posted
[I wrote this in response to a text message exchange where I claimed that Fanta's commercials are great art, and my brother demanded to know why. I figured I'd go ahead and inflict it on ya'll as well.]
I didn't want to type this all out in a text message, so I'm sending you an email.
The Fanta advertisements may appear to be silly, with the dancing women and the repetitive chanting. However, they cleverly conceal some serious social commentary under the veneer of ultimate superficiality: soda pop, insipid music, and women-as-objects. The subtext arises from the collision of these cultural symbols, which in combination are too starkly silly to be anything but satire.
Soft drinks are pop-culture defined: designed by a corporation, aggressively advertised, widely consumed. While the roots of soft drinks are in patent medicines, that hardly elevates the character of their substance. The pretense of wholesomeness having long been discarded, sugar, bubbles, and image are all that remain. Heavy on the image.
Pop music has a similar cultural profile. All you need is a heavy beat, some minimal musicality, and a sleek and sexy image in order to appeal to millions. Meaning, let alone creativity, isn't expected, or desired, as you can tell from the Macarena, or any number of Britney Spears riffs.
And as hardly needs pointing out, images of young women are pervasively used to sell everything from kitchenware to themselves: our culture uses them as the equivalent of shouting "Hey! Look at this!"
For these elements to be fused into an advertisement for a soft drink is anything but novel, and is usually the opposite of clever: it's the easy, proven, amoral avenue that 5th Avenue always takes. It's a downhill road to the pit of public attention.
But Fanta didn't just take this road. It piled into its flaming red Hummer, revved its engine, and took that road at twice the legal limit. Its soda isn't just nutritionally useless, it comes only in neon colors, and a few artificial fruit flavors that are as far from unique or refined as Suzanne Somers is from gracefully aged. The music isn't just fluffy nonsense, it's an IQ-damaging, hamfisted attempt at hypnosis. "Don't you wanna wanna, wanna Fanta." And the women are what Hefner would like if he wasn't so tolerant of critical thinking, sensible clothing, and visual character in his women.
Like a seizure at a rave, the shrillness of all this glitter shatters the vibe. It punches through the fourth wall and administers a sharp slap to the drooling face of America. Is THIS what you want, losers?!? it shouts. It shames us into recognizing the tropes that form the ropes of our cultural harness.
The pinnacle of tastelessness, these advertisements are so pointedly vacuous that it can only be deliberate. It can only be a message that tells us to think instead of drink, and demand instead of accept. Somewhere, a very smart and subversive ad designer is having a chuckle. Let's make sure we're laughing with him.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Of course, I consider all advertising as an art form, and like most art, only a small percentage will appeal to any one person.
Posts: 369 | Registered: Apr 2007
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posted
I really appreciated this post. No real comment/response, but I felt a fair bit happier after reading it (and as I'm still at work 12 hours into the day, this is a good thing).
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
The other great part about advertisement is the possibilities for fun. Try watching TV with some friends and play "find the phallus" almost every commercial that promotes manliness has one (normally five) hidden in there.
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