Okay, my Comrades, click on the link above, and then come back, but be warned: you might ACTUALLY LOSE YOUR MIND watching a cat go down the rabbit hole in search of (at least, I assume it's searching for) cat food, which, for some reason, it is being denied until it experiences a hallucinatory nightmare. And not just any cat food, but new Friskies Processed Pig Rectum n' Gelatin Gravy flavored cat food.
Exegesis:
The tag line of this video is: "Discover Adventureland! A Journey to delicious and beyond. FRISKIES wet cat food unlocks a magical world of sensory stimulation for your cat."
So, Point One: "Delicious" is not a place. One cannot journey there. And even if it were, how exactly does this product allow your cat to journey BEYOND delicious? Wouldn't it be fine just stopping there? What lies beyond "delicious"? MORE delicious? And do you think your cat CARES what things taste like if it's eating this processed offal-n'-sweepings from the slaughterhouse floor? AND AND AND: what the hell is a "magical world of sensory stimulation"? I don't know about you, but my cat gets all the sensory stimulation she needs from looking out the window and scratching the furniture. Nothing magical in that. So where does the magic come from? Do they put Ketamine or some kind of kitty LSD in the food? (And why, by the way, end the final sentence of their tag-line in a period? Don't advertisers love exclamation points? It seems even the Friskies people aren't too excited about this project.)
Point Two: THIS SITE HAS 52 SUBSCRIBERS AND 6 FRIENDS! I don't know who you people are, but what the fuck are you doing subscribing to a commercial? Or, even more insanely, being a "friend" of Friskies? I will, for the sake of my own sanity, assume that you think it's a joke and want to see more insanity when Purina puts it out, but somehow my better judgment says "Nope -- they're just plain crazy." And you can tell they're serious about this product because the comments there are not funny! For instance:
"Who sings the 'Feed the Senses' song?" Who the fuck CARES who sings that crappy commercial jungle? I'll tell you -- some fucking COMPUTER "sings" it, that's who!
"Makes you want to be a cat." NO IT DOESN'T! It makes me TERRIFIED! Terrified for every cat whose owner "friends" this site and then feeds it this death product! If I were a cat, and I had to go through this hell just to get some fucking food, I'd starve to death! It's horrifying! Here are the details of the commercial:
1. Cat enters kitchen, sees can of cat food which instantly turns into a swirling mass of hallucinatory color, only to coalesce into what looks like a giant bleeding anus. Cat, confused by this sudden display of chicanery and wondering where its food went, jumps into said bleeding anus only to emerge in a world of garish color and computer-generated terror.
2. Cat encounters a pack of flying and dancing (perfectly choreographed and with anatomically-impossible proportions, of course) turkeys who seem not to notice that in their midst is a creature whose prime function is to KILL THINGS LIKE THEM! Cat decides to ignore these swirling rotund monstrosities as it wanders further into the bowels, so to speak, of this "magical world of sensory stimulation," looking, I might add, not all that stimulated. More confused as to where the food went, I'd say. And obviously not appreciating all this "Adventureland" has to offer.
3. Cat then encounters a field of cows, which pose neither threat nor interest, so ignores them (as do we), and a bunch of windmills, some of which sit atop mounds of dirt floating in the air (and what good, exactly, is a windmill if it's just floating in the air? And who built them? Does this imply the presence of humans? Are they also magically stimulated?) until it sees this amphibious wicker fish-shaped craft, which, in the non-magical world, would SINK INSTANTLY upon contact with water, and cats, known for their love of sailing (according to the retarded animators and copywriters and ad executives who put this piece of crap commercial together without, one would assume, being instantly fired), GETS IN the boat (which has a kind of silk cushion for it to sit on), and sails off on the CGI ocean (or lake, or whatever it is), only to:
4. Sail past a goldfish imprisoned in a giant enclosed bowl (where does it get its oxygen? Why is it in a bowl of water raised above a sea of water? Is that a kind of fish prison? Or is it like a cage-dancing fish in the go-go world of magical stimulation?) and various penis-shaped fish with nasty-looking teeth which can somehow raise themselves out of the water to stare menacingly at the cat (I think they're singing, too) while flying fish escort the boat towards its ultimate goal, flying fish which the cat makes a half-hearted attempt to either kill or play with (you know it wants to kill them but is afraid of the penis fish which it probably thinks will imprison it, as well as the poor goldfish, in a water-filled bowl projected above the water at the shore, like a kind of warning that anything coming towards the ocean/lake/whatever is moving into a terrifying watery No-Cat's Land) until it reaches that goal, a sort of island on which:
5. A red carpet is rolled out by various sea creatures (pastel hermit crabs, mostly), and on either side of the carpet are little chicks (which any normal cat would kill instantly and eat, but not our cat, oh no, it's fixated on the foulness of the can of Purina it's following and ignoring all its instincts), more turkeys, and some other kind of chickenish-looking birds that are playing on drums (which we do not hear in the accompanying song), and the carpet leads to, yes, you guessed it:
6. The same bleeding rectum out of which the cat jumps (the rectum is now on the other side of the kitchen), and immediately finds a can of Purina Sickness Flavored Animal Chunks in a bowl waiting for it. How did it get there? Who knows! Who feeds this cat such things! Beats me! Why was it given hallucinogens first? Call the ASPCA!
WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?
And, just for good measure, here are the lyrics to the commercial:
"What if one little pop could open a world of wonder?
So sensory, so satisfying, the discovery never seems to stop.
Journey to delicious and be-yond!
(Crappy musical interlude)
Excite your cat day and night with endless enchantment.
It's the magic Friskies makes happen every day, in so many ways.
Fri-skies, feed the sen-ses!"
Yeah, I know.
Oh, and you can watch it in HD!
Hysterical. Blog.
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Very nice in-depth analysis! It's kind of like a mini Surrealist film only not clever. And no naked ladies or death. Although death is implied and there are plenty of fish. Yes.
ReplyDeleteI have always laughed at pet food commercials, especially the ones for the felines, because as we know, animals don't watch TV (although i met a dog last fall that watches TV way up close to the screen. She's a rescued dog and the current owner thinks it's left over trauma behavior from living with the past owner who left her alone in the house with the TV on for hours on end)(sorry for the long tangent) but their owners do. Watch TV. All pet food commercials are designed to entice the owners. Ya know, like we could eat that stuff if we had to. And some of us do.
We might surmise that those (sad sad) people who are subscribers to the Purina site are a little off (perhaps from eating cat food) and need escape from reality. Or maybe this 'Adventureland' is what reality looks like to them (perhaps from eating cat food) and this psychedelic message is the only way to reach them. Either way it's all terrifying. Both the contents of the mini-film and the subscribers of Purina. Not to mention the nightmarish jingle that will continue to run in my head for a few hours.
Wow. When you get in this deep, the Internet really shows us the scariest of human interests. But now that you have shared this insanity, I too MUST know what lies beyond delicious. And I won't stop searching until I find out. I just need to locate that bleeding rectum portal of sensation and discovery...
If you do indeed find a bleeding rectum portal of sensation and discovery, seek immediate medical attention.
ReplyDeleteOr immediate rectal attention.
ReplyDeleteWe live in a very, very sick culture.
ReplyDeleteIt makes me itchy and UNCOMFORTABLE!
Y
Be sure to carry TAGALONGs just in case your itchiness and discomfort become so great that you get some kind of rectal issue!
ReplyDeleteThis is funny. It's interesting to read someone else's point of view on this commercial. I must start by asking, do you own a cat?, a dog? or any type of pet? I am 99% sure you don't. Because if you did, you would have realized that as a pet owner, you do watch commercials or at least pay attention to those appealing to you. If you had a cat, you probably need cat food, so you would probably pay even just a small amount of attention to a cat commercial.
ReplyDeleteSince we are all sure that you probably don't own a pet, and also probably don't have a cat. It seems to me, that you must read many books. (I have only read this blog post). You probably like it when things go by the rules, and if they don't then it is wrong. Sometimes things don't have to be very logical. This commercial is actualy really fun, and to my point of view, it is also very smart. Although I have to say the animations/CG could have been way better, but other than that it is great. As I was saying, not everything has to be "by the book", specially when you do commercials. This is created so the owner thinks more about what type of food he gives his cat. I would like to see if this is actually increasing sales for Friskies. I don't give Friskies to my cat, but I have to say, I like this spot. Let me know if you want me to convince you that your post is way to rigorous.
I can't believe that you wrote at length about a cat food commercial. I like good writing. I like angry writing. But bagging on a cat food commercial? Holy Shit.
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