YouTube in the U.K.

OXFORD, England -- Missing Thanksgiving was tough for American students studying abroad last term. But for many, the feeling of loss last November pales in comparison to the excruciating absence of the Super Bowl and its infamous advertisements last Sunday. Thanks to the accessibility of the Internet and the enthusiasm of its users via YouTube, students studying abroad this year didn't have to miss out on the highlight of the Super Bowl experience: its commercials. Clips of the game are available on YouTube too.\nIn Oxford, England, the Super Bowl started at 1 a.m. A few hardy Americans powered through the game with a mixture of caffeine and alcohol in the local Junior Common Room or a pub. Those unable to find a satellite television, or unwilling to trudge their way through the cold to a pub that stayed open past 1, however, cursed the time difference and made do with news reports and, of course, YouTube. \nAlmost immediately after the end of the game, YouTube users had posted each of the commercials that had aired during the football game, ranked according to viewer popularity. Bud Light seems to be topping the charts, with commercials like "Class Mencia," a commercial working with the premise of an ESL classroom to translate the need for Budweiser to any region of the U.S. From the Southern "Hey, feller, give me a Bud Light" to the LA-speak "Give me a Bud Light, homes," Budweiser on YouTube unintentionally gives international viewers a surface summary of U.S. regional differences and plays with its status as nation of immigrants.\nI have always enjoyed Super Bowl commercials -- usually more than the game itself, I have to admit. The top industries and advertisement companies in America vie for the attention of millions of viewers in a single night. Commercials aired during the Super Bowl seep into the American consciousness, accepting the definition of popular culture presented in the commercial that has sought to reflect the same popular culture. People watching the Super Bowl in England know that Budweiser is the American beer, that Snickers is the American candy bar. American advertisement doesn't work within the realms of reality -- Doritos can help two clumsy people fall in love and cute alien creatures work in a happiness factory inside Coke machines to make soda. Beer not only tastes good, it can make us happy. \nEnglish commercials, on the other hand, tend to be more understated. On English television, old medicine doesn't make the sick person feel like running a marathon, as some brand-name drug commercials have implied -- it just makes being sick more tolerable.\nThanks goodness for YouTube and its efforts to take advantage of the democratic nature of the Web to make entertainment, and the information we can glean from it, accessible to us all. The Super Bowl commercials have reminded me of the version of reality I had begun to forget, being out of touch with American television and pop culture for more than a month. The fact that I could fall out of touch, however, suggests that commercials, American or English, more often project reality than reflect it.