Chevy Cuts Deep

“America’s founding ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more—and nothing less. The rest—everything that America achieved, everything she became, everything “noble and just,” and heroic, and great, and unprecedented in human history—was the logical consequence of fidelity to that one principle. The first consequence was the principle of political freedom, i.e., an individual’s freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by the government. The next was the economic implementation of political freedom: the system of capitalism.” – Ayn Rand

In this advertisement, Chevrolet is attempting to be excused for it’s notoriously unpopular and characteristically unAmerican acceptance of government money. “America” is not an aggregate of particular traditions or institutions – or folk dances or cooking styles – it is the result of the individual’s commitment to individual rights. A to-a-man refusal to let one’s own rights be violated and a principled respect for the rights of others; no matter how tempting or desperate the situation might be. America would be America regardless of what it’s citizens choose to do with their lives, so long as they adhere to the principle of individual rights. When they do not, it is not “America.” When Chevrolet claims that the government must violate the rights of other Americans to keep it in business, under the excuse that it is “too big to fail”, or now that it is “deep” in America’s identity, the people who comprise Chevrolet are not being Americans. They are enemies of America – just the same as foreigners who explicitly do not believe in it’s ideals. They do not deserve an exception because they “aren’t just any car company, they are Chevrolet”; they deserve to have their rights taken away.

To be an American means to hold certain political principles, and to hold political principles – any political principles – one must be equipped with the ability to conceptualize at a fairly high level. This is precisely the skill that most people today who call themselves Americans lack; and that is what this commercial exploits. Instead of thinking deeply about what America is, Chevrolet asks the audience to focus on the superficial similarities shared by Americans (it’s culture and romanticized history), and to ignore the principles which should define them, and then unite them, as Americans. What is particularly dishonest about this commercial is that in doing so – with it’s genuine music, it’s appeal to history, and it’s use of morally-loaded concepts like “integrity” – is that it gives the impression to the viewer that he has thought deeply about what America is when he actually hasn’t.

The commercial claims that “today the American character is no less strong [than when Chevrolet went into business].” If so, then why would Chevrolet think that such a dishonest commercial would actually work?

Indirectv

The reason why this commercial is expected to be funny to every day people is because every day people – regardless of their conscious political beliefs – are in fact subconsciously aware of how out of control their government actually is. It violates the rights of individuals in a myriad of ways each and every day, but because its always done indirectly, politely, in ways that are so common most people don’t even realize what they are losing, and because such actions are always given a moral (ie: altruist) justification, it doesn’t bother most people enough to do anything serious to oppose it.

This commercial gives those people relief. It lets them think to themselves “at least they’re not doing that” (even though they might as well be, because what they are doing is tantamount to this). Directv wants to be liked not for the quality of their products, but in a personified manner. The company wants to be seen as being able to understand it’s customers and the things that secretly trouble them – all so that it can encourage them to purchase yet another product that will help them avoid having to take that subconscious awareness, turn it into conscious understanding, and then, maybe, do something about their out of control government.

Really?

The reason why people spend too much time on their phones is because the software is either too slow or poorly designed? Really?

This is the “getting out in front of it” tactic, and has been discussed on this blog here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. It consists of acknowledging a problem, demonstrating it in absurd, out-of-proportion, and highly unlikely manifestations, and in doing so making it seem like it is okay to continue to indulge the cause of the problem. The advertiser is trying to convince the consumer that because his problem isn’t this bad, it isn’t really a problem. Or, at least, because he acknowledges it as a problem he therefore is ipso facto in the process of solving it, and therefore it is okay for him to continue to indulge it’s cause.

However, set all of that aside for a moment. Suppose that acknowledgment actually is the first step in resolving relatively small, yet extremely difficult to isolate, personal problems. Also suppose for a moment that commercials such as this one actually do help sufferers embark on the process of solving such problems (instead of just further twisting their awareness of the problem’s existence). Then this is the first commercial using this advertising tactic to not only fail to actually help the consumer acknowledge the problem, but simultaneously intentionally appear to do so. It is the first commercial to use the “getting out in front of it” tactic in a twice-removed fashion. Not only is an acknowledgment via an implicit, begrudged admission – and defended (perhaps self-defeatingly) by humorous satire – not really reliable as the first step in lasting change, but “acknowledgment” that misidentifies the source of the problem as some non-essential detail like poor software design is not really acknowledgment at all.

The actual reasons why people spend too much time on their phones (or on all kinds of media, for that matter) are vast and complex. Disgust and boredom with the real world, fear of it, some kind of neurological reprogramming that makes the slower pace and higher effort demands of real-life experiences excructiatingly painful are all probably factors. If it were simply the case that poorly designed software has made effective technology use slower than it should be, then technology use would be at all-time lows – not all-time highs. History would show a directly inverse relationship between technology speed and technology use. The fact is that more and more time is wasted looking at computer and telephone screens precisely because there is more and more opportunity to distract oneself from one’s real life in an ever more efficient and entertaining manner.

