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