YUKS MARK THE SPOTS

The latest trend in television commercials -- absurdist advertising, in which making a point and selling a product seem almost irrelevant -- reaches a peak with the current Levi's Wide Leg Jeans commercial. You know the one, that 60-second ER episode with denim: Richard, a very bruised and bandaged young man, is wheeled into an emergency room on a gurney. Doctors and nurses crowd around and begin working frantically to save the guy's life.

When Richard opens his black-and-blued eyes, you can see his mind registering the feeble beat of his own heart, hooked up to a monitor, a steady IV drip, and the whoosh of an oxygen pump. Their combined tempi remind him of a song: Soft Cell's ''Tainted Love,'' a top 10 hit from 1982. First Richard starts singing, then the grizzled doctor who's treating him picks up the tune, and the rest of the medical crew -- perhaps startled as much by the idea that this geezer knows a British synth-pop oldie as by the incongruity of the song in this setting -- starts humming, singing, even dancing: The ER is transformed into a funky party room for a few moments.

Then Richard's heartbeat suddenly flatlines. He's given a jolt from those electric paddles so familiar from TV doctor shows (''Clear!''), and the surge to his body causes his legs to flail, exposing his Levi's Wide Leg Jeans. Richard's life resumes along with the ''Tainted Love'' beat, and the camera slowly pulls back, out of the room, to reveal a sign on the door whose words are read by a metallic voice, as if piped through the hospital intercom: ''Levi's Wide Leg Jeans -- it's wide open.''

The Levi's ad is directed by Spike Jonze, who gained a hip rep shooting music videos for such bands as Weezer and R.E.M. The spot is filled with satisfying puns (using Soft Cell to soft-sell jeans is certainly a nice touch) and provocative questions: What does ''It's wide open'' mean? Sure, the jeans, because of the way they're cut, are wide. But isn't this also Jonze saying that the range of things that can be stuffed into a commercial is now wide open? The first time you see this ad, you have absolutely no idea what's being pitched until the very end. (My editor's husband had guessed it was a PSA against drunk driving.) But after you know what you're watching is a Levi's ad, you watch it again and again to pick up all the little details. It's one of those rare commercials that make you happy you're being sold something, because it gives you the opportunity to think about the imagination that went into winning you over.

At the opposite end of the commercial spectrum is the recent ad campaign for BreathAsure, those little translucent pills that are supposed to cure bad breath. Here we find actor George Kennedy striding into a '90s parody of a '70s apartment right out of Three's Company, filled with grinning young adults. Kennedy, looking fat/phat in an untucked plaid shirt and unlaced hightops, booms: ''Yo, Pops is in the house! Hey, roomies, what's happenin'?'' Tinny canned laughter bleeds onto the soundtrack, as if we've suddenly been trapped in a hideous sitcom. The kids start talking about all the food they want to eat (George: ''Garlic, onions, pizza -- awesome!''). Then the radiant Kennedy tells them they'd better use BreathAsure after they eat, because, BreathAsure -- ''It's da bomb!''

Unlike the Levi's ad, there's nothing subtle here; indeed, the hammering hard sell is what's being celebrated, with entertaining cheesiness. The twentysomethings in the commercial are the target at which the product is being aimed, and such an audience probably isn't even aware that they're beholding the genial humiliation of an Oscar-winning actor at a time when such self-abasement is cool. (I'm surprised the BreathAsure folks didn't have Kennedy parrot the memorable line from his award-snagging 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke: ''I got my mind right, boss!'')

Both the BreathAsure and the Levi's spots presume an audience jaded by advertising and in on whatever joke may be made. They know that when it comes to being conned into buying something, we like the corporate love bestowed upon us to be, well, tainted with irony. ''Levi's Wide Leg Jeans'' ad: A ''BreathAsure'' ad: B+

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