Commercial Broke

Arnold J. Schwartzenegger, star of stage and screen (stage?). Look upon his works, ye punters, and despair. But it’s little known that, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, he has put only his talent into his work, reserving his genius for his Japanese television commercials. Observe:

I first saw an ad for “Bwain” — which seems to be pronounced “Booie” — courtesy of my friend Kiyo, who alerted me to the fact that many Japanese stars picked up spare change by whoring themselves out for Japanese products. I saw one with Mickey Rourke, too (back when he had a proper face, rather than a Dada Identikit pasted to his skullfront).

The Schwartzie ads just keep getting better and better, so do watch until the end, although you might want to have a refreshings sports drink to hand for after. Arnie increasingly resembles an animatronic nightmare version of himself, especially when he does his evil laughing-policeman chortle, his head opening up like in TOTAL RECALL, his eyes popping out like in TOTAL RECALL… come to think of it, I bet the cheeky monkey sent his Rob Bottin special effect replica to do the ad, so he could laze around at home, cracking walnuts with his biceps or whatever it is he does for sexual pleasure now that anabolic steroids have reduced his penis to the size of a fish egg.

Theory: the ad people are quite aware that these stars are slumming it, hiding out in the orient because they don’t want their round-eyed fans to know what money-grubbing dignity-vacuums they are, so they make the ads surreally humiliating, awful, dayglo atrocities in which multi-million-dollar actors are forced at cashpoint to play perverted, funhouse-mirror caricatures of themselves. Which leads to the terrifying question: what would Nic Cage spoofing himself look like? Read on…

Sankyo very much.

About these ads