It does not bear mention that the Super Bowl is our national Holy Day. Like any good religion, ours is now locked into a palpable millenial fear, and as a result we have placed more and more emphasis on The True Meaning of the Super Bowl. And like any such guilt-provoked rationalization of the mindless practice of empty dogma, the results have been grim. Nothing wrecks a good orgy like self-consciousness.
In years past, Super Bowl ads have performed marketing miracles. Macintosh's Big Brother theme in the mid-80s changed the world, for a few years at least. Just last year there was hoopla about the murder plot in the Budweiser ads.
This year's Macintosh ad attempted, I suppose, the same kind of quasi-subversive appeal as the attack on IBM fifteen years ago. We see the red beacon of the HAL 9000 computer from Stanley Kubrick's 2001. The preternaturally calm, electronically soothed human voice of (subtly renamed) "HAL 2000" reminds "Dave" of the year 2000, when so many computers went psycho and destroyed the global economy. Well, all the computers except for Dave's Macintosh. "You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you, Dave?" HAL asks.
To whom is the ad addressed? Anyone who can appreciate HAL as a genuinely scary prospect probably doesn't consider another computer that great of a trade. The point is supposed to be that, like HAL, non-Macintosh (i.e., Windows-based) systems will all go belly-up in 2000. Yeah, Microsoft sucks! In the movie, HAL isn't just a poorly designed system, it's deadly. Microsoft kills! But since the logic of the ad makes HAL a Microsoft product, all Dave really needs to do is wait for a "fatal exception error" to put a stop to HAL's murderous misprogramming. And anyway, why is HAL still working?
Computer companies were ubiquitous throughout the broadcast. During the pregame show the Micron ad debuted. Pan over a room full of cubicles. A woman dressed as unobtrusively as humanly possible stands up saying, firmly but quietly "I will not do this." Is she objecting to unethical business practice? "I will not be a cog in a machine." The dawn of class consciousness? "You can keep your empty mission statements." A strike for individualism? The scene freezes as she walks past a generic boss, generic colleagues, through the generic cubicle stalls, towards... nowhere in particular. Voiceover: "The rules of busines have changed" and Micron provides "the digital slingshots you need to win."
Yes, yes, I see now. The rules of business have changed. Used to be, a company would make decisions on the basis of "the bottom line" of profit. No longer! Now they're flinging rocks at each other with digital slingshots. Now they're trying to win.
To hell with that, Hotjobs.com tells us, you can find another job instead. Their feature spot showed a security guard toying with a laptop while daydreaming at his post. Why, a man like him, he could be a boss! No, too many pressing decisions. A politician! No, too much press. A restaurateur! A ballet dancer! A film producer! Rich! Famous! But none of them seem to fit. No matter, Hotjobs.com can show you any possible future. The screen flashes, his eyes widen, his face lightens - he's found it! The perfect job! Security guard! Computers really are changing the world, aren't they?
But high tech companies aren't the only ones taking advantage of the millenium to spruce up their spiritual lives. Jerry Seinfeld is, too, and he's getting help from his American Express card.
As we watch, Jerry leaves his TV show behind, along with the phony cereal-box facade from the interior apartment set that dominated the show for nine years. He needs "a real life," he tells us, and off he goes in search of it, with his AmEx card. And off Jerry bounces, into a convertible, out of Hollywood (you can tell because you see the sign), through the Western desert, facing obstructions and reversals at every turn. All he wants is a life, a life and his American Express card and his convertible. A life, his card, the car, and cheap souvenirs. A life, his card, the car, souvenirs, and something, something he can't find anywhere, something that just isn't on the road, something Jack Kerouac never dreamed of. And as he crosses the bridge into New York, clearing the last hurdle, he realizes what he's needed all along - an apartment laid out just like his TV show set, with furniture identical to the props on the show, but full of the junk he bought on the road, and, oh yes, the American Express card, which made it all possible. There it is, the meaning he's been seeking, the reality of his life - a dreary, faux reproduction of the artificial history he built himself on television. If only I had an American Express card, I'd be able to do the same thing.
Most notable in the Super Bowl ads was the lack of new ideas. Budweiser repeated the lizards and frogs theme, only this time, to reflect their own millenial fear, Bud showed them getting laid off. Well, it's Budweiser, what else counts as apocalypse for them but financial ruin?
M&M's pitched a new product, crispy M&Ms, with a slight variation on its years-old not-quite-household-names celebrity campaign. This year they provided a little consolation for our tortured souls, both by featuring Salma Hayek and, more impressively, with a more direct reference to the rather perverse premise of the ads - that the celeb is about to eat the candy she's talking to. Hayek gives the candy a lustful, hungry look as she grabs its little animated leg and starts to pull it towards her across the sofa. What happens next? We don't know - the commercial ends, letting us fill in the blank with our own fantasies about Salma Hayek eating.
Indeed, no religious rite is fully complete without celebrities, which is probably why Pizza Hut bought tons of pregame time for its new campaign, which I call "Incredibly Annoying New Yorkers." The three spots I saw featured Donald Trump, Spike Lee and Fran Drescher, arguably among the most obnoxious human beings ever to walk the Earth, preening, heckling and whining in their hopefully inimitable fashions, then saying something to the effect that Pizza Hut sells pizza.
No doubt the weirdest, most ethereal and least intelligible of the Sacred Mysteries of the Super Bowl was the spot for Progressive Insurance in which E.T. returns to an alien spacecraft, begins to tell the apparently sad story of humanity's racing hither and yon in dangerous automobiles, and the need this behavior engenders for insurance. The aliens laugh heartily, and in just that moment are nearly missed by the space shuttle. "Dwuh-bwah-guh-blah-puh-goo?" ("How do we reach Progressive Insurance?") asks one of the wrinkly green guys. "Phone," ("Phone") replies E.T. The astronauts in the space shuttle give a sigh of relief.
Look, it's the millenium. Alien encounters aren't universe-expanding; they aren't even cute. They're a potential matter for litigation, so you've got to protect yourself with a good insurance policy. I assume Progressive has a policy covering incidents just like that depicted.
Here, during the compressed Advent of advertising's ecclesiastical year, the powerful and mighty are made meek and impotent. There is an overwhelming sense of dread, sorrow and guilt for our sins, a great mortification of the corporate image. All humble themselves and make ready the way, for the end is near!