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The Battle for Detroit: Chrysler's "Eminem" Commercial

If the Chrysler spot covered in the last post (here), suggested America could recover the glory days of its stylish past, this even newer spot insists we already have:

 

By personifying the brand and the city in the figure of Eminem, Chrysler is implying, I guess, that "we're making a comeback, just like one of our favorite sons."

From what I've read, Eminem's 2010 album was considered by many a sort of return to creative power.  As USA Today's review put it: "If Eminem seemed to be losing his footing in recent years, he regains it here with his fiercest and  most focused work in a long time."  

Informed by his still new sobriety, the music is said to exhibit a bit more vulnerability and social conscience, without losing its edge. It's appropriately titled Recovery.

Proof of Chrysler's own comeback can be seen in its increasing market share, which, according to Ad Age, went from 8.9% to 9.45% in 2010.

And by featuring Eminem, the spot may even be hinting that just as the hip hop star is older, wiser and more sober, the brand likewise is letting go of its past bad habits and designing higher quality machines.

But here's where the message of the spot becomes a bit ironic, for me at least.  Despite the patriotism, and proudly defiant regionalism of the message, it took a merger with Fiat, a European company, to tackle the brand's problems.  From the recent Ad Age piece:

"The Chrysler-Fiat team has worked at breakneck pace since sumer 2009 to make dramatic improvements to core vehicles.  The 300 makeover alone cost $1 billion.  'We are no longer ashamed of the products we are selling,' said brutally frank CEO Sergio Marchionne.

"The biggest obstacle is the mostly the mostly terrible quality ratings from Consumer Reports and J.D. Power.  The makeover has corrected many past sins, but it will take two to three years for the ratings to move up...and even longer for consumers to trust."

Through European Eyes...

One thing that was particularly striking to me about this spot was its sheer defiance.  It aggressively reclaims the idea that Detroit makes the best cars.  It makes the case that the city's and its industry's troubles have only made them stronger.  In what sounds to me like a  bold allusion to the civil unrest of the past, it states: "the hottest fires make the strongest steel."

If this certainty sounds unusual to me, it may be because, ever since the advent of popular Japanese and Korean cars -- and especially during the period of the bailout -- angry criticism of Detroit's "big three" has become almost a cliche.

Perhaps that's why, though created by a U.S. ad agency (Wieden and Kennedy) only a European-born executive, such as Chrysler's new Chief Olivier Francois, would be enthused enough by this approach to champion it.   (He even helped direct a key moment in the spot.)

You might even call this version of Detroit, and in fact the U.S., partly French (not unlike Poe and Jerry Lewis).  This "slightly foreign" quality made me feel, despite its aggressive, no nonsense stance, that there was something idyllic about its vision.

For one thing, in the guise of Eminem, you see the return of a more forceful image of someone with working-class roots.  And the fact that he's a cross-over artist suggests (along with the Gospel Choir) the possibility of overcoming the racial tensions that, historically, have especially troubled blue-collar culture.

In other words, perhaps only a European, unburdened by our specific, heavy sense of history, would green light this hymn to a city that makes its products cool again.

Or, as Francois put it, "Maybe it takes people from outside the city to see the possibilities and passion."  The tag at the end captures this radically refreshed take on the town perfectly: "Imported from Detroit."

Detroit's Competitive Double...

This newly hopeful version of the Motor City does make it seem like a place where an industry might be reborn.  It's an almost magical (and spiritual) locale.  And such a positioning may be necessary for recreating the brand's  and its city's identity.

For 800 hundred miles to the south, another "Detroit" has been in formation.  The Hyundai/Kia plants around Montgomery Alabama, have produced a series of fuel efficient, low-priced cars that took off during the recession -- gaining upwards of 20% in sales, so that now, the two brands together are "only 5,000 short of surpassing Chrysler."

The sheer cost-efficiency of these smaller, boxier cars not only offers an alternative for utilitarian-minded people to the "luxury" alluded to in this spot, but, in one sense,  even "lowballs" its "neo-working-class" ethos.  The non-unionized workers at Hyundai/Kia  are paid about $20/hr. (compared to UAW's approximately $28/hr.).

