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Can Rosa Parks Sell Pickup Trucks?Chevy's icky, exploitative new ad.

By Seth StevensonPosted Monday, Oct. 9, 2006, at 7:40 AM ET

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The spot: Singer John Mellencamp leans on the fender of a Chevy pickup, strumming an acoustic guitar. He sings, among other things, "This is our country." Meanwhile, a montage of American moments flies by: Rosa Parks on a bus. Martin Luther King preaching to a crowd. Soldiers in Vietnam. Richard Nixon waving from his helicopter. And then modern moments: New Orleans buried by Katrina floodwaters. The two towers of light commemorating 9/11. As a big, shiny pickup rolls through an open field of wheat and then slows to a carefully posed stop, the off-screen announcer says, "This is our country. This is our truck. The all-new Chevy Silverado."

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This ad makes me—and, judging by my e-mail, some of you—very angry. It's not OK to use images of Rosa Parks, MLK, the Vietnam War, the Katrina disaster, and 9/11 to sell pickup trucks. It's wrong. These images demand a little reverence and quiet contemplation. They are not meant to be backed with a crappy music track and then mushed together in a glib swirl of emotion tied to a product launch. Please, Chevy, have a modicum of shame next time.

I should probably leave it at that (the poor ad is just trying to sell trucks, after all, in its own muddle-headed way). But this isn't your basic flag-waving car commercial. It mixes patriotic images with some heart-rending, shameful episodes from our past. And the ambiguity is furthered by the presence of John Mellencamp—a guy who, in a different incarnation, used to make semipolitical statements about the dark side of the American dream. A guy who wrote an open letter in 2003 arguing that the Iraq war was "solidifying our image as the globe's leading bully" and wondering why President Bush hadn't been "recalled" yet. Mellencamp once sang the line, "Ain't that America" with a decidedly bitter tinge. Now he sings the remarkably similar line, "This is our country," and it's hard not to wonder what he means by it.

Especially when Chevrolet adopts the phrase in a major ad campaign. Sure, you could dismiss those words, the way they're used in the ad, as meaningless, vaguely patriotic nonsense (and as a mild rip-off of Budweiser's "This Is Beer" slogan). But they're also a bold claim: Chevy's going to tell us what America is. And what exactly is America, in Chevy's view? Well, for one, of course, it's a light-duty, full-size pickup truck. But it's more than that, too. Listen to the chief creative officer at Chevy's ad agency, quoted in the press release: "We hope that 'Our Country. Our Truck.' [the title of the spot] will inspire people to think, 'Yeah. These are the bruises and scars that have shaped our nation, and we have rebuilt ourselves spiritually, emotionally and physically.' "

Ambitious stuff. Let's break down the ad piece by piece:

Mellencamp sings, "I can stand behind ideals I think are right" while we see Rosa Parks sitting on a bus. Fine, good, terrific. I think we can all stand behind the ideal of racial equality.

Next he sings, "And I can stand behind the idea to stand and fight," while we see soldiers in a field in Vietnam, helicopters chop-chopping above their heads. Wait, what? Is this a defense of the Vietnam War? A declaration that we pulled out too soon—should have been more willing to "stand and fight"? Is it a sly statement about our present Iraq dilemma? Is Chevy making the salted peanuts argument?

Next line: "I do believe there's a dream for everyone." Here we see MLK, dancing hippy freaks at Woodstock, and 1960s peace marchers. OK, so there's room in Chevy's worldview for some anti-violence memes, too. But are we meant to celebrate America both for getting into Vietnam and for getting out of it?

Here's where it gets introspective. Mellencamp sings, "This is our country" while we watch Richard Nixon, post-resignation, waving from the helicopter that will whisk him away from the White House in disgrace. That's our country? Shamed politicians? Drab, mid-'70s melancholia? Bummer, man.

But it gets worse. Mellencamp blah-blahs some empty lines like "from the East Coast, to the West Coast," while the ad shows footage of: 1) raging California brushfires, 2) Dale Earnhardt's stock car (presumably before he crashed it into a wall and killed himself), 3) Katrina floodwaters, 4) the 9/11 memorial. Yikes!