It is true that all of the products being sold via this marketing tactic – especially modern cell phones – have redeeming qualities, so going “cold turkey” may not be the best option. Acknowledgment is definitely a necessary and useful step – and while that should never be a product advertisement’s primary purpose, it can be an appropriate side benefit. But to take advantage of that fact simply because, if challenged, one can confidently hide behind the excuse of “What would you have people do then? Not use cell phones at all?” is disgraceful. Undoubtedly the macro-economic situation in America is currently dreadful. Large, heavily-leveraged companies like Microsoft can have very little confidence in the direction of it (since the current taxation and regulatory structure makes their long-term strategies forever contingent upon the unpredictable whims of government policy) and thus have little incentive to target anything except short-term gains, but the solution is not to further inculcate in the population at large – via one’s advertising – the same kind of dishonest, short-term thinking that caused the dreadful situation in the first place. That is like saying our culture is the way that it is not because what it values is invalid, but because those values are improperly implemented – and that “it’s time for our culture to save us from our culture.” The problem is that our cultural values are invalid!

Nothing can save a person from the ill-effects of wasteful technology use except a clear understanding of what he finds interesting in media and why; and what values he is wasting by implication and why. Which means: an identification of his values, what is attacking or perverting them, and a commitment to reorganizing them (and thus preserving himself). Similarly, nothing can save a culture or it’s economy except a slow, thorough reexamination of what it has come to value, a realization of what they actually mean in every day terms (eg: a culture full of media-addicted compulsive escapists), a rejection of those values and a replacement with the values it believes it has held all along, but because they were never actually understood, never actually has.

More Questions Than Answers

The reason why Directv now has movies available on it’s pay-per-view service a month before Netflix does on it’s internet and mailorder services is actually the result of a consensually-reached deal between it and a handful of movie studios. The studios are of the opinion that the future of movie consumption is through PPV, beyond that of internet downloads, mail order, in-store rentals, and even to some extent beyond the theaters. So why announce what is, if correct, an actually productive step forward (even for those people who are momentarily losing out because of it, and even if they don’t now realize or agree with it) via a dramatization of crime? As if the natural progress of an industry – the adoption of new business models and the necessary obsolescence of others – were a zero sum game?

The reason is that that is the culture’s conception of business, and Directv believes that in order to ingratiate itself with the consuming public it must show itself to be of the same opinion. People may not approve of the superior refusing to sacrifice themselves to the inferior, and the spectacle of the superior surpassing the inferior, and they may not take their convictions seriously enough to actually avoid purchasing Directv’s new product, but they would certainly be offended if the company were to say proudly and openly that it has simply bested it’s competition fairly and squarely.

Constrast that approach to public relations with this one:

This is a startling, all too rare explicit admission by a capitalist organization that it not only understands, but believes in and regards as good, the competitive nature of capitalism. It is willing to risk the economic performance of one of it’s actual products, and thereby experience actual economic consequences should they be wrong, by having it associated with such an unapologetic homage to what it believes is the engine of progress.

Of course, in comparing and contrasting these two approaches to public relations – where one is a choice to avoid controversy by cloaking one’s actions in conventional morality and the other is a deliberate attempt to create it – a glaring bit of irony must be noted. Research into the situation surrounding the motion picture industry reveals that PPV operators such as Directv are in fact the only one who have not attempted to use lawsuits (ie: force) against the movie studios to achieve their ends. Movie theater operators – through their trade organization – as well as movie kiosk operators (eg: Redbox) have both sued various movie studios in recent months; attempting to dictate to them terms favorable to their businesses. Simultaneously, and in direct contrast, in the automobile industry, it is General Motors who is only auto manufacturer who has benefited as a result of government favoritism. If not for it’s status as “too big to fail”, GM would have done just that. They can play lip service to their respect for their competitors – and the nature of capitalism as such – but in truth they are the most non-capitalist player in their industry, if not the entire American economy.

The General Motors commercial featured here is to be praised – it is daring and theoretically accurate – and the Directv commercial should be condemned as short-sighted and twisted – but one must wonder two things: First, is Directv’s timidity to advertise the actual reasons for it’s recent success simply a matter of “picking one’s battle”, or is it simply the actions of a pragmatic company which, if ever necessary, would behave exactly as it’s competition? And second, is GM’s two-year-old willingness to sing the praises of fair competition a genuine desire to slow down and reverse the anti-capitalist direction of the economy or simply an attempt to escape popular condemnation for being the non-capitalist organization it actually is?