Will Detroit win this battle?  Does  its industry's comeback have "legs"?  Anyone have speculations on these question or other thoughts about this spot? 



 



 

Hopes for a Stylish Recovery? Chrysler's New "Arrive in Style" Commercial

Recently I read (in an essay by Daniel Albert) that the cultural critic Henri Lefebvre "labeled the the car 'l'objet-roi': the king of all objects."

Though not a driver myself, I can certainly see his point.  Car ads not only dominate (along with electronic devices) much of our commercial space, but also carry an intense degree of cultural symbolism.  They seem to mean everything.

Check out this spot for Chrysler, which originally aired during the Golden Globes:

 

What struck me initially about this spot, in addition to the beautiful film work, was the contrast it offered to the new Audi spot (covered in the last post here).   Audi told its story in futuristic language: "luxury has progressed" it argued, thanks to the breathtaking technical innovation of its design.

Looking to the Hollywood glamour of the late 40s and early 50s for inspiration, Chrysler is concerned with more poetic than scientific or utilitarian values.  The spot reminds me of the show Madmen -- since it populates its stylish images with what look to me like contemporary people playing dress-up.

This look and feel is associated with a more prosperous America.  Here's the remarkable script (intoned by Adrian Brody):

"Whatever happened to style?  Where has the glamour gone?  Wasn't too long ago, America had it  Looking and feeling like a million bucks.  It was practically our birthright.  We didn't race from A to B.  We cruised.  Going for a drive was a big deal.  And when we arrived...we arrived in style.  At Chrysler, we believe it's time to get it back.  To regain the style, the cache, the confidence.  It's time, once again, to arrive in style."

Let the Middle-East Be Your Guide...

Though the spot looks to the past for its images, I think it would be a mistake to read it as mere nostalgia.  It's true, futuristic techno-hype is the biggest game in town right now, but the power of the purely aesthetic side to commercial culture still packs a tremendous punch.

I found dramatic proof of this recently in a book by Virginia Postrel, called The Substance of Style.  Postrel tells us that when the Taliban fell in Afghanistan,

"...Afghan men lined up at barbershops to have their beards shaved off.  Women painted their nails with once-forbidden polish.  Formerly clandestine beauty salons opened in prominent locations.  Men traded postcards of beautiful Indian movie stars, and thronged to buy imported TVs, VCRs, and videotapes.  Even burka merchants diversified their wares, adding colors like brown, peach, and green to the blue and off-white dictated by the Taliban's whip-wielding virtue police." (ix)

Further, as Postrel points out, since these people were exposed to virtually no advertising or marketing, it's hard to argue their desires were generated by some sort of consumer brainwashing. Instead, she reads the need for style, i.e., for everyday aesthetics, as basic to human anthropology.

And since Postrel, and every other public commentator nowadays for that matter, interprets U.S. culture trends by referring to what's going on in the Middle-East, let me jump on the bandwagon and do the same in reading this spot.

Part of what makes dreams of a renewed prosperity possible here (and the rainbow booming through the sky at the end), is the first thaw in a rigid type of U.S. ideology: Market Fundamentalism.  Chrysler is doing better, in no small part, because their fate was not left to "market forces."  They got a $12.5 billion bailout, courtesy of "big government" in 2009.  Thus their hopes are contingent, for the moment at least, on a mixed (or Keynesian) economic approach.

The brand explores the whole idea of "recovery" even more forcefully in another spot, which is airing concurrently with this one and features Eminem as spokesperson.  More on that one in the next post.

As far as this particular commercial goes, though, I have to admit that I'm still not quite sure why Chrysler took the risk of appearing "old-school"  -- by alluding so heavily to its (admittedly stylish) history.  Anyone have thoughts on this? 

Can a Car Drive You to the Future? Thoughts on Audi's "Goodnight Moon" TV Commercial

The Audi commercial that's been airing nearly everywhere lately, caught my attention with its portrayal of a sort of class warfare.  Check it out:

 

The "gluttonous", "stuffy", and generally "outdated" people and products (such as the Mercedes at the end) portrayed here, call up the idea of conservative "old money" -- i.e., the entrenched rich, many of whom have inherited their wealth.

