Ad Men: Gardasil
What with the Mets’ season over already and my own Old Timers’ league winding down for the summer, I’ve reclaimed my nights and weekends, which only means I’ve been watching much more TV than usual. I first realized this when I decided to devote these next few hundred words to a commercial. Yes, advertising is everywhere, even here.
The ad on today’s agenda – and it’s an ad, despite the fuzzy PSA undertones – is for an HPV/cervical cancer vaccine called Gardasil. You might have seen it around, but let’s take another look:
Did you find that tough to get through? My stomach turns every time I see it. With almost each passing sentence in the spot, I shed another tear for the shame we continue to bring on our race. My rage is equaled only by my sadness when I consider what we’re doing, and truly what we’ve already done, to the younger female demographic that might be among the only innocents left on our planet. How dare we?
One less woman? How about one fewer woman?
Each of these independent minded young women is mature and responsible enough not to want to contract HPV in the effort to stem cervical cancer – and yet not one is willing to stand up with a handwritten sign correcting the pinheads who hatched this marketing scheme: One fewer, not one less. Our future!
One less –- two syllables, strong sounding, fits squarely into the double-dutch rhyme at the end of the clip there. I get it. But I don’t excuse it for being horribly, wildly inaccurate.
Not because I’m picky when it comes to this, or that there aren’t other grammar rules that I and everyone else have let slide (I try not to split infinitives, ever, but then I don’t always eat my vegetables, either).
What bothers about this particular ad – well, what bugs me the most is the semi-automatic repetition of the earsore: one less, one less, one less – but what bothers me slightly less than that is the message embedded in this error: We are enlightened individuals, destroyers of ignorance who care enough about ourselves to take certain precautions, and who love ourselves enough to want to tell everyone else how enlightened we are. In the dumbest sounding way possible.
I applaud these medical advances. I certainly hope they work, and I do think more good than harm will come of them. But I also disagree with the idea that our collective energy should be focused solely on curtailing the spread of STDs while poor grammar usage goes viral, infecting more and more people, of all ages and genders, especially children, on an even more fundamental level.
Be strong. Be a beacon. Stop the ignorance. Call attention to one petty inaccuracy at a time.
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