Barack Vs. Hillary 1984: But What Does It Meeeean?

So the MSM is buzzing about the anti-Clinton, pro-Obama ad that takes the Apple "1984" ad and casts Hillary in the role of Big Brother (and, I guess, Barack's supporters in the role of hottie blonde hammer-thrower). Here's the clip:



First, let me get my political leanings out of the way. It's still pretty early in the process, so I haven't decided which candidate I'll be supporting in the primary. After the last two electoral debacles, I hope that the Democrats put up a candidate that can energize the population, especially people who voted for Bush but are now disillusioned enough to consider voting Democratic, but I'm a big old bleeding-heart commie liberal, so whoever the Democratic nominee is in '08, I'll be voting for him or her.

So that's where I'm coming from. As far as the "ad" itself, I have a couple of pretty big problems with it, as well as with the MSM's response to it.

First of all, I can't believe the sloppy blow job this ad got from the San Francisco Chronicle. So far, just about every article I've seen online refers back to Carla Marinucci's article, where she serves up the sort of breathless, dealthless prose usually reserved for new product launches and invasions of Middle Eastern countries. According to the experts/quote whores Marinucci talked to, this ad is "a watershed moment in 21st century media and political advertising" which "could have the iconic power with the 21st century political generation that another classic political ad called "Daisy" represented to Baby Boomers."

Pretty heavy stuff, but I don't buy it. First, it's not all that technically amazing. I'm no special effects guru, but looking at the ad it doesn't seem like whoever did it really did all that much. They took the original ad, replaced Big Brother with Hillary Clinton, and put Obama's logo on the hammer thrower's shirt. Big deal. Even 23 years after its original airing, I have a visceral (positive) reaction when I see the Apple ad -- it was a great piece of advertising and one of the first well-known uses of that sort of anti-authoritarian message to sell products, and for that I applaud Apple and Chiat/Day. When I watched this version, I had a little bit of the same feeling, but after thinking about it for a few seconds I realized that was due to the original ad itself, and not this re-working of it.

Which leads me to my biggest problem -- this ad is intellectually lazy. What does it mean? The original ad set up a very clear syllogism: IBM was Big Brother, and as they gobbled up market share they were imposing their Way on the poor defenseless computer buying public, who didn't even know they were being duped. It fell to Apple to stand up for the rights of the poor, dumb sheep and subvert the dominant paradigm (and if that subverting could be done by a fit chick in shorts, all the better).

Whether or not it was true was irrelevant -- the medium quickly became the message and Apple immediately became identified as the anti-corporate corporation, the computer company that let you stick it to The Man by buying its products. It's a corporate stance that Apple has clung to since, and it has served them well, from "Think Different" to the iPod to the John Hodgman TV ads. I'm sure we'll see more of it when the iPhone hits the streets.

But the analogy falls apart in this reworking. How is Hillary Clinton Big Brother? She's in power, sure, but Obama has the same job she does, and I find it hard to believe that her four additional years in the Senate (or even her eight years as First Lady) gave her some sort of overlord-like power that Obama lacks. How is Barack Obama a plucky underdog revolutionary? Yes, he's the first African-American with a reasonable chance at a major party's nomination (sorry, Mr. Jackson & Mr. Sharpton), but Hillary is the first woman with a reasonable chance at a major party's nomination. I'll call that a wash on the underdog-revolutionary scale.

So what dominant paradigm, exactly, is Barack Obama subverting with respect to Hillary Clinton? Or, to put the burden of proof elsewhere (since Obama is apparently not involved in the production of this clip), what do the creators of this mashup (or, for that matter, Carla Marinucci) think it means? What do they want to accomplish? I have a sneaking suspicion the answer has less to do with paradigm-subverting and more to do with job-getting. Until the creators identify themselves, we won't know, but something tells me we won't be in the dark for too long.