Other This Much Hatred Always Means True Love

I'm not sure which commercials have been torturing the British of late, but, here in the States, it's a series of spots for AIG's pseudonym, Progressive Insurance.

In them, a pathologically enthusiastic brunette in 50s Bettie Page makeup performs checkout lady duties while getting various (usually male) customers worked up over their -- how do I put this? -- options. She's supposed to be disarming and, judging by the public's reaction, actually is.

Yesterday, I was reading a friend's blog and found they'd devoted two entries to the actress in the ads: She turns out to be a career improvisational comedian. What startled me was the pitch of the responses to the blog. The overwhelmingly male commentators were either in love with the woman ("I can't stop thinking about her" one man wrote) or hated her with equal passion.

Puzzled by this, I looked up the commercials and the actress, whose name is Stephanie Courtney. If you bother watching any of these on youtube, I think you'll be as mystified as I. Clearly, a corporate ad company hired someone who's worked in comedy and let her improvise in order to make the proceedings slightly less rigid. It's the same sort of "button pushing" (as it's called) that made execs choose a lesser-known B Side from a 90s Plone single to be the background for a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercial.

Then I looked up Stephanie Courtney's imdb page and was transported to a dim and dismal universe. I learned there are people whose entire lives seem to be consumed by either worshiping or despising the actress.

I'm not convinced that people who say they hate Ms. Courtney actually do. There's too much emotion in that response. I'd be more inclined to believe them if they shrugged and asked, "What's the big deal? She's not funny and she doesn't do anything for me."

But no! Around here, it's either (A) full-on men in raincoats tracking down every possible clip and bio tidbit before gazing at screen captures while giving Opie a good thrashing, or (Z) the Gentleman's Higher Morality League raving obsessively about hair, makeup, vocal timbre, body part shapes and cloying eagerness. You get the impression they're being kept awake at night by the excesses of the campaign's makeup crew.

We all know where that kind of obsessive hatred leads: to the classic Freudian scenario in which he's pulling her 50s headband and she's shrieking "you animal, you're destroying the symmetry of my coasters!" and someone produces a baby bottle with amputated lips attached and then suddenly grandmothers in overalls are marching around in a viscous barnyard decorated with huge corncob pipes and erotic clown paintings while, nearby, a cow yodels in falsetto and some neighbor's Siamese cat contorts its mouth to make horrible "m-r-r-w-o-w! g-g-w-a-a-h-h-h-o-w-w!" sounds to emphasize its yearning to be fed by a bearded criminal in lederhosen. . . .

(Or maybe it's that *other* classic scenario.)

Guys don't usually talk about hating a woman unless they're fantasizing about her. I know this because I did something horrible while I was still alive and now have to monitor men's thoughts. If you think Progressive commercials are mundane, you ought to hear what these guys are thinking at any given moment.

And Ms. Courtney's message board isn't even about slightly-less-than-casual hating. It's about people researching her, memorizing and repeating her name, finding every web page and thread about her and posting on them endlessly about turning off her commercials within seconds of their airing yet, for some reason, being thrilled to talk and think about them during every spare moment. This is the kind of fetish-fueled outrage that can only end with every hater in question applying a 50s mascara brush vigorously to the triangle in his Bermudas.

And yet the mystery continues. If you happen to see any of these commercials on youtube and scroll down to read the comments, you'll probably ask yourself, "What is it about this woman and these commercials that makes people devote their lives to reacting to her endlessly?

The answer, of course, is incredibly obvious: Ms. Campbell is a woman and her visibility in a national ad campaign has a number of lonely and/or frustrated men looking at her. Loneliness breeds attachment, good or bad. Somewhere, there's a man who can't stop caressing a bottle of pancake syrup shaped vaguely like someone's aunt. Somewhere else, another man is systematically smashing the bottle and pulverizing the pieces to a fine powder.

 

Hmm... that was quite a rant. And somehow I was pulled to read the whole thing. I usually dont do that! Haha!

Well, I've seen her numerous times on TV. I think the ads are dull and unimaginative, not enough to search it online ad nauseam and complain about it on her own forum though. Some may find her funny, but I am not one of them, but I dont detest her. I just tolerate her unoriginal nature.

Thanks for the good read. I found it entertaining, especially the bits about the 'Freudian scenario'

 

Quite an interesting read indeed. I've suffered through an untold number of those commercials, but I can't say I detest her. She definitely has a way about her that screams "I'm trying too hard" and I really don't enjoy watching those commercials (or most commercials, for that matter) but I wouldn't go as far as to say I hate her.

She's almost certainly not writing all her own material, and she's probably getting a pretty decent paycheck for being a corporate monkey, so I can understand why she does it. Can't say I would do it myself, but to each their own.

 

I am entirely confused

 

You're confused? I first half read this while half watching Flight of the Conchords... This morning it still doesn't make any sense, but there is less Foux du Fafa.

 

Ah, I looked up the adverts...yeah, they're just annoying - but I'd want to spend as little time thinking about them as possible rather than whining about them everywhere.

Big rant but I think you're right time to get Nexxo on the case?

 

please gief youtube link.

also the Freudian stuff is a bit much isn't it?

 

No one hit you up with a link yet? Meh, they have an entire channel on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/progressive

TBH, they're just adverts, like any other advert. I still don't get it.

 

I wish I hadnt ever read this thread...

 

Looking at that I can see whe people can love her and why people can hate her.

 

Meh, I prefer the customer in the tricked-out name tag.

 

lol, good read there...

Though somehow you managed to beat your own point by spending quite some time penning that down.

 

I just dont get why people would get so worked up over her? Really? Its just some woman being way too excited about her cashier job?

 

just now clicked the video, at least i can see why people would like her: she's positive and lively, and while she's quite good-looking and wears entirely too much make-up, she's not one of the generic singer-actress-model bimbos that the media usually put forward when they want to use a hot chick.

Cheers.