hey, big spender
I have many talents, but there's one thing I do better than absolutely anyone I've ever met. I am a fucking genius at identifying celebrity voiceovers. Whereas some viewers of advertisements are lulled into a state of ripe consumerism by the voice of a familiar actor that they have not consciously identified as familiar, my ears will perk up and I will almost always be able to identify whose voice it is before the end of the ad.
Julia Roberts for AOL.
Richard Dreyfus for Nissan.
Stockard Channing for AIG Insurance.
Patricia Clarkson for BMW.
All of these recent examples, however, prompt the question, "Why the fuck are so many celebrities doing ads these days?" This interesting article in Slate examines the phenomenon in the context of the history of advertising, but I don't think it goes deep enough. It seems like every celebrity is doing this these days, and we're not talking minor league celebrities like Suzanne Summers hawking the Thigh Master. This is Julia-highest-grossing-female-actress-Roberts we're talking about!
Of course, when it's a voiceover you're hidden by a cloak of anonymity. But there are big name actors who aren't afraid to put their mug right out there for a product (think of those American Express ads with Robert DeNiro, and now Kate Winslet). I'm excluding fashion ads from this, because I think we all can see why stars might be in fashion ads. But pens??? Both Julianne Moore and Johnny Depp (for the love of God!!) can be seen on a number of telephone billboards in the Gramercy Park area promoting some classy fountain pen. How did this come about? Did the pen representative approach them at the Independent Spirit Awards or something and demonstrate his wares? Using Johnny Depp (who's so famously anti-establishment) to promote your product is a brilliant strategy. You're like, "Whoa, if Jonny Depp likes that pen so much, it really must be good! It must, like, save starving children in Africa or something!"
Which brings us, of course, to the political implications of all of this. I think a lot about celebrity voiceovers (especially since identifying them is my most unique talent), but it wasn't until the other night when I heard George Clooney's voice on TV extolling the virtues of Budweiser that I got worked up enough to write this post. There's no way that George Clooney drinks Budweiser. In fact, I would suspect that -- like most limousine liberal Blue Staters -- he has almost no respect for Budweiser as an organization. Yet, he'll use them to earn some extra spending cash.
This pandemic of celebrity endorsement is further evidence of the long reach of the tentacles of multinational corporations. It has started to get me worried about art as a pursuit. I'm not going to get all sanctimonious on you; I know that art and commerce have been intertwined since the age of Shakespeare. And I certainly don't fault George Clooney for doing a stupid commercial film like One Fine Day (remember that one? romantic comedy with Michelle Pfeiffer?) so that he can produce more edgy, less bankable work. I understand the principle behind that and I accept it. But at least in that situation, the artist is still functioning as an artist and not trading in on his associations (which for George Clooney make him the Hollywood equivalent of Eliot Spitzer, a leftie heartthrob) to be a salesman pure and simple.
Maybe it's always been this way and I've only just now cottoned on to the extent of the corruption. It was only really this past year, for example, that I thought to myself, "Hey, the Tony Awards are just one big advertisement!" That's what they are -- a commercial advertisement created by an exclusionary cabal of capitalist racketeers intended to lure impressionable Midwesterners to the Big Apple to "experience the joys of live theater." If the purpose of the show were really the awards, then the bulk of it would not be taken up by huge glitzy musical numbers for show that aren't gonna win any awards (Sweet Charity). If it were really about honoring artistic work, then the nominees would not be restricted to work that was performed in a handful of specific theaters not distinguished so much by their geographical location (i. e. "Broadway") as by the people who own them.
Commercial structures can produce great art (cf. Elizabethan theater or much of the output of Hollywood before 1945); they can create great popular art, which is harder to do. It's easy to make acclaimed work that appeals to a limited group of overeducated, elitist snobs or to affluent philistines looking for a little intellectual cachet to rub off on them (which is essentially what all "non-commercial" theater in America does these days).
In America, we have one big come-on masquerading as a culture. When supposedly "liberal" stars and media outlets are falling all over themselves to be just as profit-hungry as the robber barons they scold, you realize that everyone, everywhere is buying into corporate culture, some are just afraid to show their faces doing it .
posted by Brian @ 7:30 PM
5 Comments:
Brian--
I have been meaning to write you more about this post since I read it on Friday. I was just so impressed and pleased that at least someone besides myself and the late comedian Bill Hicks had flesh crawlings issues from the growing corporate schill factor in Hollywood. Obviously it's so hard to start drawing lines, because everyone is selling themselves anyway... But he was one who railed against that amongst his contemporaries and sort of instilled that value in me. Obviously, struggling actors throw themselves into commercials to get themselves out there, and it's childish and sad but we can all look the other way because it's everyone's first trick turned. But it's particularly shameful coming from people who don't need the money. And that's an odd term, because who doesn't need "the money." The point is, the work that they are getting paid hand-over-fist for is commercial work that requires them to be salesmen, not actors. These are all people who would have no trouble getting work acting if they were willing to diversify, stay on top of and create their own projects, etc. It's really easy to have someone approach you with a contract for millions of dollars to put your recognizeable face on a product line, and not have any responsibility for having led millions of people to choose that product, whatever it's features and faults are. Why should the trusted voice of James Earl Jones lead me to the price gauging that is Verizon. Something is amiss about that. And why isn't JEJ making some quality made for TV movies right about now. Although, I guess if your primary source of work is Voice-Over, then most of what you do are commercials, in which case, you are mainly a salesman. Are all actors salesmen? Can there be art created without inherent desire that man is forced to capitalize on. It's an issue that puzzles me as an artist that wants to adhere to some values of artistic merit, but also wants to make money and be able to maneuver a career. It's like being a politician. Which is sick. And the last thing that someone creative, rebellioous and outspoken ever wants to do. I am just so glad that you posited this as a topic of discussion. I had this feeling that the majority of performers/consumers were sort of past this issue. Or didn't see it as an issue at all. Or maybe I am just a brainwashed nay-sayer. But I say nay. To something. Not sure what.
Desiree --
Yeah, it's true that all artists are salespeople (except perhaps tortured souls like Kafka, who keep most of their art to themselves and try to have it burned upon their death), but there are DIFFERENT ways to be a salesman. Some, I would argue, are more legitimate than others.
I have no problem considering myself as a CRAFTSPERSON, selling his creations the way that a builder or a seamstress sells his or her wares. In fact the term "-wright" (as in playwright) is a medieval term for a craftsperson (as in shipwright or cartwright).
I don't think you can fault artists for doing work where they are serving as legitimate craftspeople and are seeking fair compensation for the work they do. Actors should be paid for their contributions to moives because their performances provide education/enlightenment/dsitraction to the audiences that come to see the films. But when movie stars work in ads they're not really practicing their craft. They're pimping out their talent to others. I would also argue that they do the same when they work on crappy moive projects that are more like big corporate advertisements than like individually considered pieces of filmmaking craft.
It's all about the degree of talent and consideration that an artist puts into his or her product, rather than allowing him or herself to serve as a tool for corporate types hoping to capitalize not on the artists' talents but on their images alone in order to make a sale.
Brian,
Great posting. I've been thinking a lot about the bankruptcy of popular culture these days. I think that the problem goes even further than you say (but not than you think, I know). Without great popular art that represents (let alone celebrates) the lives of ordinary people and their struggles and victories without commodifying them we've created a society in which the highest dream seems most often to be to be like Johnny and own a Mont Blanc pen.
I've been super nostalgic (as only a historian can be) for the Popular Front art of the 1930s and early 1940s, in which in some important ways and for a brief moment the bottom informed the top, including even Hollywood and Nelson Rockefeller. That moment ended with McCarthyism. Unfortunately the carrot opiate of consumerism is far more powerful than even the stick of anti-Communism.
Karen --
I can always count on you to add a very learned historical perspective. You've seen "The Cradle Will Rock," right? That movie certainly makes one nostalgic for the days of socially enaged art -- it makes you wish you lived through the Depression, in fact!
But times have changed and the government (of the United States at least) would never fund projects like that anymore. In some ways, I'm inclined to say that's good. That means there are absolutely no strings attached and revolutionary artists have to fend for themselves to create work, rather than begging for grants from Uncle Sam and getting (relatively) fat and lazy (and politically watered-down) for doing so. The problem is that few people seem to have any fire in their bellies to do that hard work of operating outside the corporate culture anymore. It's a failure of the imagination as much as anything else. Probably the majority of artists in America are left-leaning and we sympathize with Popular Front-types, but we've become too jaded and ironic to actually believe that a better world is possible. Drugged out on the opiates of consumer pleasures, our wider political horizons have narrowed.
hey voice identifier guru can you tell me whose doing the nissan ads now? IT'S DRIVING ME LOCO! thanks
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