Cheesy Violence

Picture the inside of an older, very tidy basement within a home with white walls, missing base-boards, and concrete floors. Opera music playing in the background; warehouse lighting with an open ceiling establishes an eerie feel and lights the figure of a man with a bag of groceries. The man is wearing a black, business suit with his hair gelled down, as though just getting off work. As the man enters his humble living quarters he places his grocery bag on the table, only to pull out Doritos and a mouse trap. The young executive then opens the Doritos bag, and very precisely takes a single chip and cuts a corner off. He then places the corner onto the center of the mouse trap and engages the contraption. Next, the clean-cut man positions the mouse trap in front of the stereo-typical mouse hole, similar to what is seen in children’s cartoons, and drags a chair in front of the hole to view the mouse being trapped. After taking a seat with the remaining Doritos bag, the gentleman watches and begins eating the very food used for his trap. Unexpectedly, a man-sized mouse breaks through the old wall where the mouse hole had been and tackles the young man. At this point, the Doritos logo comes on screen and the giant mouse continues to punch the man on the ground until the thirty allotted seconds are up for the commercial. Filled with foolish humor, this concept is the main idea of a Doritos chip commercial that was aired during the 2008 Super Bowl. By just watching the commercial, one sees there is no real content or substance to it; it is like many other obsolete ads. But an analysis of the commercial’s target audience brings enlightenment to the idea of how violence and humor combined can sell a product such as potato chips.

A commercial aired during the Super Bowl has a very general and broad audience, therefore the theme of the commercial needs to be entertaining to more than one group of people. According to Dr. Frans de Waal, a professor at the University of Columbia, America is infatuated with violence and finds an individual getting hurt to be humorous (3-4). This supports the idea of generalization of a commercial to illustrate comedy that appeals to every type of viewer. The simplicity of a mouse breaking through a wall and violently hurting a young man seems irrational, but funny. The ad is intending to appeal to the viewer’s sense of humor through an unimaginable idea of a giant mouse breaking through a wall because the Doritos are that irresistible.

Since the Doritos product has been a house-hold name in the chip market, the commercial acts as a promotional piece to relate the product with enjoyment and humor. By showing an untraditional ad, it doesn’t promote the cheesy sensation of the chip by showing dressed up irresistible potato slices. Rather it creates an image that a mouse cannot distinguish normal cheese from the Doritos. The stereotypical mouse is portrayed in the ad by being lured into the mouse trap with the scent of the cheese. Another stereotype is used by introducing the idea of a small chip of Doritos, “cheese,” which would attract a small mouse, and a large bag of chips would attract a giant mouse. These concepts are taken from children’s cartoons, where typically the mice out smart their predator. The result of these cartoons has the culprit getting injured or runs into a serious of bad luck. These stereotypes all help the viewer relate to the advertisement because most of the viewers have seen or understand the concept of the cartoons children are watching. Professor Hugh Rank describes this technique, the “trust me” step, as being apart of the pitch which involves five ideas to sell a product: “Hi, trust me, you need, hurry, buy.” Building a relationship between