Commercials From Hell: Gorbachev Sells Pizza Hut

When I taught world history to college students, I would end my class about the end of the Cold War by showing this commercial. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was reduced to shilling for a second-rate fast food pizza company. Is there anything that better sums up the victory of capitalism? Of for that matter, the utterly fatuous nature of the brand of capitalism that triumphed?

One of my favorite passages from The Communist Manifesto deals with how capitalism destroys traditional culture.

"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers."

Whatever Marx got wrong, he certainly got that right. Gorbachev turned into pizza pitchman was ultimate proof of capitalism's ability to force every single aspect of modern life to bend to its values system. Back in the 1990s it was easy to think that this was the end of history. How wrong that was.

Commercials From Hell: Bartles and Jaymes

In the 1980s wine coolers bestrode America like a colossus. Yuppies had given wine a leg up, but most Americans didn't know a chardonnay from a merlot. Wine coolers allowed cheap sophistication, and 17 year olds who did not like the taste of beer could now drink something less potent than vodka and cranberry juice.

The actual drink was pretty atrocious. A few years ago as a joke I picked up a pack of them for a party, and they tasted like Mad Dog doused in corn syrup. (Don't ask me why I know the taste of Mad Dog so well.) At that moment I realized that I had been seduced by nostalgia not for the taste of wine coolers, but for their commercials.

Bartles and Jaymes had some of the catchiest commercials of the 1980s. Two old codgers dressed in an old-timey way pitched the product. Bartles did all of the talking, and finished off his little folksy monologue with "thank you for your support." Jaymes stood in the background, a silent enigma with a wry smile. These ads took a mediocre corporate product and made it seem like the passion project of local eccentrics.

The ads also smartly contrasted the new product consumed by a young audience with the old-fashioned characters and their courtly formality. There's nothing more poisonous for a youth product's advertising than pandering to what middle-aged ad execs think young people want. This ad also fit in with the old people as cute mascots trend of the 1980s, from the "Where's the Beef" lady to Sophia on Golden Girls.

Watching it now, the sensibility seems so alien from modern day advertising, to the point that it feels refreshing. Certainly much more refreshing than the product it's pushing.

Commercials From Hell: The Night Belongs to Michelob

I have been having a hard time finding writing inspiration recently, so I've decided to kick off a new series: Commercials from Hell. This is inspired by the amazing website Trailers From Hell, where commenters give glosses on old B movie trailers. This series will involve me writing about old television commercials and ad campaigns.

I have been consuming too many of these ads because late at night I find myself to watching old blocs of commercials on YouTube gleaned from old VHS tapes used to tape things off of TV (remember that?) Nothing puts me back into the past like these ads, since they don't get rerun, unlike the shows. They thus tend to be pretty amazing cultural artifacts of their time.

I want to start with the Night Belongs to Michelob campaign. Michelob is a product without a niche today, but back in the dark ages before craft beer it was Busch's "premium" beer. This meant that it tasted slightly less watery than Budweiser, and cost a little more. As a premium product, Busch would have to have a premium ad campaign. What better way to show class than a commercial with Phil Collins and Genesis!

I am struck by the juxtaposition of the young singles in fashionable yet bourgeois clothes with middle-aged rockers Genesis. Did they think this was going to sell to both age groups? Did the makers of this think that Genesis was super hip? Phil Collins skullet should have disabused the ad execs of that notion. There's also the awful moment where a guy puts a move on a young woman and puts his hands behind her neck, bottle of Michelob in hand.

Despite those off notes, there is an irresistibly noir element to all of this. Neon signs. Steam rising from manholes. Rain slicked streets. The song may be 80s cheese, but there's enough minor key mood that it sort of works with the commercial. When I saw it back in 1987 as an 11 year old, it gave me a bit of a thrill. Is this what being an adult was like? Seductive glances from across the bar, geezer rock, and a Michelob in hand? It was certainly alluring than beer ads with animal mascots and outdoorsy men going fishing. Premium beer indeed.