What a Sexist Joke and Religious Imagery Taught Me About Advertising

About likeness, cheap tricks & the use of metaphors

There’s a sexist joke I first heard at band practice when I was 17. 

It’s a comparative gag that is sometimes exchanged among insecure young men who want to assure themselves that their feelings of inadequacy are okay.

It’s a bad joke that only works if you really want it to be true.

Here it is:

A key that can open any lock is amazing. A lock that can be opened by any key is crap.

Get it? It’s funny because the key and lock are like a penis and a vagina. One is an outie and one is an innie, right? Hilarious.

It is of course a tremendously stupid joke because it compares genitals — the evolutionary tools for combining and expanding the tribe — with a mechanical invention of man, designed to divide and restrain us.

The joke uses a superficial similarity to activate fearful machoism — and hope that no one thinks too much about the underlying contradiction.

There’s plenty of advertisement that relies on superficial manipulation and fails unsurprisingly.

There are plenty of people in advertising who complain that political correctness has made advertising harder.

I’d argue it mostly goes for bad advertising.

My old bandmate’s sexist joke works in an isolated room (like a soundproof studio or the darkest corners of the web) where critical voices can’t point out the hypocrisy or stupidity. 

Much like advertising of old could identify and activate “male values” without caring if it made enemies of women and people of other genders — because how would they complain?

In the age of the internet and digital branding, there is no escape from critical voices. Misguided attempts at edginess or unearned cultural tension are shot down immediately. And cheap manipulation is picked apart.

The best solution is of course to not be sexist. Don’t use cheap tricks and don’t build on faulty premises.

But that seems a lot easier said than done.

That’s why it’s good to know the difference between a visual comparison and a structural symbol.

Metaphors, allegories & symbols

Forgive me for going into English Teacher Mode but a lot of creative advertising is about finding comparative qualities, thematic overlaps, and narrative bonus value.

For that, you need to know your tools.

A metaphor is the umbrella term for a creative comparison.

There are several sub-metaphors but most important is the difference between allegories and symbols.

An allegory is a cultural metaphor that always means the same. The Grim Reaper = Death.

A symbol is contextual. It has structural meaning but can express different things in different situations. The rose is a Christian allegory for Jesus but mostly used as a symbol for romantic love — though a yellow rose can express deceit.

The joke from before finds a visual likeness but overlooks how the core meaning is fundamentally off. The key and the lock have superficial similarities with genitals — but their structural functions are opposites. The joke and its sexist message only work until someone shoots down the premise.

Roses are Red and Sometimes Jesus

I recently watched the 1986 movie “The Name of the Rose” based on the Umberto Eco novel.

The movie has a wonderful payoff that understands its use of symbolism to create bonus meaning.

The sexist joke gives insecure chauvinists a visual likeness to activate prejudice — but is easily explained away as meaningless.

“The Name of the Rose” turns an allegory into a symbol and a perfect payoff.

It’s a story about a monk (Sean Connery) and his young protegé (Christian Slater) who investigate a murder at an abbey.

The murderer turns out to be a blind monk who wants to prevent fellow monks from reading Aristotle’s book of comedy. The book challenges the Franciscan system of solemn poverty and the fanatic monk kills to protect the brotherhood.

The rose in Christian imagery is usually Jesus or the love of Jesus. Both Sean Connery and the murdering monk fight in the name of the rose — for what they believe to be the grace of their savior. Until the end of the movie, you are led to believe that the titular rose is the allegorical faith and its symbolic corruption.

Young Christian Slater has a side story where he falls in love with a peasant girl, they have sex, and she’s burned as a witch for it. This leads indirectly to the entire abbey burning down — as faith is symbolically corrupted by multiple kinds of systemic oppression.

And then there’s the payoff.

At the very end of the movie, Slater’s character as an old man looks back on his life:

And yet, now that I am an old, old man, I must confess that of all the faces that appear to me out of the past, the one I see most clearly is that of the girl of whom I've never ceased to dream these many long years. She was the only earthly love of my life. 

Yet I never knew nor ever learned… her name.

The allegorical rose of faith is transformed and becomes symbolic for human love — beyond religious iconography and systemic limitations.

A rose by any other name is love itself — not the interpretation of blind monks maintaining flawed systems of power.

It’s a wonderful conclusion to the movie and a great way to make you keep thinking about its message.

As a copywriter, you don’t sell products. You sell concepts.

Understanding the fundamental symbolism and working structurally from the inside out will give you a much stronger latticework for your creative endeavors — from core branding to product campaigns.

There’s an easy way to activate bias and prejudice — until someone on the internet spoils the fun.

And there’s a sustainable way to tell the most beautiful truths by working from the core and understanding its narrative structures.

Why do less?

***

As I’m writing this, Christmas is five days away and Copenhagen looks festive.

In Denmark, the holidays are full of Christian and pre-Christian images mixed together. They have been intertwined for so long that almost no one remembers why.

But look for roses in your Christmas carols. And ask yourself if they symbolize love or oppression.

Ask yourself if the icons and metaphors in your life are there to confirm limited thinking — or to give you bigger perspectives on life.

Happy holidays.