Awful Superbowl Ads in 2024

Graphics by Anika Dua

Hey Jerks. It’s been a week and some change since the Superbowl. Don’t worry if you missed it - we had our eyes glued to the television when it aired. We think it’s crazy that people paid thousands of dollars for a front row seat in that stadium, but that’s a different article.

In this article, we’re talking about the ads that played in between the big game, specifically the controversial ads that made our skin crawl. 

First one up: the ad that started showed images of fathers and their children. Innocent enough right? Except, it turned out to be another attempt at Israeli propaganda to push their narrative about their war on Gaza.

We don’t know about anyone else, but we’’re not sure why the NFL chose to air this ad to begin with? And at least 10,000 viewers agree with us. Immediately after the ad was televised, the FCC (Federal Communication Commission) was flooded with complaints. A birdie told us that the NFL could be in trouble, but you didn’t hear that from Jerk.

Second ad burned into our memories: the Jesus washes feet commercial. In addition to this being propaganda, it just leaves a sour taste in the mouth. It starts off with an AI image of someone washing their family member’s feet. The feet were jumpscares to begin with, but don’t worry, it gets worse.

The images change completely. There’s a police officer washing a black man’s foot. A white man washing a supposedly native american’s feet. A woman washing another woman’s feet outside of a family planning clinic. You get the picture. 

The images seem to be harmless, but it automatically pushes the narrative that all forms of oppression, racism, sexism etc. can be ended simply. Set all differences aside, and we can all live in harmony and peace like, Jesus did. 

It not only invalidates the histories of the oppressed, which is completely disgusting, but also erases the intersectional identities and experiences of people who are restricted under these oppressive systems. 

Finally, there’s one last problematic commercial we’d like to address: the Dove- body confidence ad. It starts off with girls in various sports falling and immediately getting back up. It has good vibes and you can even jam along with the ‘It’s a Hard Knock Life’ song from Annie. So, you’re jamming, vibing to the song, and then the words “The knocks don’t stop girls playing sports. Low body confidence does.”

It shows a little girl looking at her body in the mirror and it gives a statistic of how many girls drop out of sports by age 14. In essence, the ad basically says “This statistic can automatically be fixed by girls using dove products!”

What the fuck.

Dove really said, “Instead of addressing low body confidence in girls at the source, we’ll just give them Dove products that can make them feel instantly better!” 

Yeah, it doesn’t sound right to us either. 

Anyways, thanks for going through those with us. We think the lesson we learned here is that big companies think we’re stupid. If you got a different lesson from this, just let us know.