Such folks, with the exception of royalty of course, don't seem to get represented much in our media images lately.  Perhaps they seem too inaccessible to provoke interest.  That's why the section in the spot where they, their mansions, poodles and chandeliers still live, seems almost like a dream sequence -- scored to a rewrite of the classic children's book Goodnight Moon.

Of course, the spot isn't addressed to such phantoms (or those who aspire to be them).  It speaks instead to those in the market for a luxury car (this Audi starts around $78,000), who identify with the futuristic appeal of Audi design -- people who demand "inspiration", "illumination", and most of all, today's hottest commodity, "innovation".

Audi's brand image is constructed through such attributes.  It's said to signify "innovative design and technology", and a "progressive" outlook.  As Dan Pankraz, a student of luxury brands sums this up: "Audi is modern." 

And the section of the elite class who might be identified by such characteristics does make the news enough to become objects of emulation. 

The Working Rich

In an essay from the Atlantic titled "The Rise of the New Global Elite", Chrystia Freeland describes this new elite:

"...the rich of today are also different from the rich of yesterday.  Our light-speed, globally connected economy has lead to the rise of a new super-elite that consists, to a notable degree, of first- and second-generation wealth.  Its members are hardworking, highly educated, jet-setting meritocrats who feel they are the deserving winners of a tough, worldwide economic competition -- and many of them, as a result, have an ambivalent attitude toward those of us who didn't succeed so spectacularly."

These folks do, in fact, owe much of their wealth to innovations -- whether they be technological, financial, or "the liberalization of global trade."  Their social life is said to be different as well: 

"The debutante balls and hunts and regattas of yesteryear may not be quite obsolete, but they are headed in that direction.  The real community life of the 21st century plutocracy occurs on the international conference circuit."

My guess is that the demos of the audience that Audi is after are younger than the Mercedes crowd -- the type of folks who would aspire to the values of the new, rather than the old class of elites. 

Accordingly, the spot seems to say, "Don't emulate the snobby old school; not when Audi can drive you to your future."

Where Have We Seen This Before?  Ask Ezra Pound...

I wondered why this spot, despite its praise of all things new, nevertheless felt a little old-fashioned to me.  Then I remembered that playing off the "decadent bourgeois" against the values of modernity is as old as modernism itself.  Ezra Pound's poem, "Les Millwin" (1913), for example, portrays the upper crust "Millwin" clan at the ballet:

The little Millwins attend the Russian Ballet.
The mauve and greenish souls of the little Millwins
Were seen lying along the upper seats
Like so many unused boas.

A few lines later, these indolent folks meet with the vitality of young "Futurists":

With arms exalted, with fore-arms
Crossed in great futuristic X's, the art students
Exulted, they beheld the splendours of Cleopatra.

Pound scholar Christine Froula commented that these lines refer to Italian Futurism, whose "aesthetic exalted speed, motion, the abstract qualities of life in the machine age." (p. 50)  Faced with such an aesthetic, the Millwins are caught, deer-in-the-headlights fashion, and can only look on passively, "With their large and anaemic eyes."

It's worth remembering, though, that despite their "revolutionary vitality" the Italian Futurists, and indeed, Pound himself, ended up endorsing the very old-fashioned values they seemed to criticize: they backed Mussolini -- and his bureaucratic neo-traditionalism (dressed up, of course, in modernist garb).

Cultural critics, such as Jodi Dean, wonder, in fact, if our current crop of techno-futurists will up strengthening -- by renovating and upgrading -- the very order they initially criticized in their cyber-communalist, "information wants to be free" days. (p. 27)

The jury's still out on such a question.  What is fair to say, though, is that using the language of "technical innovation" helps Audi put a more contemporary spin on what's fast becoming, with the age of the electric car looming, a pretty old-fashioned product.

