a play on words, associating the bottle-prick with a sucker punch; to "cold cock" someone is to hit him unexpectedly.



A Lowenbrau ad's image defies the contention of the text that accompanies it. "Only pure thoughts go into Lowenbrau," the caption claims. However, the picture shows a male worker standing before a female coworker who bends forward at the waist to grasp a bag, presumably of hops or barley. Between them is the end of the handle of a large, flat shovel, protruding in front of the male worker's groin, as if it is his erect penis. This ad implicitly plays on the word "wood." The shovel's wooden handle, at the same elevation as the male worker's cock would be, were it exposed and erect, suggests that he "has wood," a slang term for an erect penis. Reviewed in light of the ad's full context, the woman is bent forward as if she is about to forego collecting the bag of barley or hops in favor of sucking her coworker's "wood." "Pure thoughts," indeed!



Sometimes ads for hard (pun intended) liquor also feature bottles as stand-ins for cocks. One such ad shows the hands, forearms, and ripped, nude torso of a male model who is holding a bottle of the product, which is named "Shaker," where his cock would be, were it shown, erect, instead of the bottle. The caption reads, "Shake it baby," in letters that are, in fact, themselves being shaken. This ad obviously equates drinking the product with masturbation by the male model.



Another ad, for the same product, shows a topless woman--or rather her torso and her hands--holding the bottle. Again, the caption says, "Shake it, baby," in the same shaky lettering, suggesting that, this time, it's not the man who is "shaking" his own cock, but a naked woman who is doing the honors for him.



A third Shaker ad shows two naked women, side by side--lesbian blondes who, apparently, want to have more fun, as blondes are supposedly wont to do. One holds the bottle of Shaker while the other, lifting her right hand to brush her lover's hair back from her face, covers her own right breast with her left hand. The women are inches away from a kiss. The caption? "Enjoy Shaker with a twist." Again, there's a pun, with the word "twist" referring, it seems obvious, to the lesbian "twist" that the women are putting on their sexual indulgence. Whether alone or in a heterosexual or a homosexual relationship, Shaker, its ads imply, helps people to "shake it," the "it" being the hips, the cock, the booty, or whatever one imagines "it" to be.



A Bice bread ad shows a loaf of bread that stands up, like an erect penis, from its fellow loaves, with two rounded mounds of bread--its testicles--at its lower front. A crease in an appropriate place even suggests that the erect loaf is circumcised, as it were. "Bread is life," the caption reads, just as the penis and the testicles are life-giving organs.



In an ad for Candies.com, a woman sits atop a computer monitor, her legs well apart. On the screen, a rocket is being launched, its trajectory taking it directly into the woman's pubic area. The man at the keyboard looks out of the frame, toward the viewer, an amused look on his face, as if to ask, What's a guy to do? The phallic rocket is multiplied by the stiletto-heel shoes the female model wears; by a bottle on the desk, to the right of the monitor and the keyboard; and by a similar bottle to which the woman, holding it against the right side of her face, offers a kiss.



Some companies seem to be taking a shortcut, letting their corporate logos resemble penises instead of paying for high-priced ads. Given the costs of advertising, this is a cost-cutting approach for sure.



The Doubletree Hotel chain's logo is supposed to show two trees, side by side, with interlocking canopies, but it looks more like an upside-down cock and pair of balls, although the penis portion comes to an abrupt end above the name of the hotel chain.



Likewise, buty Salon's logo, which features a stylized nude female figure, shown from the back, resembles the male genitals. Her buttocks substitute for the balls; her back, for the shaft of the penis; and her head (a crescent), for the head, or glans, of the penis.



According to graphic designers, anything that's thicker than it is long qualifies as a potential phallic symbol. Such a definition covers a lot of ground, so much so that it's hard (pun intended) to say whether graphic designers just have dirty minds, like Freud, or they simply want you and me to expand our own horizons. In either case, it's not just beauty that's in the eye of the beholder anymore.

