11. Real Men Watch Handmaids
11. Real Men Watch Handmaids
Also In This Issue: The Dick Stays In The Pic | May I Have A Word? | Lesser-Known DC Landmarks | Florence Welch's "Free"
Readers: I’m back after a brief interregnum, untanned but otherwise rested and ready. If this is your first time, welcome. Please subscribe; it’s free. And all of you, please share with your friends. There’s a button for that and It really helps. - Art
#RealMenWatchHandmaids
Hulu created this chilling 30-second “Morning in America” parody, which aired on Fox during the 2019 Super Bowl at a cost of $5.2 million. The ad promotes the then-upcoming third season of The Handmaid’s Tale. (This video also includes a related 60-second trailer.)
The Handmaid’s Tale
Only one-third of the viewers of this fantastic television series are men.1 If you’re not among them, bro (and I wasn’t until recently) it’s time to man-up and get busy. Borrow a friend’s Hulu password if you don’t have one.
Why?
Margaret Atwood’s brilliant novel justly ranks alongside 1984 and Brave New World as classics of dystopian fiction
It’s fucking great television (94% score on Rotten Tomatoes)
A chilling view of a theofascist, woman-hating America
Hits very close to home, especially right now
Seasons one thru four are streaming; season five premieres 9/142
Bottom line: Support your sisters. An added fringe benefit is that women will prefer the new you.
Post-Roe Advisory: Wear condoms in red states unless you're trying to make a baby. Your dick will barely notice and it might keep your partner out of prison.
May I Have a Word?
The “Defund the Police” campaign was a political and policy disaster. Do we really want to go there again?
Don’t get me wrong: “Defund” was a brilliant short-term rallying cry. It helped mobilize tens of thousands of outraged Americans in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020.
But from my perspective as a retired professional sloganeer, the key to understanding both the initial success and the ultimate failure of the “Defund the Police” campaign is that it wasn’t fundamentally about criminal justice policy at all.
The word “Defund” was really a linguistic stand-in for “Fuck” — as in “Fuck the Police!”
This was a genius backdoor campaign tactic. It inspired angry crowds to shake their fists and shout it out repeatedly, giving voice to their rage in front of the world’s news cameras and microphones. “Fuck the Police” was the underlying meaning — the obscenity obscured behind a policy prescription.
And the media ate it up. “Defund the Police” saturated mainstream media coverage, something that simply could not have happened if the protesters were dropping actual F-bombs and their campaign sign was an extended middle finger.
It was a hall-of-fame activist slogan… and the award goes to the Black Vision Collective of Minneapolis, a self-described “Black-led, Queer and Trans Centered Organization,” which coined the phrase.
And then of course it boomeranged and bit us hard in the ass. What a surprise! It turns out that vanishingly few Americans actually want to eliminate their hometown police departments! But that’s what the damn word means.
Meanwhile, progressive allies working toward real-world solutions in the criminal justice space were left sputtering, “They don’t really mean defund, they mean reform.”
And good luck with that! The definitional battle has been won and not by our team. Republicans are still milking that slogan two years later; watch for it to reappear as the November campaigns heat up.
Takeaway message: When your enemies love your slogan, and your allies hate it, perhaps it’s time to reconsider your marketing strategy.
Which brings me the long way around to “Abortion on Demand.”
Permit me to grossly oversimplify. (For a more nuanced reading of the history, try Eliza Berman’s review of Katha Pollitt’s landmark 2014 book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights.)
Unlike “Defund the Police,” “Abortion on Demand” isn’t a contemporary coinage. The phrase goes back 50 years to the time of Roe v. Wade. It marks the demarcation line between pragmatists who argue that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare,” versus those who want the primary emphasis on women’s agency and control over their own bodies.
The most current iteration is “Abortion on Demand and Without Apology!” Its main proponent is Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, who are certainly more in the “fuck you” mode, as in “Fuck the Patriarchy.”
But this linguistic ship also sailed, a long time ago actually, and the only ones who enjoy the phrase “Abortion on Demand” any more are Republicans, because it polls so well as an epithet.
And so it goes.
Lesser-Known DC Landmarks | “The Barbie Pond”
An ever-evolving display of Barbie and Ken dolls has adorned the tiny front yard at 1454.5 Q Street NW for nearly a decade.
The Barbie Pond on Avenue Q, as it’s formally known, has been proudly “lowering Logan Circle property values since 2014.” A recent offering — and obvious retort to Florida Gov. DeSantis — featured protesters in their summer finery carrying tiny signs reading “gay,” “bi,” “trans” and “straight.” The themes are not always so overtly political but they are all absolutely gay af, which is kind of the same thing. Check out the Pond’s Instagram account.
Artifact | “The Dick Stays in the Pic”
It was a full-page Wall Street Journal ad I made for The Nature Conservancy 22 years ago, back in the day when I was an agency creative director.
“The Call of the Wild… and Those Who Answered It”
First came a brief thank-you note from the Conservancy’s CEO, followed by the real money shot:
Six columns of small type listing 180 individuals, institutions and corporations that had donated the first $430 million in a $1 billion campaign “to permanently protect 200 entire functioning ecosystems — along with the plants and animals they support — throughout the Americas, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific.”3
“You have to airbrush the penis” was the word from TNC’s fundraising department when they saw our final draft of the ad. A top executive was worried they would get complaints about Bison Erectus from some superdonors who were religious conservatives.
The marketing team argued conversely that the penis was just the thing to make Journal readers pause and maybe even read the damn ad. This controversy rose all the way to the full TNC board of trustees, who ultimately voted yes: The dick stays in the picture.4
Recommended | Free by Florence Welch
Free by Florence + The Machine is a single from the band’s new album Dance Fever, their first in four years. The video was shot in Kyiv with the participation of Ukrainian artists and crew shortly before bombs started falling. As Florence Welch sings: “Is this how it is? Is this how it’s always been? To exist in the face of suffering and death and somehow still keep singing?”
An excellent question, dear reader. Be well, stay safe, keep singing, and *please* get involved in the midterms ASAP. Visit SwingLeft and enter your zip code to see where your efforts could have the greatest immediate impact on specific winnable campaigns.
-Art
If you are unable to watch all the prior episodes in advance of season five, try this hack: Watch the first few shows from season one to get the feel of it, followed by the latest upload of this amazing, obsessively-produced fan edit, complete with a new music score. It reduces 47 hours into less than three! It’s also a great refresher course.
Re-reading this circa 2000 ad with 2022 eyes, I can’t help but notice that TNC makes no mention of protecting the people in these ecosystems, just the plants and animals!
Apologies to the Estate of Robert Evans
Ha! Long live our bison brethren. Down with bad slogans! Another on-target edition.