Friday, November 03, 2006

Still on Pete's Couch




A tightly written and exuberant analysis of the Rhetorically Unstable Pete's Couch commercial can be found here. Note Harrogate's concurring comment to what Baseball and Brioche sets forth: The point being that, however unintentionally, there is a solid reading of this commercial whereby Pete (and not the preppy narrator who, by the way, has enjoyed the fruits of Pete's Logos only to sell him out in support of the Federal Government's Mythos) emerges as the true hero of the piece.

Harrogate invites--no, implores--readers to follow his link for some context on this culturally crucial topic.

1 comment:

Oxymoron said...

I just returned from mzmeg's blog. Her post on Pete's couch is great. I especially like her forecast that high school students all around the country will start using "sitting on Pete's couch" as a euphemism for getting stoned. And who wouldn't want to be on Pete's couch? The commercial makes it seem that Pete's couch is the place to be.

It's interesting that anti-drug commercials might have the opposite of their desired effect and actually motivate their audiences to do drugs. Such is the case with anti-tobacco campaigns. I heard on the radio yesterday that some tobacco research institute recently reported that the boom in anti-cigarette advertisements have actually encouraged more teens to pick up the smoking habit.