I realize the notion being pushed here is that we'll face these hardships together and—aided, perhaps, by the hauling and towing capacity of a 2007 Chevy Silverado—overcome them. That's why the Katrina and 9/11 shots are countered with scenes of firefighters and people rebuilding houses. But I still don't understand the purpose of including all this bleak stuff in the first place. (Other than to get some attention for pushing the envelope, which—for an established, down-to-earth product like a Chevy pickup—seems a misplaced goal.)

Maybe the red-state viewer, to whom the ad is likely directed (I assume that's the main target market for pickups), interprets the overall statement as an optimistic, can-do, morning-in-America kind of thing: We've come through the bad times and we're ready to kick some ass again. But to me, this spot feels more like the advertising equivalent of Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech. It arrives at an awkward, unsettled moment in the American psyche (underscored by the 9/11 and Katrina imagery in the montage), and it almost seems the ad hopes to capture the essence and feeling of that moment. Dredging up all these depressing incidents in our recent past, and then saying, "This is our country," sure seems like an effort to address our "crisis of confidence."

I guess I'd ask Chevy: How'd that strategy work out for Carter?

Grade: D. Automotive blog Jalopnik reports that an early version of the ad included footage of a nuclear mushroom cloud. Well, that would have brightened things up. I wonder if they could squeeze in the Rodney King beating and the Abu Ghraib photos, too.

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Seth Stevenson is a frequent contributor to Slate.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

I have seen an ad recently showing Abraham Lincoln playing cards with some kind of rodent to sell, I believe, sleep medicine. It is intended to be funny and I can't help but wonder why people do not raise the same fuss over that. Didn't he get assasinated?

Who sets the standards for what is sacred? How is it that people like Parks and MLK are promoted to the Pantheon of American heroes but must be treated with hushed reverence and are place above reproach in a way that someone like Lincoln is not?

--Saru

(To reply, click here.)

I think Chevy is trying to say that there's bad and good about America, but it's our country so it's part of who we are. If we lose any part of what makes us American, we lose part of who we are. We are strong enough to look at who we are, warts and all, and love our nation. This is not a bad thing in itself.

Here's the tricky part: Chevy wants us to accept them as quintessentially American. That means they can get away with having good and bad, but, because they are "America," we need to accept them warts and all, too. The only problem is that most people don't see any big company as quintessentially American anymore. Just because your most highly paid executives live in the US, just because you once employed a lot of Americans, well, that doesn't mean that you haven't off-shored a huge chunk of your work. And, if you have NAFTA'd a huge chunk of your business, you don't get to play the "America" card to explain your warts.

--DeaH

(To reply, click here.)

Chevy is deliberately invoking fear to sell trucks. They are suggesting that if you have to live in a country full of racial tension, war, corrupt politicians, natural disasters and terrorist attacks, that you might feel better sitting behind 4 tons of steel. People are buying giant cars and trucks because they want a sense of safety and security behind the wheel. Even small cars look more aggressive these days---with their big grills, large panels and smaller windows. People want to drive a fortress.

--kadc

(To reply, click here.)

As a citizen of Michigan, I can tell you another drive/buy American campaign is long overdue. Good for Mellencamp. And don't give me any crap about the percentage of parts on American cars built in other countries. It is the UAW workers that are being laid off by the the thousands, while Toyota and Honda take over the market. People are more than willing to boycott when workers in third world countries are hurt by our purchasing practices, but I don't see any left wingers boycotting foreign autos, while Detroit, Flint, Ypsilanti, Saginaw....are hit by an economic Katrina.

--jhammer

(To reply, click here.)

Back when the "Think Different" ad campaign came out, Apple promoted it using images of famous people who 'thought different'... inclusing Rosa Parks.

If it's ok to shill a computer using Ms. Parks - why is it wrong for Chevy to do it?

It's possible they got her permission to use it - but some of the people on their list I would be hard pressed to believe wanted their image used to sell a computer.

Like Ghandi?

And from what I've read of Ms. Parks, I don't think she would have wanted it either.

--TheWerewolf

(To reply, click here.)

(10/11)

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