Meet the Super Bowl commercial that launched a thousand literary blog posts. During the most watched television show ever, Bud Light unveiled the beer ad embedded above, poking fun at book clubs, male readers, female readers, and book reading in general. The ad shows a couple fun-loving beer drinkers crashing a book club, playing with all sorts of stereotypes about American readers.
Our post on the topic generated a wide range of reader responses. One reader wrote: “If ya’ can’t laugh at yourself… I’m a writer and reader (and book club member) and don’t drink much beer, but it didn’t bother me a bit. If we all took ourselves a bit less seriously, we’d save time (and have more fun!)”
Another reader took offense at the offense: “I enjoy drinking bud light because its cheap and I can drink a lot of it while I’m not being an organic chemist, which frankly requires more intelligence and betters society significantly more than being a stuck up literary snob.”
Reader Deborah performed a quick literary fact-check: “They were also apparently discussing Little Women but the plot she was giving to him sounded like no version of Little Women I’ve ever heard before!”
Paul Oliver wrote: “The scariest part of the commercial is the hero. I have noticed a clear trend in commercials making men out as increasingly simple or buffoonish. Ever see the Dominos commercial where a woman is ringing door bells in a home improvement store to try them out? Yeah, the men come running from everywhere in the store in belief that Dominos pizza was just delivered.”
The late, great novelist Nathanael West weighed in on his posthumous Twitter feed: “Undrinkable beer. Nobody in the ad would be one of my readers.”
Finally, C.J. West contributed some book club intelligence: “The makers of Bud Light are trying to be funny here … Who cares if they got the background on the book right? They’re trying to be funny. I’ve visited many book clubs to talk about my books and NEVER has there been a man in attendance. The men of the house run when the ladies start coming in. If you are offended by this, I think you’re taking yourself a little too seriously.”
What do you think?