A Cheez-It commercial has somehow become the latest front in the culture war, because apparently nothing says eternal damnation quite like a man getting a little too enthusiastic about a cracker.
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The commercial, titled “The Boyfriend,” features a young woman introducing her new boyfriend to her dad. Simple enough. Except the boyfriend spots a floating Cheez-It hovering suspiciously close to the father’s face and immediately becomes captivated.
“Oh wow. You are even cheesier, yummier, and saltier in person,” he tells the increasingly bewildered dad.
Then things get cheesier.
“You’re making my mouth water. Just so delicious. If I could just…”
He lunges forward and takes a bite of the Cheez-It, positioned directly in front of the father’s lips. The visual joke is obvious: for a split second, it looks less like a man eating a cracker and more like he is about to kiss his girlfriend’s dad.
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The tagline, naturally, is: “Cravings can happen anywhere.”
Honestly, the cracker was right there. What was he supposed to do?
One Million Moms has entered the chat
One Million Moms, a socially conservative Christian advocacy group created by the American Family Association, was considerably less amused.
The organization has called on Cheez-It to pull the commercial, arguing that it contains “offensive sexual innuendos with an extremely sensual message between two males”.
“This ad demonstrates weak marketing,” the group complained in its August 12 post, arguing that Cheez-It should show “corporate responsibility” and avoid what it considers an offensive euphemism.
One Million Moms also described the commercial as “vulgar” and “extremely irresponsible” in its petition, demanding that Cheez-It cancel the ad. Which raises an important question: how exactly did we get here?
Somewhere between “pass the crackers” and “please remove this cracker-based seduction from the internet,” America appears to have wandered into a very specific cultural battleground.
The dad didn’t even get kissed
To be fair, there isn’t actually a gay romance happening in the commercial. The boyfriend is dating the man’s daughter, and the entire gag depends on viewers briefly thinking he is flirting with his prospective father-in-law before revealing that, no, he simply wants the snack. The Cheez-It is the object of his craving, not the dad.
It is basically a classic misunderstanding with a baked, orange-colored twist.
Yet One Million Moms sees something considerably more scandalous: “a sensual message between two males” and an image that “looks suspiciously like a kiss on the mouth”.
And now a cracker has become the star of another morality panic. At this point, Cheez-It may want to consider changing its slogan to Cravings can happen anywhere, apparently including the Christian boycott list.
Who are One Million Moms?
Despite the name, One Million Moms does not appear to have a membership of one million people. It is a project of the American Family Association, and its petitions have historically attracted nowhere near that number of signatures.
Its latest Cheez-It petition had slightly more than 12,000 signatures at the time of PinkNews’ reporting, although the figure had been lower in earlier coverage as the petition circulated. The organization has nevertheless built a lengthy record of campaigning against LGBTQ+ representation and content it considers inappropriate.
So, yes, the Cheez-It controversy has company.
Meanwhile, the gays have Cheez-It to eat
There is something almost beautifully absurd about a culture-war battle over a cracker. No one is being asked to come out. No one is proposing gay marriage to the dad. Nobody is even kissing him. A man just sees a Cheez-It and gets very excited.
And yet here we are, with a Christian advocacy group demanding that a snack brand reconsider its advertising choices because a cheese cracker briefly created an optical illusion.
For queer audiences, the whole thing is difficult not to enjoy on some level. After decades of LGBTQ+ people being told that our existence is somehow too sexual, too provocative or too inappropriate for polite society, watching a family commercial trigger a moral emergency over a snack is almost performance art.
The boyfriend isn’t presented as gay. The dad isn’t presented as gay. The cracker certainly isn’t gay.
But if this is what counts as scandalous now, perhaps we should all buy another box. For solidarity. For the culture. And, most importantly, because apparently Cheez-Its are dangerous now.
Source: AFA