The tension in this Arrow shirt ad is palpable.
(click ad, via) Visual portion of a 1954 ad for a particularly ghastly Arrow shirt. Before we begin the anthropological analysis, let's enter that yellow thing into this vintage men's fashion Ugly-Off.
OK. What exactly is going here in this—what looks like—Mexican tourist gift shop? Is the lady buying the hideous hat openly flirting with Arrow Man in front of her husband? Or is Mr. Blue Shirt the Arrow man's impatient lover? Arrow Man has his sperm-speckled shirt tucked into his swim trunks—something a style-conscious gay man would never do. Is he covering his burgeoning erection with that blue bull? Maybe Arrow man is a British secret agent being tailed by a Russian mole (Blue Shirt)? The man in the blue shirt is very short.
Related: Members Only (shudder) jacket ad.
posted by copyranter @ 1:45 PM
6 Comments:
The fashion conscious turista keenly aware yellow to be a phallic colour, could not believe the sartorial faux-pas.
As if the unseemly shirt tucked in the high-waisted stretch-jersey ladies pants wasn't enough, what to make of the man's fascination with the emasculated 'toro castrato' blue figurine.
Which hat then she mockingly visualized would complement this sissy man's ensemble.
Her impatient companion meanwhile, uncomfortably aroused by Arrow man, tried hard to suppress the raging 'toro bravo' in him.
I think blue-shirt is standing at the base of the stairs on the beach outside the shop. Everything else in your analysis is spot on.
Yes, stairs.
they are all just happy to have escaped the shop full of people wearing Gap
That shopkeeper is dead on. Every Mexican I have ever met had that look on their face.
Someone actually slaved over a piece of paper for at least a whole day to draw that ad by hand. I just wanted to be the one to eh, appreciate that.
The guy in blue? Blond, shades, 1954: Definitely KGB. The girl? Same. That's a transmitter she's carrying in her dainty little basket. Sputnik circling overhead (ok, there was no Sputnik in '54. Humour me.)
The guy in yellow? MI6. He's waiting for the effect of the "chok'er" slow killing belt he gave her this morning to kick in. Any moment now...
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