Budweiser: Beer-Stealing Crabs

Yechh.

Hell, I'm not gonna be polite. I hate that beer.

When I was out at the bar drinking with my friends, I'd say, "Y'know, if you drink Heineken, you'll piss out Bud." And it's not because I'm an arrogant, nose-in-the-air snob, I just think there's a better way to get drunk than guzzling cold raw sewage in a can. I mean, really, Budweiser is so bad, I get a headache before I drink it. Yechh.

Of course, Budweiser is incredibly popular.

("Hey, bartender! Gimme another pitcher of cold raw sewage, alright?")

Why?

If you ask me, it's because I think those evil geniuses down in the dungeons at Anheuser-Busch know how to market their swill. For example, the "beer stealing crabs" commercial aired during the Super Bowl is, as usual, funny. Goddamn them.

Here's the premise: It's a hot summer day on the beach, and group of crabs that move like Marines steal a cooler full of beer. The beer, naturally, is Budweiser. Once the stolen treasure is taken to a secluded area, they bow down before it, chanting prayers of thanks.

Yeah, I know: on paper, it sounds like a stupid idea.

But when you see it on the screen, it just works beautifully. It plants three insidious ideas inside your poor, defenseless brain pan. 1) Budweiser is worth stealing, 2) Budweiser is a holy object, and 3) Budweiser will make you smarter. The ad works because it's a parody of the famous scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey when the apes are gathered around the monolith.

Every great movie has at least one great scene that clearly and powerfully defines what the movie is about. In Spartacus, it's when the captured slaves scream out defiantly, "I'm Spartacus!" when the Roman soldiers demand that the leader of the slave rebellion give himself up. In Good Will Hunting, it's when Matt Damon, a working class hero in Boston, bitch slaps an intellectual yuppie punk with his brains, not his fist. In 2001 (a sci-fi movie made before George Lucas single-handedly dumbed down the genre), the monolith is a strange alien artifact that increases the intelligence of the apes.

Get it? Budweiser is a holy object worth stealing because it will make you smarter.

It's a well-executed, diabolically manipulative commercial. In spite of myself, I almost bought a six-pack of Budweiser because of it.

Fortunately, after my third Newcastle Brown Ale, I forgot.