Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 2, Summer 2000 | Page 89

A Drive Through the City: VW’s Safe and Delusional Urban Setting Here’s a simple question: why is the young, white, middle-class population of America bombarded with and stricken by black-populated urban images via commercials, television programming, MTV, BET, etc.? To attempt to answer the question, I am going to focus on a popular television commercial designed to promote the 1999 Volkswagen Jetta. It first appeared on Fox NFC’s playoff game in January of 1999. It was created by Arnold Communications, which also created the prize-winning “Sunday Afternoon” Volkswagen Golf advertisement (a.k.a. the “Da, Da, Da” commercial) of the previous year - two young men, one black, one white, driving aimlessly around town in the afternoon and temporarily finding an old chair for what we might assume is an empty apartment. Volkswagen, in fact, is spending more than forty million dollars on its Jetta advertising campaign in an effort to desperately increase American car sales in the next ten years. The engaging 60-second Jetta commercial begins with an opening shot of the black car driving towards the camera. It is beginning to rain, and we are treated to a view of wet asphalt, and legs passing by the camera’s view. We get a good look then of the young couple inside their brand new Volkswagen - dressed quite conservatively and casually, seemingly out for a drive with no particular destination in mind. The woman slips in a cassette and settles comfortably into the scenario. The music begins with a catchy beat that is matched perfectly by the flap of the windshield wipers. As in all commercials the music is crucial to set the tone and mood of the piece - but this ad gives the music an even more crucial effect on the commercial as a whole: the beat of the music is not only repeated in the beat of the windshield wipers, but it is repeated in the beat of all the individual movements outside the car as well as all the urban characters in the city setting moving exactly to the same beat. The result is a harmonious connection between what is being experienced inside the car and all the activity outside the car Everything around them conforms to the urban beat of their music, people walking, bouncing a basketball, even the image of a hand flashing its red warning to stop on the street light. What, one might ask (though we never do ask in the uncritical passive state of commercial browsing), is this couple up to? Why are they driving slowly down an urban street peering at the seemingly innocuous activity around th