Obviously, some clear-headed thinking is necessary for the explication of the Frito-Lays commercial.
First, it is clearly a throwback ad as it involves slapstick humor, a type of comedy not much in vogue lately. Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett were two great practitioners of the art, but being women they were never appreciated for how they extended/augmented the form.
In more recent times, slapstick has degenerated into gross-out humor which according to Prof. I.B. Smart (not her real name, but a nom de plume adopted in honor of Maxwell Smart and Agent 99. She imagines herself as the offspring of their marriage and highlights the eradication of female autonomy in television situation comedy [99 is never named] through an act of self-eradicating nomenclature) can be theorized to have begun with John Landis' Animal House in 1978 (There is some controversy as to this dating, but it is not within the scope of this email to tackle this issue).
So the Frito Lay commercial displays daring in being both blatantly anachronistic and centering on the chronologically-challenged (at one time known as the elderly or senior citizens, but as the French writer Thierry Overall points out, such terminology does not give full expression to the power relations inherent in time calculations).
The commercial itself
A young man – son? grandson? – exits a kitchen leaving behind a bag of Frito Lays. There are two chronologically-challenged (c-c) adults left in the kitchen. Is there a relationship? Is it their kitchen? The younger man’s? And what exactly does the bag of chips represent?
The c-c female rises up and moves toward the chips. The c-c male, clearly threatened since he is no longer the supplier of sustenance (either food , sex [as represented by the young man – the LAYS chips are possibly a payment for some sexual favor/gratification involving the c-c female] or even possibly shelter – remember: whose kitchen it is remains an unanswered question), uses his cane/artificial phallus to trip the c-c female and send her sprawling (which may conjure up memories for the c-c male of earlier times when the c-c female LAY before him in sexual submission).
Having felled the c-c female, the c-c male makes his way toward the bag of chips. Reaching his goal, he looks back and is aghast to find that the female c-c is in possession of his teeth. Having already lost his phallic power (forced to use a cane), he can now no longer have even oral satisfaction/gratification.
Had the commercial ended there, it would merit only minor consideration. However, at this point the young man reappears. Has he been there all along witnessing what happens? Is this some sort of Genet-inspired ritual that is enacted over and over? Does his reinscription represent a regaining of potency on the part of the c-c male despite the loss of his teeth? Once again, the text is silent.
The young man takes the bag of chips and sends a haughty? withering? contemptuous? pitying? look at the c-c male and female and then departs. The c-c male and female are left chipless, having waged battle for no gain. Building on the thinking that I. M. Wright pioneered in his seminal work “Goodies for Goody Two-Shoes: Behavior Modification in Late Capitalist Societies," I propose that the failure of the c-c male and female to obtain the bag of chips represents the false/unattainable goals offered by late capitalism as presented in a postmodern reification of the idea of diminishing returns.
Of course, a whole conference section could be devoted to the explication of this particular advertisement, but I must stop for now. I am off to a colloquy: Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda: Transgendered Representations of Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo Marx in Sex and the City: The First Season (with Gummo as the Excluded Middle).
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister