It's All Too Much

I'm pretty sure that this video deconstructs itself, but allow me just a few words of comment.

I first saw this video when I watched the Michael Phelps/Husain Bolt games a few weeks ago, known in some parts, I gather, as "The Olympics." But evidently the commercial had been airing for some time now--I just don't watch much television.

So first of all, the music, which is what I know best. The commercial uses as a backing track "Sunshine of Your Love" by Cream. However, I would guess that it's not the original version of the song from Disraeli Gears (incidentally, one of the LPs I stole from my dad's record collection), but a copy of it newly-recorded for the occasion by some studio musician geeks. I say this because I think that Just for Men would have actually had to negotiate with Cream (or whomever own their music these days) for the rights to use the original recording. It's probably cheaper just to pay the standard royalties to cover the song and get some guys to copy the original sound as faithfully as possible. (And you should all know that I'm resisting the postmodern urge to put "faithfully" and "original" in scare quotes.) This also works because the snippet of the song used in the commercial is instantly recognizable to the desired audience without the use of vocals--which are harder to copy exactly (there's a Barthesian/Benjaminian argument about grain, aura, and presence here, but we'll pass it by). In fact, "Sunshine of Your Love" may be relatively unique in being a "classic" rock song (couldn't resist the scare quotes there) that has a fairly long instrumental section (at least, long enough for a 30-second commercial) that is still easily recognizable. And, interestingly enough, it shares with other candidates for this honor --such as "Smoke on the Water" and "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"--a heavy reliance on our old friends, the first, second, flatted third, fourth, raised fourth, fifth, and flatted seventh scale degrees of the blues scale. I will leave it to you to reflect on the implications of that.

Anyway, so this commercial is clearly meant to be appealing to Baby Boomers, a generation that includes those born in the United States between 1945 and about 1960. I just finished reading a hilariously polemical book by Joe Queenan titled Balsamic Dreams: A Short but Self-Important History of the Baby Boomer Generation that gets at some of the things that I find interesting and amusing about this commercial. Queenan writes:

"Baby Boomers are embarrassing the entire nation through their misguided obsession with remaining youthful in both appearance and behavior in spite of the biological facts and social imperatives working against them. Traditionally, older people in most societies have functioned as wise, respected mentors to younger generations. But how could any young person today possibly take advice from a fifty-three-year-old man wearing a baseball cap turned backward, perched on roller blades, who is contemplating a stint at Burning Man?"

Burning Man (which, did you hear, had a major dust storm?) may be a bit too edgy for this crowd. But other than that, the obsession with youth is one of the things I find most interesting about this commercial. And, by the way, I don't think that Baby Boomers are alone in being obsessed with their youth. I think everyone is, but the Baby Boomers may be the first generation with the size, influence, and economic clout to have entire industries devoted to recapturing, re-living, and replaying their youth. This is particularly apparent now that Baby Boomers are all reaching retirement age--and perhaps a newfound freedom from the responsibilities of work and raising children, a freedom they haven't experienced since, well, the sixties. Maybe they'll be entering a second sixties now of free love (aided by Viagra and Cialis this time, not the Pill) and antiwar protest. Let's twist again, like we did last summer, even if last summer was 40 years ago.

In other ways, though, I don't think that commercials like this (and the topic that I study, tribute band performance) are really about re-living or re-experiencing a past. I think they're about experiencing it for the first time. I think most Boomers didn't go to Woodstock, didn't live in a hippie commune in San Francisco, weren't at Kent State. And yet, they've had (and we've all had) an endless parade of mediated images from these events and assorted talking heads and other "experts" telling us that these are the really important events, these are the events that defined a generation. But how terrible to be ostensibly a member of the Baby Boomer generation and to have missed out on the things that are, apparently, basic to your existence.

The good news is that you've got another chance. You can party, protest, and play guitar in a rock 'n' roll band. "Just take those old records off the shelf," as Bob Seger says. But first, why not just get rid of a little bit of that gray.