I really dig this ad. Absurdity seems to be the hottest trend in TV commercials these days (Would Ernie Kovacs be thrilled or incensed?) and most of said ads annoy me, but somehow this one I like.
Dood just sittin’ there on his weight bench, in front of his moped, eatin' his Filet-O-Fish(and, yes, that link is to the Wikipedia entry. Even sandwiches have 'em and I don't – sigh.) bobbing his head to the tune, thinking nothing of it. His buddy coming over to return the drill, buggin’ out that the fish isn’t crooning it’s usual “Bridge Over Troubled Water” but its own angry number.
And then there’s the song itself, it’s catchy fish-on- the-wall-synthesizer simplicity and zany lyrics. To wit:
Give me back that Filet-O-Fish / Give me That Fish / Give me back that Filet-O-Fish / Give me that fish / What if it were you hanging up on this wall? / If it were you in that sandwich you wouldn't be laughing at all. Give me back . . .
Let us do a bit of close reading, shall we? First off, Anja made the point that no one actually is "laughing at all,” just one guy very happily munching guy, another giving a quizzical look. Second, just what exactly does our fishtagonist want returned, and how. The breaded rectangle itself? Was it cut from his very bod? Does he want the bun? Would he like it reincorporated in his own body, perhaps with the help of our head-bobbing friend’s duct tape? Or just returned in a box or an urn for a proper burial at sea? (and dontcha always want to say or write “duck” not “duct” re the tape? [AFLAC! Speaking of absurd ads] Did you ever hear the not-apocryphal news-of-the-weird item that the one thing said tape really isn’t good for is . . . ducts? I kid you not.)
And then, last night it occurred to me that there’s also an alternative reading that de-absurdifies the whole thing: Guy munching on his sammy could just be a practical joker. That is he could have just felt like playing one on neighbor Bob and recorded the song himself, stuck an mp3 player in the fish, gone to Mickey D’s, come home, called Bob and told him he needed his drill back immediately, pretending to be really pissed, of course, then hit play when he saw Bob coming. A lot of work for a laugh, perhaps, but you know those wacky practical jokers and the ends they’ll go to.
I also appreciate the proper use of the subjunctive "were." “What if it were you hanging up on the wall? . . . If it were you in that sandwich . . . ”, because in fact, it is not you, of course, but your meal’s cousin mounted over the workbench.
And then there's the sublime, deceptively simplecasiotone-ish tune itself: Deet-deet-deet deetle-deet-deet. Deet deet deet deet.
It's about a week since I first saw, the ad, and maybe 20 viewings later, still charmed, the missus and I sing it in the shower,to each other, to our pets, to . . . you get the idea. (saccharine, I know.) We make up new lyrics, like, give me back that – oh, I dunno, potato chip, philatelist, you get the idea. But it’s a fine line between kooky/charming and annoying, and I wait with trepidation for the other anchor to drop, when one of us (probably me) finally starts driving the other nuts with it and the other of us (probably Anja) doesn’t want to say so but then eventually WILL YOU STOP SINGING THAT DAMN SONG!! just comes out. (Previous sentence for entertainment purposes only; Anja would never be so cruel -so far, anyway.)
The ad also has sentimental value for me. While never a F-O-F fan myself. Anja grew up eating them, and she's the second of my serious sweeties who’ve been fond of that fishwich. And while, as a strict quarter-pounder manback in the day (and now more of a chicken selects guy when I stop on 91 on the way to Albany),I never once ordered one, the school lunch version was something I always looked forward to more eagerly than most. I liked it as food okay, but more than that, I was a terribly picky eater as a kid, and school lunch could be a scary, humiliatingthing. I couldn't eat anything with any sauce on it, would separate my food carefully on the plate so, say, the rice didn't touch the green beans didn't touch the chicken. And nothing with sauce. Not spaghetti (butter only, thanks) Not even salad with dressing. I didn't eat pizza until I was a senior in high school, and after that, pretty quickly, I just started eating messier and messier grub and now I'll at least trypretty much anything and love a lot of the messy stuff. And when I say I "couldn't" eat saucy foods, I do mean couldn't. It wasn't that I didn't like un-plain foods, it's that I physically couldn't eat them – I would gag when I tried to swallow them. But when Fridays rolled around, the dining hall (not a Catholic school, but for some reason we did have fish on Fridays) served fish on a bun, plain with no sauce (don't even get me started on how I felt about tartar sauce), which was a great relief, and pretty yummy too.
So yes, indeed, give me back that Filet-O-Fish ad, give me that fish commercial.
(Looking back at this post, I’m thinking maybe I need some kind of a new hobby of some sort. Readers?)
Over the years (Dan and) I have written about several ads. Here's one, and here's another, and here's one more, that started it all.
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Happy International Women’s Day, everybody!
