Wow.
I am struggling to find the words to describe this.
It's beautifully spelled out here at Americablog.com, so I recommend that you head over there and read the whole post.
Short version: Snickers (and parent company Mars, inc.) created a many-layered series of candy bar ads for the Superbowl and for the upcoming Daytona 500 that were startlingly homophobic.
How startlingly, you ask?
Well, here is a screenshot of a man drinking motor oil - a suicidal activity - as a remedy for accidentally touching lips with another man.
Or, alternatively, one could undo accidental gay touching with brutal violence, such as slamming a man under a car hood:
or beating him in the stomach with a wrench:
Apparently thinking they were being funny, Mars created an ad where two "butch" men, desperate to eat a snickers, end up eating the same bar and then being deeply disturbed when their lips accidentally touch. In the version aired during the actual Superbowl, they recoil in disgust and (apparently) start ripping out their chest hair. Homophobic, yes, but not graphically violent.
No, that content was apparently saved for the Snickers website. It's down now (thank you, HRC!) but apparently there was lots of additional content, including:
- alternate endings where, in the sequences that include the images above, the men drank motor oil or antifreeze to "undo" their moment of intimacy, beat each other with wrenches, or slammed each other under hoods of cars. Sure - it's definitely better to be dead than gay!
- and perhaps worst of all, what is apparently real footage of Bears and Colts football players reacting to the "gay" content of the ad. Here's a sample screenshot:
And people wonder why LGBTQ teens have a suicide rate four times that of kids who don't identify as queer.
I am so, so sickened. Please let Snickers/Mars know how you feel.