by Curmie
[This is Jack: Almost as if in response to my secret wish, Curmie has submitted a column designed to turn our attention away from politics, division, culture wars and the rest, instead focusing his analysis on pizza ads. Makes me hungry for more…but not more Red Baron pizza. I’ve been eating a lot of frozen pizza since Grace died, and have placed Red Baron on my blacklist. Yechh. DiGiorno, Frescetta and Trader Joe’s offerings are far superior. ]
I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m a little starved for something, anything, other than politics. The thought that anyone would vote for either of the likely contenders for the presidency (as opposed to against the alternative) is chilling. So I’ve been casting about, looking for something else to write about. This may not be much, but at least it’s something. And I did sort of open the door for this kind of post last Christmas season with an analysis of ads for Monopoly.
Red Baron (the pizza company, not Snoopy’s antagonist, but why pass up an opportunity like this?) has released a trio of new commercials, all connected to the joys of sharing. They’re not going to convince my wife and me to buy their product—we’ve tried it and found the gustatory difference between it and cardboard to be insignificant (your mileage may vary), but that doesn’t mean their commercials are similarly boring.
Indeed, “Baddie Librarians,” in which two stereotypically bespectacled (complete with glasses chains) older women naughtily share a pizza intended for a single person, is trite but at least reasonably cute. “Hipsters” is even more fun, as sharing a delicious pizza leads to sharing of a different sort: one character “shares” that he’s tired of being hip, another (her name is Willow, of course) admits that she doesn’t even know what her neck tattoo means, the pizza is described as “way better than kale” (I’ll grant that much), and kombucha is called “garbage water.” It’s not laugh-out-loud funny, but at least it brings a smile.
“Book Club” starts down the same road, but it takes a wrong turn. Sharing the pizza prompts one woman to “share” that she didn’t actually read the book. Indeed, no one has; the closest anyone can come is the hostess, Linda, who “watched the movie last night.” So far, so good. But the ensuing dialogue goes like this:
— “I judged it by its cover!”
— “I haven’t read a book since middle school!”
— “I’m secretly seeing two other books clubs!” [What?]
— “I can’t even read!” [He’s holding the book upside-down.]
— “I’m not really Gary! He just paid me to be here.” [Again, what?]
If “Hipsters” showed something like a moment of enlightenment for the characters—they’re questioning their past pretentiousness in the name of hipness—“Book Club” seems to excuse that very pomposity and deception. If Willow and her friends begin to re-evaluate the illusory benefits of being hip, Linda and her book club giggle about how cute it is to be superficial, anti-intellectual, illiterate, and deceitful. Eating that tasty pizza brings the hipsters to a realization that “kale sucks”; for the book-clubbers, though, it prompts only the joys of shared ignorance and imbecility.
No, I’m not blaming the purveyors of frozen pizza for the decline of thoughtful analysis that has characterized the last couple of decades in this country. But that one ad in particular, while not a contagion, is at least a symptom.
One of the first papers I wrote as an undergrad was for a class on Jean-Jacques Rousseau. (I ended up in that class because my first couple of choices for a Freshman Seminar were full when I tried to register, and I’d at least heard of Rousseau.) We’d just read Émile, in which one of the key points was that what we try to teach and what a child sees in that pedagogical moment do not always coincide. We were assigned to write a short analysis of a contemporary story or event from the perspective of such a child.
I don’t remember what I wrote about (it was over a half century ago… ouch!), but the assignment itself keeps re-appearing in my consciousness after all this time. I know what “Book Club” intends its message to be, but what I see is “stupid, incurious, and artificial people like our product.”
Dammit, it seems like I’m writing about politics, after all…
Ethics Alarms 
Having been around for a while, the 1st thing that popped into my mind was that 1966 Royal Guardsman tune, which rang out the year second only to The Monkees “I’m A Believer.“
PWS
I have not willingly had Red Baron in years (maybe decades). There are many other varieties (including Jack’s pizza) that are much better.
Of course, I am curious how the brand made it on Jack’s blacklist.
