America as comedy

The above comic strip comes from Get Your War On, by David Rees.

The philosopher Henri Bergson had an interesting notion about the comic: "something mechanical in something living." That is to say, when a living being, or something apparently alive, behaves as if it were a dumb machine, we find it funny, and therefore laugh. The social value of this laughter is as a corrective; it is meant to humiliate the subject into properly adapting to circumstances.

One of the most common and effective methods of producing comedy is through repetition. Think of a man repeatedly tripping on the same banana peel. According to Bergson, we laugh (evolutionarily speaking) at this individual in order to shame him into correcting his faulty sensory-motor schema. The more times he falls, the bigger the falls, the greater the peril to his personal safety and that of those around him, the harder we laugh.

As our government at least makes play at undertaking a third simultaneous war, we would do well to laugh as hard and as often at them—at ourselves, really—as possible.

Gift as Excess Value

I want to revist an idea I stole from Jonathan Lethem in an earlier post, which I now think is entirely incorrect: that a commercial can have no status as a "gift".

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The whole point of the Super Bowl Ads, the whole reason that people get worked up about them, is precisely because they are in fact gifts — their value as entertainment exceeds their value as sales pitches. Why did everyone hate the SalesGenie.com spot? Because there is no excess value; there is only the sales pitch. Why did people like the "Rock Paper Scissors" Bud Lite ad? Because they appreciated the gift of the comic vignette (in much the same way that people appreciate funny little YouTube videos), whose value was far in excess of any direct instruction to purchase beer.

If this "gifting" has any potential to sell stuff, it's through displacement of the emotions inspired by the gift to the product for sale. That is to say, one appreciates the humor of a beer commercial, takes pleasure from watching it, and then mistakenly associates these positive feelings with the beer itself.

How well does this work? I don't know. Do I wish it to work? I am pretty neutral. I find the tactic of "gifting" in itself to be far less manipulative than the inclusion of the product for sale within the symbolic exchange of the ad (usually as the object of desire). I know now that I was wrong in thinking that I could easily subject commercials to a symbolic analysis without digressing into armchair sociology and psychoanalysis-light. But, I still think a useful analysis could be made of commercials — one which would bring us closer to a pre-linguistic, imagistic understanding of the logic of desire.

Which I'd like to think would bring me closer to a functional notational system for the cinema.

Super Bowl Ads IV: Only fools work hard

This spot is currently the second-lowest rated Super Bowl ad on You Tube (the lowest being the Sheryl Crow Revlon spot).

SalesGenie.com

The male protagonist encounters four other characters in economical shot/reverse-shot exchanges: an attractive woman, an overworked co-worker, a commendatory boss, and a dazzled junior employee. The exchange with the woman shows the protagonist to be desirable; the exchange with the co-worker shows him to have lots of luxury time; the exchange with the boss shows him to be professionally on the rise; and, the final exchange with the young employee is a vehicle to explain the protagonist's secret to success. The spot ends with a trophy shot of woman, car & house, and then promotional titles.

A number of online commentators have been baffled that a spot with such low production values would warrant a $2.6 million Super Bowl placement; but, I think they miss the point. SalesGenie.com obviously believes its own message: the leads are everything; the pitch is nothing. Why waste time and money on a glossy/ironic/celebrity-enhanced ad? Why "work hard," as the protagonist puts it? All you need to suceed is to pay for access, and SalesGenie.com purchased access to over 90 million people.

I recently read an article in New York Magazine about Wal-Mart's advertising strategy, in which I was introduced to the direct-marketing kingpin Howard Draft. A line from the article: "No one really knows if award-winning ads increase sales." The point is, irony & humor & even beauty can be distractions from a direct solicitation — and direct solicitation is now and has always been the most effective way to sell. Is Nationwide really going to benefit from their Kevin Federline spot? Why pay David Lynch to direct an ad for a pregnancy test (not that I don't approve of him getting the cash)?

By way of closing the book on my Super Bowl ad analysis, I present what may be the most perfect commercial of all time:


"Motley, only fools work hard!"

Super Bowl Ads III: Redemption of the Real

Garmin — "Maposaurus"

As a parody of an old Japanese tokusatsu show (Spectreman comes to mind, in particular), this spot doesn't lend itself so well to a straightforward, symbolic analysis. However, it does call to mind an answering machine greeting my roommate and I recorded back in college. Over a menacing bassline, I recited the following excerpt from Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulations:

"It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself."

Upon hearing this greeting for the first time, my roommate's mother exclaimed, "That sounds like a devil worship!" and promptly hung up the phone. I still have the recording of her saying this saved on my computer.

Baudrillard was in the above passage reframing the so-called map/territory relation — a classic philosophical problem of distinguishing between symbol and object (or sign and referent, if you will). As the great bard of postmodern nihilism, Baudrillard contended that representations of reality (and representations of representations) had replaced reality itself in contemporary society. (It's no coincidence that the expression "desert of the real" made its way into the first Matrix movie.)

It is generally agreed that the destruction and/or replacement of reality is a bad thing.

As you can see in the ad, the Evil Maposaurus is hell-bent on destruction. Not only is the map here "not the territory" (as per Alfred Korzybski [see above link]), this map in fact actively destroys the territory. What can save the Real? Who can save us from this lumbering abstraction?

Technology! Garmin GPS comes to the rescue, and effortlessly dispatches the Bad Map. The message here is a rebuttal of high-postmodernism, as well as the Cyberpunk movement: Rather than further abstracting us from the Real, technology redeems it to us.

How? Through karate kicks and laser beams, mostly.

