Among the sophomoric Super Bowl ads, most of which featured either scantily clad women, coarse sexual innuendo or beer-craving, emasculated men, there was one I found not merely offensive but quite frightening too. It was the Audi commercial which presented the tyrannical "Green Police" of a not-too-distant future.
(I post the clip at the conclusion of this post.)
At first I thought the commercial was a clever satire of radical environmentalism and the despotic Nanny State that might be heading our way. I'm sure that the grins and giggles that viewers gave in response to the ad was because they too thought that was the message.
However, the obvious hero of the ad is the buyer/driver of the Audi A3 TDI which burns "clean diesel" fuel. He's the guy who escapes the hassles of the "Green Police" and is allowed to drive away -- clear, clean and guilt-free.
So the underlying message of the commercial is either: 1) You do indeed have a moral obligation to studiously avoid all of those crimes for which the "Green Police" were arresting folks: using plastic bags and Styrofoam cups, failing to toss the orange rind in the compost pile, having hot water in the hot tub, burning incandescent light bulbs, and throwing away a dead flashlight battery. And therefore, the "Green Police" are the good guys keeping eco-slobs from polluting the planet.
Or 2) Even if the commercial is meant to make us laugh as we consider the extremes to which environmental rules are heading, those extremes are presented as inevitable, the quickly-arriving triumph of the Nanny State who will control every little aspect of how we live. So, doggone it, you'd better make the best of it by complying in style...as in buying our Audi A3 TDI, Green Car Journals' 2010 Green Car of the Year.
Either way the commercial is meant, the joke ends up being on us. We can laugh at the commercial's absurdities (police ignoring serious crimes against persons and property while prosecuting crimes against Gaia) but we must prepare ourselves to endure yet more niggling laws, more bureaucratic oversight, and a lot more pressure as political correctness morphs into environmental exigency as defined by the Sierra Club.
Therefore, even though the "Green Police" of the Audi commercial may not be on the scene quite yet, the spirit of coercion that it represents is already here and active.
