Superbowl Ad Dissected
Art Advocate
| 2/06/2008 3:39 pm |
Mad Art Scenes
On the Superest of all Sundays I was, as many of you were too, watching the pre-game show to Superbowl XLII on the FOX network. Stats were given, predictions made and Alicia Keyes proved that she can really sing.
Being
that the Superbowl was on FOX it must have had to include at least
one piece of propaganda which came in the form of Russel
Crowe narrating a clip show ostensibly on the subject of perfection
(click here), playing on the Patriots perfect season that they
would then go on to screw up by losing the Superbowl.
Now
don't get me wrong, I don't care that it's a commercial and I don't
care that it's Russell Crowe narrating an American commercial. As
the Art Advocate it is my sworn duty to expose visual mechanics and
hypocrisy. Am I making mountains out of molehills? Maybe, but I am
not wrong.
While
Crowe concedes that each person's definition of perfection is
different initially, he later states "on the planet's biggest stage
we may bear witness to perfection" (we didn't). This montage
creates the visual statement that just as art is perfection so too
is football. Though it should go without saying that the perfection
of Leonardo Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa," Jackson Pollock's "Blue Poles,"
Raphael's "School of Athens," and Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel
have absolutely nothing to do with football or the Superbowl. How
do I know this? Well for one, because football hadn't been invented
yet (with the exception for Pollock). Perfection is also not a word
that I would use to describe JFK or Martin Luther King, Jr.,
important yes, perfect no. Linking football with these two
luminaries is absurd, especially considering that the NFL still
allows the openly racist team name Redskins and JFK had to force
that team to integrate in 1962. Only the addition of Gandhi or
perhaps Nelson Mandela into the sequence could have made this more
absurd.
I did
think that it was interesting that they showed all the Ninja Turtle
artists (with the exception of Donatello) in painting when so often
perfection, especially related to sports and physicality, is
depicted in the human body. For the "gladiators of the gridiron"
why not show Greco-Roman sculpture? It's much more logical and
relates to sports. But then again showing sculpture of naked men
could be a little uncomfortable on one of the most heterosexual
days of the year, besides those pants the players wear are tight
enough.
In the
end Crowe's script is right, we all should strive for perfection
but this promo was perfectly incomprehensible.
blog entry tag reference
arts | culture | people | sports | Superbowl
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