I’m very concerned about something we all see on the tube these days, and I obsess about it far more than I probably should, but I can’t help it. It’s all those gross animal legs and paws we see in commercials.
You know, commercials starring an animal, where the poor beast appears to be doing something far more anthropomorphic than is humanly possible and which usually involves one or more of its limbs. Only they’re not really the animal’s own appendages. (I so hope I’m right about this.) They’re just these desiccated, poor imitation paws and legs, made by humans, (oh please let that be so,) stiff, fake looking things, the sight of which really grosses me out.
For example, the camera will focus on a dog’s head and shoulders, music is playing, the product is being hawked at the viewer, and the animal suddenly appears to be applauding with his front paws. Or saluting. Or performing surgery. Or tossing back a cold one, or playing a musical instrument or even knitting, all done with those dreadful, pseudo-creepy paws.
Where do you suppose the ad guys get those horrid paw props in commercials? I dread to think, but I hope they come from a huge box of appendagi in a warehouse somewhere, labeled of course by color or breed or length or whatever, which, with a little work, could be made to match up with the animal who’ll star in the commercial. For example, short-sided boxes, under C could have a nice assortment of corgi legs, or under D, Dachshund limbs. Tall boxes, (so they wouldn’t stick out,) under I, could have Irish wolfhound legs, or under G, Great Dane etc. etc.
But let us hope those limbs are made of synthetic stuff and not collected from — OK, you know what I’m thinking. If that’s the case, that box of gore would have to be kept in a freezer, and I’d think it a fair guess to assume the commercial, for revoltingly obvious reasons, would have to be made very, very, very quickly and only in winter.
I once worked in an advertising agency in New York City. Back then, if animals were used in commercials, their only criteria were that they behave themselves, never leave unpleasant surprises around the studio, and absolutely, positively never ever chomp on, or do anything else distasteful on the sponsor’s leg. The ad guys would always have a few identical back-up critters on hand, in case he, she, or it developed an attitude or a fatal hairball.
One day my boss asked me to go watch a shoot. (That was very hip adspeak back then; maybe still is.) I went happily, delighted to legitimately avoid working, a skill I’d honed to perfection and still do quite well. It was to advertise Coca Cola, although there was a pack of Marlboros in plain view on the prop side table. (Ad guys often do trade-off favors for one another.) The model was supposed to lounge provocatively on a couch, seductively sipping a Coke. Back then, alternating the sucking on a Coke and a cigarette was considered tres chic and even quite healthy. (Even chicer if you at shoot’s end, one emptied the Coke into a potted plant and refilled the bottle with Vodka. No, I never did that. OK, once.)
There was supposed to be this big, fluffy white cat lounging in the crook of the model’s arm while she took long, slow pulls on her Coke. The sponsor was just wild about cats and thought the purring animal would be the perfect touch. He desperately wanted the beast to have its eyes half shut to show it was a contented quadruped, sort of in keeping with the contented-with-Coca Cola message they were trying to sell. Well, that old cat not only refused to half shut his eyes, he made it entirely clear he wanted to be the anywhere but there, wanted OUT, and NOW.
The model, who by that time had downed gallons of Coke from those endless shoots, kept leaping from the couch and charging off to the lady’s room, and, on top of that, in order that she get hired for future gigs, the comely maid had neglected to mention to the ad guys that she was severely allergic to cat dander.
What an unholy mess. The cat clawed the model’s arms perpetually, requiring pots of pancake makeup to cover the seeping wounds, and the beast angrily refused to sit still in her crook or in her anyplace else. Even after it had been mildly drugged, it kept flying off that couch in a high legs-spread arc away from the now thunderously sneezing model. The cat would then bolt across the studio, crew, actors and camera people in wild, scrambling pursuit, cursing, laughing, knocking over lights, cameras and everything else, and making enormous, hopeless snarls out of the dozens of cables everywhere on the floor. It was one major hideous nightmare and no one had thought to bring in another white cat as backup. I don’t know why they just didn’t bag the whole feline idea, but I guess ad folk, when they wax creative and are spurred by deathless inspiration, are loathe to change cats in mid streak.
But at least that cat and other TV creatures back then weren’t forced to dramatize scenes with those ghastly fake legs and paws awkwardly performing human activities. Animals in commercials in that era were not expected to make their paws clap, dial a phone or dance the Cha Cha. The limbs and paws were attached to the beasts the way nature intended, instead of being stored like mummified extremities in a warehouse or freezer. Yik.
LC Van Savage is a Brunswick writer.
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