A new promo for an upcoming “Tucker Carlson Originals” episode titled “The End of Men” made some … interesting artistic choices, featuring men wrestling, flipping tires, milking cows and tanning their testicles.
Not pictured anywhere in the spot: shirts (and in some cases, pants).
Allowing for what has to be a heavy dose of self-awareness on loan from the Old Spice marketing department — there’s no way this is meant to be serious, right? — the images in the promo are sufficiently bizarre that those who may have difficulty processing irony, especially when its purpose is not abundantly clear, are advised not to watch the video (below).
For you, here’s a breakdown of everything we witnessed (spoilers):
- Shirtless men doing push-ups
- Shirtless man shooting automatic rifle
- Shirtless man milking cow
- Man (shirt status indeterminate) flipping sausage on flaming grill
- Shirtless men wrestling in gym
- Naked fella in “Davinci Man” pose with strategically placed testicle tanning module
- Shirtless man flipping huge tire
- Shirtless man chopping wood
- Mark Zuckerberg look-alike, presumably shirtless, dunking in icy pool
- Shirtless man chugging pint glass full of raw eggs
- Naked man standing casually before full-frontal tanning lights
If you now feel sufficiently prepared to process all of this, have a look:
While the on-screen subject matter and music (“Fanfare for the Common Man”) would have you thinking this is an enormous put-on, the voice-over toward the end — a British chap talking grimly about “iron sharpening iron” and “tough” men rising in difficult times — throws the whole thing into a tonal tailspin that makes Joss Whedon’s “Justice League” cut seem coherent.
An earlier, longer version of the promo, which features an even greater abundance of shirtlessness, seems to indicate that the episode focuses on the decline of masculinity and its cultural impact in the United States. And, perhaps, the role that shirts play in all of this.
New episodes of “Tucker Carlson Originals” launch Monday.