The Art of Recontextualization in Commercials

(I apologize that every link in this note sends you away from the page, but just simply click the back arrow after watching them).

Lately, I've noticed many commercials are employing the art of recontextualization. For example, The Careerbuilder.com commercials place office supplies, furniture, and workers in a jungle (which represents a Hobbesian state of nature, i.e., survival of the fittest in a short, brutal life) to exhibit how office workers just try to "survive the work week."

Image from the Careerbuilder.com's Jungle series.

Picture use courtesy of http://www.justforlaughs.com/

Link to commerical: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCsLITgWzTI

Gotta love the post-it note horn blower (and the cinematography as well). In the new Honda Ridgeline commercials, the company is juxtaposing descriptionally and conventionally oppositional but desirable elements of a car like "tough meets classy" by exhibiting figures who represent the one into atmospheres that stand for the other. In the "tough meets classy" commercial, a well-worn and filthy Chuck Norris (Walker, Texas Ranger...I wish you could hear me singing the theme song) enters a fine dining area.

Image from Honda's Ridgeline commericals
Picture use courtesy of http://www.worldnetdaily.com/images2/norrisad.jpg

Link to commerical: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-nPto9zmSo

In Snickers' newish commericials for their "Snicker Dark" chocolate bars they show a viking, a pilgrim, an indian (and other unidentifiable but presumably iconic historical types) at a gas station. Snickers' purpose for the use of these figures is that they are presenting their product as a "feast." Pilgrims and Indians are obviously related to the Thanksgiving feast and the image of a Viking is usually directly related to huge, indulgent meals. So, Snickers, or more correctly, Mars is recontextualizing the historic feast with their product as the object and contemporary society as the place with hilarious results.

Image from Snickers Dark "Feast" Commercial

Picture use courtesy of http://thumbnail.search.aolcdn.com/truveo/images/thumbnails/07/2D/072DF8AC994998.jpg

Link to Commerical: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEYEFfAbB5g

(This next bit is a tangent from my topic [this just a blog!] but is interesting nonetheless) In the commercial, the pilgrim comes out of the store to inform the viking that there were no more snickers bars. The Viking gets angry and throws a trash can at a car. Then, the pilgrim says that the store did have new Snickers Dark bars and the Viking proceeds to celebrate this message in the same way that he displayed his anger, by throwing the trash can.

The fact that the viking used the same action (with different grunts) to celebrate and to display anger touches on how a passionate person walks a thin line. Passion can beget much enthusiasm and energy but that same positive emotional outpour can quickly turn destructive. We see this after a sports championship is won and the crowd borderlines on riot status like the burning and smashing that went on after Super Bowl XL in Oakland: http://video.aol.com/video-detail/superbowl-xl-riots-burning-couch/2548737745.

In this case, the Viking's positive and negative actions are the same. The result of which cancels out motive. What's it matter what he was thinking if the result is identical? If a viewer had been passing by and hadn't heard the pilgrim (and the difference between the Viking's grunt was indistinguishable from a distance), he may be under the impression that the SAME EVENT (sequence of causes and effects) has just occurred twice (The Viking threw a trash can and hit a car. The Viking threw a trash can and hit the same car in the same spot). And physically, the same event did happen (as much as temporally separate events can be the same), just with different reasons. Do these separate reasons make it a different event? Are two works by two artists different if they look exactly the same? (what if they grunt differently while they make them?)

Anyway, it would be really interesting to compare these contemporary commercial flavored recontextualizations with art historical ones like Duchamp's Fountain, Warhol's Brillo Box, Oldenburg's Clothespin (or any of his other giant objects), Kosuth's definitions, etc. and see how the motivations and results parallel or differ. Such is an exploration for another time.

Before I go, another series of commercials I want to point out are the Pioneer ones. Here's a link to one of them http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1vMUexTKUE&feature=related
Now, you tell me that it doesn't remind you of video art's explorations of the body (Acconci, Nauman, Sherman, Arnold, McQueen, etc.)?


Thanks for reading

(The writing in this blog is a little confused but I hope you get the gist...commercials are recontextualizing things...I like this...how does it relate to "the art world?")