Ad anxiety?

Here's a blog that covers video games in large part, but takes good cracks at more general cultural crit. This post from last week about the ads from the Super Bowl is perceptive.

The Times made some fuss over the ads as reflections of the wartime American mentality. The blogger isn't buying it, and he's not bad at illustrating why. The ads that were supposed to be all about anxiety seem pretty campy and unthreatening. The post also points out, to its credit, that brain-scan studies did confirm in some cases that viewers were feeling anxiety or fear watching some of the ads, like this one. Beats me why, though.