Jamaican Commercials

I have not lived in Jamaica for 30 years. But I still remember two television commercials that regularly appeared on TV there. One was for Sutton deodorant. You saw a black background, with a male symbol (the circle with the diagonal arrow) at the top and directly below it the corresponding female symbol. They were apparently snuggling. A very smooth male voice said,

"John and Marsha had a problem."

At which point the two symbols moved away from each other suddenly, saying things like "Oh, dear!" and "Ugh!" in tones that would be used by genteel people being forced to acknowledge the presence of a bad smell.

"Sutton solved it."

Whereupon the two symbols met and merged in the middle of the same background.

"John. I like your Sutton Stick," the Marsha voice said.

"Marsha. I love your Sutton roll-on," and no matter how you tried you couldn't prevent your mind from heading straight to the gutter as it were.

The second commercial was for Anchor butter. This great lout of a man in a dark and poky little house demands that his wife makes him some bread and butter. She brings him a plate with some sliced white bread, buttered. He takes a bite and chews for a moment and spits the mouthful of bread and butter into his hand.

"But a no de Anka Butta dis!" (Anglice, "But this isn't Anchor Butter!")

The wife makes some lame explanation of how no, this is some cheaper butter. Whereupon he roars at her to go get him his beloved Anchor Butter. Next scene he's happily eating some bread and butter, and, with his mouth quite full, grins at the camera and declares, "I like my bread well buttah!"

I think of these commercials because one of the things that hasn't changed in all the years I've lived away is the spectacular awfulness of Jamaican commercials. I listen to them on the radio now. There is one for home equity loans featuring the two most annoying female voices on the planet. My mother went to the hairdresser on a visit to Jamaica some years ago, and when she got back she had me cracking up with her imitation of these middle-class Jamaican ladies and their peculiar plaintive drawl, something that has emerged in Kingstonspeak since we left there.

But it's the ones for the lottery that get me. Especially the one with the man who is saying in a voice of desperation, "Come on! Get up! Get up!" He's frantic, pleading. From a little distance away, and evidently from among the bedcovers, a female voice calls out, "Baby you ready?" in a tone that is meant to sound seductive and teasing but, somehow, sounds like it could shrivel every testicle in a ten-block radius.

This ad is for some lottery game that allows you a second chance at winning. Unlike this poor man who can't get it up and is about to disappoint his eager partner.

The other lottery ad in this "second chance" series has a woman trying to seduce a traffic cop. She seems to be the same annoying woman who was so surprised to hear she could take out a home equity loan.