Everywhere you look

For this assignment I tried to find something that was outside the expected group of advertisers blatantly using sex to sell their products. We all know that ads for perfume, cologne, shower gels, and it seems any brand of clothes use our sexual nature to sell their products but I wanted to find an ad that we wouldn’t expect to use this avenue. The unexpected branding that I found was Dentyne Ice, a chewing gum company. The ad is a play off promoting contraceptive commercials promoting safe sex and following this ad that appeared a couple of years ago companies like orbit and doublemint have followed this line of advertising with the new tagline for doublemint reading “double your pleasure, double your fun.”

The ad starts with an attractive couple in the back seat of a car who the audience would assume are about to have sex when the girl asks, “You have something right?” To which the man responds, “Oh, yea” and then pulls out of his pocket a package of Dentyne Ice gum. The comedy in the ad is replacing the expectation of a man reaching for a condom with the reality of the man reaching for the pack of gum. The commercial then shifts to an attractive man in a drug store taking a pack of Dentyne Ice from an aisle where you would expect to find condoms and then sheepishly approaching the counter to pay the attractive cashier who knowingly grins at the man as he makes his purchase. The last scene of the commercial is another attractive man entering into his roommates room while he’s asleep and asking “Hey bud, can you help me out?” The roommate responds by opening up his nightstand and pulling out a pack of Dentyne Ice to throw to his friend. Having acquired the pack of gum the man returns to the couch where he came from and where an attractive woman waits for his return. The tagline of the commercial then reads, “Be prepared no matter how close you get. Dentyne Ice, practice safe breath.”

            This admittedly funny commercial draws on the natural instinct of men to be drawn to sexually appealing women and relationships with the opposite sex as well as the adolescent humor of today’s culture which is displayed in the running joke about the use of condoms. The ad also seems to speak to the feelings of insecurity that men feel in regards to their sexual nature with the section of the ad taking place in the drug store. In its discussion of the sexual nature of humanity, the hope for sex and relationship with the opposite sex, the humor of today’s culture and the sexual insecurity that many face this ad does seem to speak in some way to the human experience and what it means to be human.

            Scripture speaks into each of these ideas of sexual nature and the hope for relationship, humor, and insecurity. It’s no wonder that we hope for relationship and indeed intimate relationship with the opposite sex because we have been created to want this relationship. Scripture encourages our sexual nature, telling us to be fruitful and multiply, but within certain constraints that the Lord our God has put on sex. By going outside the constraints God put on sex we are corrupting one of the great gifts that God has given to us. Still, we can’t deny that our sexual nature plays a large role in what it means to be human without denying scripture and the gifts God has given us. As for the humor addressed in this ad, we can see that humor is at play throughout scripture, but as we read in the New Testament we should also be careful to avoid immoral or crude humor lest some of us should fall. And as for the insecurity that we face whether sexual or otherwise I think we can all agree that this is a part of the human experience. The problem is that we often try to find security in the approval of another person of the opposite sex where scripture is clear we are to find our approval in God and God alone.