Okay, so this is a day early for the new-Wednesday-tradition. (Wednesday WTF, which I will tell my gentle readers stands HERE for "what the foolin'?")

I've blogged before about the usage of pop songs in advertisements. And I've blogged before about how my rather well developed auditory memory gives me many WTF moments when a pop song I would deem inappropriate or just plain strange is used in a commercial context. (Inappropriate: a redoing of "Baby's Got Back" into "Baby, I'm Back" as a back to school sale ad. Strange: "Little Bitty Pretty One" morphed into a Zen chant for a green tea commercial).

Well, I saw another one last night.

Flipping around, I came upon a commercial: plain white background, superimposed with shots of smiling people, large sandwiches, bread, lunchmeat.

The song? "Happy Happy Joy Joy." Happy Happy Joy Joy from Ren and Stimpy. .

The commercial was using it (as far as I can determine) in a non-ironic way. As in, Happy Happy Joy Joy here is some Sara Lee bologna!

And this produced a considerable amount of cognitive dissonance.

On the one hand: I am overjoyed to hear the song again. It is truly one of the few things in this world that ALWAYS makes me laugh. And I laughed through the commercial and sang along. (No, it will not dispose me any more favorably to buy Sara Lee products. So at least on that count the commercial does not work.)

But on the other hand: Ren and Stimpy was a...disturbing...show. And I say that in all kindness and love; I WATCHED the show regularly. But it was a sick, sick show. (I mean "sick" as in "sick in the head," not "sick" as in "gross." Although it could be that kind of "sick," too.)

I mean: Ren Hoek (the chihuahua character) was given to outbursts of extreme and shocking rage (that was one of the things I personally found most startling about the cartoon; its graphic portrayal of rage). Ren was something like a hybrid between a character out of Kafka, Peter Lorre, and Napoleon. And Stimpy - well, Stimpy was just dim. And he sounded like Larry from "The Three Stooges."

"Happy Happy Joy Joy" was Stimpy's favorite song. It was sung by a Burl Ives parody named Stinky Wizzleteets (and, if you think I don't regret that a piece of my brain's real estate is given over to that particular fact, you're sadly mistaken.). The whole irony of the song is that Stinky is NOT the happy balladeer that the Sara Lee usage of the song would seem to suggest: throughout the song in the show, he mutters things like "I told you I'd shoot!" and "I'll teach your grandma to suck eggs!"

So, it's not really a happy joyful song. (In fact, when I was in grad school, several of my friends and I used "happy happy joy joy" or simply "Joy!" [pronounced in as Stimpy-like a fashion as one could manage] sarcastically, when some unpleasant task awaited us).

And yet, as I said: it's one of the things I find reliably funny. So on the one hand it's confusing that Sara Lee has chosen the song: it's from a strange violent show that was also given to having startling* subtexts - do they really think that is a good image for their bread to project to Middle America? Or do they just assume that the folks in Middle America who would be offended by the link to the show never watched it, and therefore don't know the origin of the song? Or on the other hand, do they think that disaffected Gen Xers are going to hear the song, and zombie-like, go "must buy that company's bread" instead of looking at the tv, laughing, and going "Sara Lee, you've got to be JOKING." [pronounced in as Davy Jones-like fashion as one can manage].

(*by which I mean homoerotic. Considering that it was a cartoon that children were likely to watch...well, I tend to think ANY kind of erotic subtext in that sort of situation is inappropriate. But appropriateness was not the goal of Ren and Stimpy.)

So what's next? May I suggest that the next commercial be some kind of VERY deep soul song (Barry White, perhaps?) with the tagline: Sara Lee: not just white bread.

sure, it'll offend people. But you've already started down the path using Happy Happy Joy Joy.