Brooke And Bob



April 7, 2001



BOB GARFIELD: Now our inaugural edition On the Media's exclusive feature: Important Stuff We Couldn't Fit Anywhere Else in the Show. Brooke, what do you have this week?

BROOKE GLADSTONE:I have a commercial. This is the controversial commercial of Martin Luther King "selling" communications equipment from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The way that the commercial has it -- it's a commercial for a company called Alcatel Americas [sp?] -- King is delivering the I have a Dream speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 but the crowd of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of spectators has been digitally erased, and King is completely by himself, speaking. And then at the end of it there's a voiceover that says:

MALE VOICEOVER: Before you can touch--

REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: ...that all men are created equal...

MALE VOICEOVER: -- you must first connect.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: The reaction to this commercial has been uniformly negative from all over the country. Leonard Pitts [sp?] in the Chicago Tribune said I'd like to connect all right -- my foot with the backside of whoever conceived and approved this piece of historical vandalism.

And then we have Barry Saunders in the Raleigh News and Observer saying ironic, isn't it, that the dude survived attempts by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to destroy his image, yet that image is being sold and sullied in death by his own family.

I could read more, but I think these couple of responses are pretty typical of what we've seen.

BOB GARFIELD:Well allow me to stake out a contrarian point of view. Also, let me put on my advertising critic hat for a moment. Look if you frame the question as what could some multi-national fiber-optics stringer have to say that possibly measures up to the defining moment of this country's civil rights struggle, the answer is obviously nothing. But you know I don't think that's how to frame the question.

Alcatel's question essentially is if the defining moment of the civil rights struggle fell on Washington small and nobody had been there to witness it, would it have made a noise? And I think that's an interesting inquiry! I think it's a legitimate inquiry! I don't believe this commercial in any way dishonors Dr. King or his message or in any way cheapens it.

Now we live in a society where advertising and everything else about the commercial culture cheapens almost everything that is sacred to us from President's Day and, you know, you celebrate Memorial Day by going down to the Chrysler Dealer for the big sellathon, and you know I don't think this commercial in any way approaches the sort of commercial crassness of those.

The NAACP has been fairly vocal about this. There's a lot of people concerned with what they think is the King family profiteering on Dr. King's image but you know whether the King family is doing that is I think irrelevant to the question here, and that is does this commercial paint this speech and this moment in history in a flattering way or in somehow in an irreverent way, and for my part I'm annoyed with the digital animation effect they use cause it makes Dr. King at some point look like a character in a video game.

But the substance of the thing I found actually quite inspiring and the question it raises I, I think is perfectly legitimate.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:I really disagree. I don't think it dishonors his message, but I think it certainly diminishes and dilutes it, Bob. I mean the fact is, there are certain things that are meant to be simply what they are and not stand for anything else. It's true, Christmas has been diminished and we go out and buy mattresses on Memorial Day Weekend.

But this country has still lived that moment, was alive during that moment, and because the race struggle still exists, is still very present, I think this moment ought to be preserved in amber as it was for what it was.

BOB GARFIELD:Well I certainly understand. I think for the moment anyway I'm going to stay out here in Contrarianville, and let's talk now about a second commercial. This one was from the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals promoting spaying of house cats, and it was submitted to a cable network but rejected on the grounds that it was too pornographic. It was of course two house cats or at least animatronic puppets of house cats doing the dirty to some sort of percussive and I think erotic musical bed.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And the network in question was MTV!

BOB GARFIELD: MTV! [LAUGHS] rejected a commercial because it was too erotic. What is that all about?

BROOKE GLADSTONE:[LAUGHS] What that is about, Bob, clearly is hypocrisy. As one PETA rep said is carnal knowledge between cat puppets more problematic than seeing one of Sisco's [sp?] Thong song dancers waving her buttocks at the camera?

BOB GARFIELD:In all probability they never really expected to get this commercial aired anyway. This is a kind of rejection marketing wherein you create a spot that you know will be controversial and you really don't have a lot of money to put on TV, but you create one that you're almost certain will be rejected and then you take the rejection and get tons of publicity for it, far outstripping anything you might have achieved by actually having some minor media buy.

So I, I think this has worked out famously for just about everybody except possibly MTV.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well thanks Bob for being on On the Media.

BOB GARFIELD: No, Brooke, thank you for being on On the Media.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You're welcome.

BOB GARFIELD: No, you're welcome.