Men perfect their secret handshake in this absurd dark comedy for Equal Pay Day

This Equal Pay Day PSA from Belgium uses an anatomically distressing analogy to illustrate the old boys’-club way of doing business—with men shaking hands where their penises should be.

Set to a ridiculous original song called “Dickhead,” the spot—from agency mortierbrigade and Czar directors Lionel Goldstein—opens with two men kneeling on an office desk, facing each other. Suddenly their crotches begin to gyrate of their own accord. Who knows what’s going to come out.

As they unzip their flies, a female co-worker looks on in horror...

As metaphors go, it’s pretty—to mix body parts—on the nose, but in a good way. And the line they keep repeating, “I trust you because you have a dick,” is both refreshingly blunt and perfectly infantalizing. I’m not totally sure about the guys in green being intentionally left in the video—instead of being painted out in post. That feels like it takes away from the absurdist power of the visuals, without an obvious rationale for doing so.

Still, on the whole, it’s an inspired bit of zaniness—wrapped up with a solid end line, a powerful stat, and a worthy call to action. The spot was produced by CZAR Films in Belgium. In the U.S., Lionel Goldstein are represented by Slim.