In fact the ad is unctuous in its flattery of only one person: the lone viewer, Joe B., who even with an average brain can’t help but discern the ironic contradiction between the “Choice” slogan (sound) and the Pavlovian orgy around the van (sight). The commercial invites Joe to “see through” the manipulation the beach’s horde is rabidly buying. The commercial invites a complicity between its own witty irony and veteran viewer Joe’s cynical, nobody’s- fool appreciation of that irony. It invites Joe into an in-joke the Audience is the butt of. It congratulates Joe Briefcase, in other words, on
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