Having gotten that out of the way, I have to disagree with Curmie. I am part of one “book club.” Very infrequently, someone will come in and announce that they did not finish the reading. It happens, but that seems to be the joke about book clubs. I have known of book clubs in which discussing the book is less important than: 1) socializing; and 2) drinking wine (not necessarily in that order).
So, if I were to make a joke about a book club, not doing the reading would be the joke. I did not watch the commercial, but I found the dialogue hilarious (maybe hilarious is a little strong). Each comment got sillier and more absurd than the previous one.
I was about to comment that, if this were a Monty Python sketch, it would go over much better.
As I searched my memory for a Monty Python sketch that might display such an escalation of silliness, The Book Shop popped into my head. For the uninitiated, the Book Shop features a customer who goes into a book shop to find something to read. He asked for all kinds of obscure books that don’t really exist (some funny dialogue about Charles Dickens, or Charles Dikkens with 2 k’s, the well-known Dutch author). Eventually, they land on Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying. At this point the clerk at the book shop wants to sell the book and the customer has to come up with all kinds of excuses about why he can’t purchase the book, finally coming to the admission that he can’t read. So, the clerk starts reading the book to him.
Here is the transcript: https://genius.com/Monty-python-bookshop-annotated
(And, yes, before it was a Monty Python sketch, John Cleese and Marty Feldman performed a version of it on another show.)
-Jut
That was a common formula on the Flying Circus. Which skit was it when the customer, after making escalating absurd requests, admits that he’s been wasting the clerk’s time and the clerk shoots him point blank in the forehead?
I believe that was the Cheese Shop.
But, the customer shoots the clerk.
https://people.cs.rutgers.edu/~mdstone/class/440-fall-99/cheeseshop.html
-Jut
Holy Cow! That’s Marty Feldman as the customer in Cleese’s book shop!
That’s the one, and yes, had the end wrong. He shoots because the clerk admits that the store has no cheese at all.
I can’t watch TV commercials anymore. America is now evidently eighty-five percent of color. (And they’re all fabulously well off and successful and are consumers extraordinaire. But they need reparations? But I digress.) Don’t people of color have any objection to being pandered to and being depicted in a fairy tale?
And if the characters aren’t of color, they’re Asian. I forgot. Funny how Asians are okay to be in TV commercials, but not okay to be admitted to elite schools.
Mrs. OB’s book club often convenes as a “no book book club.”
Share a pizza, i always thought wha twasintheobx was what we call inmedicien “a unit dose” meaning meant for one person. Another observation, i received an ad for a left over pizza keeper, wh has left over pizza?
oh, Curmie. I must consume pizza now. Yes, I must.
This does remind me of a recent Pizza Ordeal: my long-suffering wife celebrated her birthday. I ordered pizzas from Gino’s East out of Chicago. Damn, they are good.
I ordered two pizzas from their website. When they arrived, in learned they weren’t the 12 inch pies, but 9 inch pies. I called them and learned Gino’s East outsourced its online orders bit that company only ships 9 inch pies at an increased cost. Very disappointed.
I felt a bait-and-switch outrage was in order until I looked at my receipt and realized I got hosed, but the hosing was disclosed. Still, disappointed.
jvb
PS: the French women’s gymnastic team is imploding.
Re the PS: GOOD
Re pizza: the three establishments in the D.C. area that had pizza I loved are all gone. I am now reduced to frozen pizza because 1) Grace isn’t here to talk me into getting fresh baked pizza 2) I can’t afford to eat out, even pizza, and 3) no place I’m aware of has good enough pizza that the best frozen variety aren’t, oh, 80% as good, even though they’ve shrunk the size of large pizzas by at least 20%.
Little Ceasars is cost competitive with frozen pizza I think, although it probably depends on topping choice ($6 for an EMB, which has extra cheese and extra of one meat). It compares favorably to Red baron taste wise.
EMB = Extra Most Bestest, which I cringe every time I hear or say it. So that’s a mental drawback. I could be wrong about choosing a diffeent meat with it.