Living in the USA

[randy_byers]

Yesterday evening I went to see Southland Tales at the Uptown. I'm not going to write about the movie, except to say that it isn't as horrible as the haters say, but neither is it as good as Donnie Darko (Kelly's first movie, to which it bears a number of significant resemblances). Anyway, when I entered the theater, there was a music video playing onscreen, with the lights up. Gradually it became clear that it was a military recruiting ad, although I wasn't sure for which service at first. But it definitely took the form of a music video, with footage of a band singing interspersed with scenes of men in uniform in various situations. The music was metal, pumping out the macho attitude, "we hope you never need us, but we'll be there to protect you if you do." The scenes we see are a soldier rescuing a blonde child from some sort of natural disaster, generic recreations of the Revolutionary War and Normandy Beach, and edgy, contemporary shots of guys going into an urban battlezone to rescue a buddy who has been injured and captured by enemies we never see.

It ends up this was an ad for the National Guard. I was pretty astounded at the whole thing. The music was very powerful and pulled me with its pulse and emotional appeal, but the contextless jingoism was utterly jaw-dropping. What really puzzled me was why this was being played at the Uptown, especially in front of a weird ass satire on, amongst other things, the War on Terra. Has anybody else seen this thing? Is this how desperate the recruiting effort has gotten?

Comments

[e-compass-rosa.livejournal.com]

How desperate has the recruiting effort gotten?
http://twofeetin.typepad.com/elisa/2005/09/military_recrui.html

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

That could almost be a scene in Southland Tales. One of the things that struck me about the video was how much it took the goth power fantasies of metal and applied them directly to this very nationalistic message. I guess it isn't to far from Christian metal, for that matter.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

A friend who works at Google told me that a lot of Googles strategy is based around brokering advertising, in part because AdWords has shown that they are very good at it, but also because they have discovered the people who do it now are almost all very bad at it. I doubt the people selling the advertising think as far as matching film to cinema to ad.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

You know, there were six of us in the theater, all guys, it's true, but geeky-looking guys. Not going to be joining up real soon, probably.

[kdotdammit.livejournal.com]

I've seen that National Guard ad way too many times and oddly I've seen it most when taking Bean to kiddo movies. Are they trying to appeal to young parents who need more money to raise their kids or recruiting the elementary school set? It's very strange.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

That is weird. Although E's story linked above does tend to support the kid theory.