For, even with "13% better fuel efficiency" than its predecessor, it's increasingly difficult to see any gasoline powered car as particularly modern. 

What's So Alien About Artificial Intelligence? Thoughts on AI, Science Fiction and "Consciousness"

Recently I found myself fascinated with a group of articles in Wired Magazine re-examining the theme of Artificial Intelligence.  Enthusiasm about AI, it seems, after a pessimistic "winter', has experienced a renaissance.

The lead piece, by Steven Levy (which offers an enormously useful capsule history of theories about the field) shows that the development of artificial intelligence is proceeding at a faster pace than ever -- but that it comes in a completely different form than was previously imagined.

Gone are the fantasies of the metallic humanoids you saw it movies like I, Robot (itself based on classic science ficton tales from the 40s/50s by Isaac Asimov).  Engineers have given up trying to replicate the human brain (as was thought achievable in the 50s).

But their inability to do so turned out to be a fortunate fault -- for it led to the creation of a rich array of smaller, intelligent machines, each furnished with  "clever algorithms" that enable them to accomplish a limited number of specific tasks:

"Once researchers were freed from the burden of building a whole mind, " Levy writes, "they could construct a rich bestiary of digital fauna, which few would dispute possess something approaching intelligence."

Along the way, "the AI crowd" made a key discovery:

"'The big surprise is that intelligence isn't a unitary thing,'" says Danny Hillis, who cofounded Thinking Machines, a company that made massively parallel supercomputers.  'What we learned is that it's all kinds of different behaviors.'"

Because of the success of these new machines, Levy concludes that we are more dependent on Artificial Intelligence than ever.  We use AI to help us drive, invest, and find answers to nearly everything (via Google), just to name a few of the types of robots who assist us everyday.  Such dependency leads Hillis to conclude, "the computers are in control, and we just live in their world."

And this is a world we don't understand.  Levy tells us that these new machines reason in ways vastly different than human logic.  If anything, their consciousness is more mysterious than the soul searching, existentialist machines imagined (but never realized) during Science Fiction's Golden Age.

Different but Same

I asked myself what I found so intriguing about these ideas, especially seeing as I'm more of a pragmatist than a utopian (or dystopian) when it comes to technology.  At first, I thought it was the cool "otherness" these thinkers achieve when talking about what seem to be mere gadgets.  The vision of AI they propose -- multiple, ubiquitous, alien -- and with a "will of its own", is reminiscent of the founding science fiction narrative of the current technologic sublime: The Matrix.

And then I wondered if what drew me to these ideas was not their alien but familiar quality.  Maybe this is because this tale of alien intelligence replays recent theories of what human consciousness is all about. 

Take the idea, for example, that the minds of the new machines are too strange to comprehend.  In Susan Blackmore's concise introduction to contemporary thinking on "Consciousness", you find out that there is a school of thought, dealing with human and animal consciousness, based around the same assumption. 

Its proponents are labeled "mysterians."  They argue "that we humans are 'cognitively  closed'  with respect to understanding consciousness ... Just as a dog has no hope of being able to read the newspaper, he so happily carries back from the shops." (p. 7-8)

Or the idea of intelligence as multiple rather than unitary.  It turns this is the standard, materialist account of human consciousness as well.  As Blackmore puts it:

"There is no single location from where my decisions are sent out.  Instead, the many different parts of the brain just get on with their own jobs, communicating with each other whenever necessary, and with no central control." (p. 15)

And it's not just in the realm of philosophy such ideas seem familiar.  The arts of our time, both popular and avant-garde, are obsessed with the multiple -- and the "otherness" it supposedly forces one to confront.  And this is not to mention (before the crash at least) the praise heaped upon "de-centralized" approaches to business management and economic policy -- all said to be increasingly necessary in a "multi-centric" world.

All of which is to say, I suppose, that as "otherworldly" as the workings of artificial minds may appear, when it comes to describing them, the influence of worldly, human culture and metaphor is as powerful as that of science.

This may also be why the literature of really great science fiction, rather than being escapist, is the true realism of our time.

For often you need the technology of the future to get a clear look at the now.