Super Bowl Ads II: The Corn Chip Whore

Doritos — "Live the Flavor"

A man, physically empowered by his vehicle, is about to enjoy an object of desire, when he spots another object of desire—a woman on foot (and thereby relatively disempowered). Seeing the man with his object, the woman smiles, and extends her arm to show that she is possessed of the same kind of object. Clearly, they are in this scenario for the same kind of enjoyment, so to speak. Distracted by this recognition, the man crashes his car (disempowering himself), and destroys his bag of chips. Concerned, the woman rushes to his aid... with her own chips in hand. There is still a chance for them to experience mutual enjoyment. But no, she trips, and crushes her chips as well. Both are "losers": both have taken no pleasure, and both have experienced physical injury [which was likewise necessary in the spots I analyzed in my previous entry]. Normalcy returns in the final shot, with the man again relatively empowered (as he is at least still in his car, and the woman is on all fours on the street). The strap line appears in an overlay: "Live the Flavor". Though they cannot any longer experience the pleasure of the corn chips' qualities through the eating of the chips themselves, this man and woman can experience the same pleasurable qualities in their relationship with each other.

If anyone thinks the scenario of this ad is an analogy for anything other than picking up a hooker, I'd love to hear about it.

Super Bowl Ads I: Parity is Queer

Two spots involving contested objects of desire:

Bud Light — "Rock Paper Scissors"

In an open field of play (established by a wide shot), two contestants approach the object of desire. Body positioning and shot order establish the man in the hoodie as the protagonist. Unable to immediately resolve their contest through physical strength, the antagonist in the oxford shirt proposes, and Mr. Hoodie agrees to, a contest of wits. The contestants play their game; however, Mr. Oxford wins through violence. As Oxford claims the object of desire and leaves the playing field, a vanquished Hoodie questions the contest's fairness. Oxford's response confirms that not only has Hoodie lost a physical contest, he has in fact also lost a battle of wits. A product shot with a voice-over strap line confirms the legitimacy of Oxford's victory through trickery and violence. The final shot of the supine Hoodie confirms his status as loser of the contest.


Snickers — "Kiss"

Two individuals cooperate on a technical task in a confined space. Body positioning establishes the long-haired man as the protagonist. Mr. Long-hair produces an object of desire, and begins to take pleasure from it. The short-haired man sees and covets the object of desire, then procedes to likewise take pleasure from it. A contest ensues for which man can take more pleasure from the object. This contest ends in a tie, and in intimate physical contact. The contestants abruptly pull apart from each other. Both men are "winners," in the sense that they have each taken equal pleasure from the object of desire; however, this cannot stand. In order to establish their status as "losers" of a physical contest, the men commit violence against their own flesh. A product shot and tagline overlay confirms the rightness of this final act.

I don't think it's the kiss itself which activates the "gay panic" in the Snickers spot; I think it's the mutual and equal pleasure the men take from the candy bar. If the short-haired man had quickly munched down 3/4 of the length of the bar, and then the two men had inadvertently kissed, the outcome would have been different—there would have been a clear winner to the exchange. As the Snickers folks clearly realize, ties are not satisfying.

As a thought experiment, imagine a version of the Bud Lite ad in which the two men confront not a bottle, but a pint of beer, and then avidly suck down the contents through straws. If both men drink at the same rate, you end up with a potentially queer image.

Interestingly, what both of these spots suggest is that to lose a contest over an object of desire, a contestant must be physically injured... which I suppose is appropriate for ads placed during a football game.

What I'm playing at

I've been busy with the "Synesthesia" project all week, so I haven't gotten around to parsing the SB ads yet.

(Incidentally, we got a decent review from nytheatre.com.)

Also, I must confess to an utter absense of enthusiasm for watching them again. In this month's Harper's, Jonathan Lethem has a great piece on (and which is a) plagiarism, wherein he adopts Lewis Hyde's concept of art as a "gift," which cannot properly ever be "stolen." He goes on to say that even the best ads can never be art, because "an ad has no status as a gift; i.e., it's never really for the person it's directed at."

Ironically, it is precisely this absence of personal value which I think makes TV spots a good place to start an analysis of contemporary film grammar. There is a mechanical, disembodied feel to commercial filmmaking; analyzing ads is like diagraming simple sentences in grade school: Who the hell really cared what those sentences were about?

Bless the little purple one

I'm still recovering from the miserable Bears loss.

I will, however, take this opportunity to second the CW on the half-time show: it was the best ever. And Prince is one of the best Rock & Roll guitarists of all time. And will probably never get credited as such.

[NOTE: There used to be an embedded video here of Prince at the Super Bowl; but, it was killed by Universal Music Group. Corporate copyright sucks.]

Forget the red carpet

Rejoice, dear viewers, for it is time again for our annual, national celebration of the apotheosis of American Filmmaking.

No, I'm not talking about the sad celebrity orgy of the Oscars; I'm talking about the bourgeois bacchanal of the Super Bowl Spots!

More people will watch these commercials than will see any of the Academy Award contenders this year. More money is spent per second in the production and distribution (CBS is charging $5.2 million a minute to show these spots) of these commercials than in any feature film. If cultural value in our society can be measured by dollars, and cultural relevance by audience members, then it's hard to overstate the significance of the Super Bowl ads.

Want an indicator of just how important these "shows" have become? They now have their own marketing campaigns. Let that settle in. Ad agencies are creating ad campaigns to promote advertisements. Previously, the measure of an ad's success was the extent to which it was remembered and talked about after the game. Now, spots are "leaked" to YouTube ahead of the event, and a special section of the site has been reserved for a post-game contest.

This year, in deference to the outsized importance of the Super Bowl Spots, I will provide in this blog a filmic analysis of all the commercials.

Stay tuned.