This commercial begins with a series of little vignettes
presenting people recharging many normal everyday items such as video game
controllers, cell phones, electric toothbrushes, cars (a Nissan Leaf, actually,
although I’m not sure many people are really doing this yet), etc., while the
announcer says: “We charge everything else. Maybe it’s time to recharge the
human battery.” (Why do we “charge” everything else and “recharge” the human body? Shouldn’t we “recharge” everything, especially since this is a direct analogy and
metaphor? Or are they thinking about all the money they’re going to make, and
that’s why they say “charge”? But they didn’t want us to suspect, so they
applied the “charge” to the inanimate objects, and said “recharge” about the
humans?) Then they show some lady resting on a couple of beds and mattresses,
while computer graphics show us what the mattresses are made out of, etc. Then
the lady is shown sleeping on a bare mattress, and text indicates this is “Proper
Sleeping Posture™”.
Yes, apparently Beautyrest owns proper sleeping posture, and
you’re not allowed to use it, in fact nobody is, unless you buy their
mattresses (!). Yes, apparently this is why we have so much unnecessary pain
and spine problems in the world: Beautyrest is hogging all the proper sleeping
posture for themselves, and they’re extorting money from us all to allow us to
use it! Those fiends! They should branch out into chiropractor stuff too: then
they could trademark “Proper Alignment™”, and they could sue anyone who had
proper alignment for copyright infringement unless they first bought a mattress
from them and paid through the nose for
their chiropractor services to boot! Think of all the money they could make!
And then the court system could force everyone to sleep wrong and to have
scoliosis and spinal problems unless they bought a Beautyrest mattress! I’m
telling you: this is the future of the mattress industry: shaking people down
for having correct posture!
And it’s odd, because according to Beautyrest, the “Proper
Sleeping Posture™” is to lie directly in the center of a double bed, and to
sleep with no sheets or blankets on (!). (Maybe that’s so they can tell more easily who is infringing on their trademarked sleep posture on the wrong brand of mattress, so they can sue them. Which must mean they have secretly installed webcams in all of our bedrooms!) But hey, these people are
professionals, so they know what they’re talking about! And this is why men always
hog the mattresses and steal all the covers off of you, ladies: they’re just
trying to show their wives/significant others how to sleep properly so you can
learn how to do it right! You see, it’s because they care about you that they
always hog the bed and steal all the covers: they’re leading by example, and
they’re just trying to help show you how to do what’s right for you! But since
women never listen to men, in order to help the women they care about, men have
to demonstrate things like this without making it clear that’s what they’re
doing. (So ladies, remember that the next time you complain you’re being
squeezed off the bed and have no covers! You’re just being ungrateful of your
man’s helpful demonstrative persistence, and this ad proves it!)
Oh, but by the end of this ad, the woman’s mattress turns
into a huge electrical recharge bay, and our heroine is exposed to massive
amounts of high voltage electricity and radiation! She’s going to be the Bride of
Frankenstein! Isn’t this dangerous,
secretly exposing sleeping people to high voltages? Those maniacs! They’re
planning on electrocuting us when we’re at our most vulnerable: when we’re fast
asleep! Oh my God!
Save yourself! Trust no-one: anyone and everyone could be a
clandestine Beautyrest agent secretly attempting to electrocute you! Sleep
alone, and always wear a full-body rubber suit! That should help protect you
from their “shocking” plans!
(Or am I overreacting here? Maybe they’re not trying to make
us all into electricity-fed automatons tasked with doing their bidding like
some sort of cyborg army of electrical supermen. Perhaps they’re simply trying
through these ads to subliminally plant the ideation of human-electrical
hybridization, hoping we might defy our mothers and collectively lick our
fingers and stick them in an electrical outlet {!}. But even if that’s all it
is they’re trying to do here, won’t that place millions of lives at risk? I
mean, I understand that they’re simply experimenting with creating
electrically-charged super-humans so they can enslave us all to help them rule
the world, and there’s nothing really all that wrong with that in theory, but
what if we’re not all susceptible to electrical super-humanizaton? That is to
say, despite how unlikely it may be, what if being electrocuted harms people,
rather than making them into superheroes? Hey, it could happen! Then they would
be guilty of horrific crimes, rather than the saviors of humanity! But hey: I
guess if there’s a chance at creating a race of electrical supermen, you’ve
just got to try it, no matter the cost. So I suppose I can’t really blame them
after all.)
Here’s the current customer-charging commercial:
