The Alternate Universe of Viagra

During the NCAA tournament, viewers have been deluged by all the usual sporting-event suspects: commercials for cars and trucks, retirement funds, Axe Body Spray, and beer. And of course, Viagra.

That’s nothing new; the world of marketing seems to have sports fans pegged, and probably correctly. What I have found completely baffling this year, though, is the odd world demonstrated by the current Viagra commercial.

Here’s the scene: we’re in Nashville; it’s 1:22 a.m. The camera pans around a music studio where a bunch of musicians are tuning their instruments; there’s an empty coffee cup, signifying that this is an all-nighter. One of the musicians, an affable-looking older white guy in a cowboy hat, interrupts the concentrated silence of musicians making preparations: “Hey, fellas. Listen to this.”

And he proceeds to strum “Viva Las Vegas,” substituting his own words. They’re vague, but can be read as pertaining to erectile dysfunction (”can’t wait ’til I get home”), at least until the chorus, which (just as in other Viagra commercials) is “Viva Viagra.”

What I find troubling and fascinating about the commercial are the unanimously favorable reactions of all the other session musicians and the engineers behind the glass in the studio. They wait appreciatively while this dude sings his song, but when he mentions Viagra, why, it’s as if he’d told the funniest joke they’d ever heard. That is, it’s not at all like he’s wasting their studio time dicking around while they’re getting ready for the next take. (Maybe, though, they are working on a Viagra commercial, and he just came up with the winning jingle, and they can all go home now.)

Clearly, commercials are not reality. Commercials don’t go in for gritty realism, and so we don’t get images of the annoyed drummer who just wants to go home, or the young session guitarist who finds this guy’s singing about ED insufferable. But it’s interesting to “catch” the commercial encoding certain attitudes toward ED and Viagra: first, go ahead and sing about it; in fact, take up other people’s time to do it, because ED is serious business and Viagra is some kind of miracle drug. Second, everyone loves Viagra; they find it charming and amusing, because it’s cool.

What’s weird about this appeal, too, is that it has nothing to do with sex. It’s like Viagra has moved from something having to do with erections and sex, to something having to do with just the guys. It almost seems possible, given the NCAA tournament audience–which is probably a fairly broad slice of the dude market–that this is part of a long-range marketing scheme to position Viagra as OK, manly, a rite of getting older just like graying hair, Dockers, and an appreciation for the corny lyrics and music on display in the commercial.