Most of us will be gazing at the Super Bowl beer ads this weekend, but James R. Walker, a professor of mass communications at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, will be analyzing them.

He and a colleague at Xavier, Nelson Hathcock, study beer ads. They have compared the way beer was pitched to Americans between 1946 and 1956 with the way it was pitched between 1961 and 1971. They wrote a chapter about this in a recently released book, Sport, Beer, and Gender: Promotional Culture and Contemporary Social Life.

Right after World War II, beer ads stressed home and hearth, Walker told me in a brief phone interview. The idea was to make Americans comfortable with drinking beer at home, with women, not just in male-dominated taverns. "Beer was touted as the beverage of moderation." It was a "social lubricant," Walker said.

In contrast, the beer ads of the 1960s showed beer drinkers asmostly males in taverns, or participating in sporting activities.

Lately, he said, some of the beer ads aired during the Super Bowl show young males in embarrassing situations. These young beer drinkers feel they are separated from conventional society, but they are happy, he said.  The ads depict young men  "celebrating their isolation, their unique beer drinking culture," Walker said. 

So during Sunday's game, I too will study those beer ads.  I will attempt to figure out if they are placing beer in the middle of family life, or in the lair of single, fun-loving guys.

I am betting on the fun-loving guys.

How about you?  What are your favorite Super Bowl beer ads?