In yet another example of cynically inappropriate song repurposing by television advertisers (see Iggy Pop's ode to heroin addiction, "Lust for Life," used to sell ocean cruise vacations, and then this), tonight I saw Laurie Anderson's "O Superman" promoting a cell phone!
It's only one of the most devastatingly bleak critiques of the technological age I've ever heard. It's 1981, and humans are replaced by their answering machines. Love is replaced by justice and then force. Mom is replaced by electronics, chemicals, and the military.
In case you think the producers of the commercial spot didn't bother to listen to the lyrics — making them not actually cynical but just lazy and dumb — the ad's storyline features people jumping gleefully out of an airplane. Viewers are thereby induced to start singing, "Here come the planes."
The unsettling irony created in the song at this point by conflating images of pleasure trips with those of air warfare is here reduced to a plain old post-modern embracing of opposites. Why shouldn't parachuting be a military exercise AND a fun thing to do with a bunch of friends? Why shouldn't love be human AND technological? As long as you can afford it, why not wrap yourself tighter in those electronic arms?
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2 comments:
Yes, Andrew. Was going to go off about this as well. The Laurie Anderson one really bothered me. And you say it very well.
Carol Anne here, above.
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