Keeping it Capitalist

If any of you had watched TV with me recently [in March 2000], you would know that I have lots of problems with current televisual commercials. One of my most consistent whining topics has been the continual insistence of gargantuan corporations in their advertising that those who consume heavily marketed products manufactured by other gargantuan corporations have willingly submitted to a giant conspiracy aiming to eliminate excitement and individuality. However, they continue, consumers of products made by the gargantuan corporation currently paying for time on TV are individualists who have chosen against such heavily marketed groupthink.

Toyota's commercials for its RAV4 automobile, for example, emphasize the presumed fact that the RAV4, a car made according to specifications carefully garnered by veritable armies of demographic analysts for a corporation whose vastness is only surpassed by its conservativism, is a car made for iconoclasts and presumably by iconoclasts. This is, of course, a crock of America's finest bull, and could only have been created by Americans who think that Americans are as stupid as, en masse, we undoubtedly are. Undoubtedly, this trend will continue regardless of how much I complain about it.

Lately, though, a corporation has pushed this twisted message to a new and ultra-galling level, a level which I would have thought it impossible to reach if conscious thought had been exercised at any stage in the advertising design process. I have therefore taken keyboard under hand in order to advise you to boycott the advertised product completely, until the corporation committing these sins against our common intelligence and perceptiveness quits being so egregiously hypocritical, and goes back to lying about its products in more transparent ways.

The corporation of which I speak, of course, is Mitsubishi. Mitsubishi previously committed the sin of using Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly" in an ad for the Galant. It's good that Mayfield is dead, for his heart surely would have been pained to see the opening number of his magnum opus turned into just another tool of the Man. Apparently, that ad was successful, so Mitsubishi has gone even further into ridiculousness in pitching the Spyder. Most of this ad's length is taken up with a discussion of why John Shaft is a better detective than Joe Friday, with the voiceover concluding that Shaft is better because both knew how to get information from a reluctant witness, but Shaft was constantly surrounded by hot chicks while doing it. Under the voice, a heavily edited version of the "Theme from Shaft" manages to maintain its funk. The voiceover concludes by implying that Shaft would have driven the Mitsubishi Spyder if it had been available to him, with the further implication that you should drive it, since, by chance, it is available to you.

There are several hundred things wrong with this advertisement. First and foremost, Shaft would never have driven a Mitsubishi Spyder, because that car seats only two people, and Shaft needs at least three women with him at all times. For maximum woman-toting capability, Shaft would probably choose the Lincoln Town Car Millennium Edition, with suitably modified suspension and sound system. Second, Shaft is opposed to economic domination of the black community by the Man, but this commercial is for said domination, since it is pushing Mitsubishis and Mitsubishi's record of hiring black people is spotty at best. Third, Mitsubishi, having desecrated one funk treasure with its advertising, has now desecrated another, setting a dangerous precedent. What's next? A shingle company using Parliament's "Tear The Roof Off That Sucker"? Fourth, what in heaven or hell does John Shaft, black private dick and sex machine to all the chicks, have to do with a Japanese multinational specializing in heavy machinery, electronics and debt instruments? Who decided this tenuous connection existed? Were they off their medication? It beggars the imagination.

Even the most ardent advocates of free markets have conceded that occasionally markets make mistakes. Some people think these mistakes include the creation of a permanent underclass and things like that. But they hadn't seen the Spyder ads, and I'm here to tell you: the worst mistake our free market has made lately is invoking the legend of a blaxploitation hero to sell a mediocre plastic Japanese sports car. The advertisers have made alarming advances, mostly unopposed, and one presumes that they will keep pushing and pushing until the U.S. Treasury uses the Wu-Tang Clan's "Cash Rules Everything Around Me" to introduce the new $5 coin as a cool new form of currency that you do not wish to mess with, sucker.

Stop it now.

Now, i.e., in October 2002, Pontiac is advertising one of its automobiles with James Brown's "Sex Machine," which is an even worse travesty than advertising the Spyder with "Shaft," if that's possible. They even let the Godfather sing "Stay on the scene! Like a sex machine!" during the commercial like he thinks the Pontiac is a sex machine that has staying power similar to that of James Brown, the hardest-working man in show business! This is a General Motors automobile! The only time a Pontiac is going to "get up, get on up" is if a mechanic puts it on the lift for its inevitable transmission rebuild. I would write a whole column like this but it didn't work last time, so screw it. Still waiting on the Wu-Tang joint.

The Rest of Our Culture Home

Spam-O-Matic Home