When in doubt, when completely out of ideas, no matter what you are trying to peddle, you can always go for the Cutesy Wittle Tot Looking Into the Camera and smothering us with her adorability as she innocently Gets it Wrong.
This time the guilty lazy party works for Audi. Cutesy Girl Who Apparently Failed the Kraft Mac' n Cheese Screen Test tells the camera that she has "proof that daddy is a Space Alien." Groan. Maybe it's because I'm not a parent, but...is this really endearing to anyone out there? Are there people watching who are getting a chuckle out of this because "my kid says stuff like that all the time" or "she reminds me of my little Brittany?" Am I the only one who finds this cloying and manipulative and about as subtle in it's sledge-hammer huggability as "Three Men and a Little Lady?"
Anyway, what really convinces Curly Sue that Daddy is a Space Alien is the fact that he drives a car with all these overcompensating bells and whistles. Daddy can order the sound system to play his favorite music. Daddy can demand directions without feeling smaller about it. Daddy can have his ass warmed by his seat and can multitask to his heart's content and, so far, manage to get Shirley Temple to Mom's house before visitation ends and the cops are called without being SO distracted that he wraps the spacecraft around a tree.
Little Miss Dimples wraps this mess up by repeating that Dad's a Space Alien, because even though she's barely six she's been in enough cars to know that this stuff is not common equipment.
In other words, Mom got ripped off in the settlement and is driving around in a very un-spaceship like vehicle which actually has buttons she has to push to change the channel, how lame is that?
I know it's a forlorn hope, but wouldn't it be great if ad agencies left these little moppets to peddle ice cream, Disney World and other products that kids actually might have a legitimate opinion about? Because maybe Daddy bought his Audi to impress his little girl- more likely, he bought it for the same reason everyone else who buys an Audi buys an Audi- because he COULD, and it was the best way to let the neighbors KNOW he could.*
No, Little Girl Who Is Not As Cute As You Think You Are, Daddy is not a space alien. He's just a guy with warped values and insecurity issues. If I were you, I'd be less impressed by Daddy's ride, and more concerned about your college fund.
*And if you think that's bad, I'd like to remind you that another round of Rich Young White People Who Live in Palaces Giving Each Other Lexuses for Christmas is right around the corner....
Awww, isn't it cute how little kids get things So Wrong in their innocent, uninformed view of the world? Isn't it so cute how oblivious, unaware, and stupid they are? Aren't the adults who pull that crap so annoying and proves just how oblivious, unaware, and stupid far too many adults are?
ReplyDeleteI don't know any kid this girl's age who are stupid enough to think the 'proof' presented means Daddy is an alien. They might think gargling and drinking green stuff and the way Daddy dresses to ride his bike are strange, but they wouldn't think it was evidence he was an alien. They wouldn't think Albuquerque was on another planet. They think Daddy's car was really, really cool with the computer that comes out of the dashboard and you can open the windows with a button and the seat gets all warm on its own. Anyone who wants to write about how kids see the adult world in a humerous way needs to read Calvin and Hobbes and Jean Shepherd's writings about his childhood.
It's simpler to rip off Bil Keane and Art Linkletter because it fits with the adman's preconceptions about children and how stupid they are.
DeleteI've seen something even worse that this, recently. Because it has adults doing this. I'm talking about this fucking piece of pretentious bullshit:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2isDZgoTFk
"Mystical device? You mean that slightly smaller version of what you're already using? That's what you're viewing with a sense of incomprehensible wonder?"
Oh, yuck. THAT one. It's a blue-eyed miracle that they didn't set the blasted thing in Ancient Egypt.
DeleteThanks, blackferret- what an "awesome" (awesomely bad, that is) Ad! Assuming I have online access tomorrow, I'll post my response to it then!
ReplyDelete