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Popular Culture Review
but converse, or dribble a basketball, or play with a yo-yo. So why are they there in
their shiny new black car, driving slowly, looking uncomfortable but fascinated, in
one shot their turn signal on as if they might be pulling over to the curb? At one
point the female passenger watches out of the corner of her eye as two young men
attired in wide-leg jeans walk down the sidewalk synchronized to each other and
the ubiquitous music - music, we remember, which comes from inside the Jetta
and conforms to everything going on in the urban scene around it. In another kind
of encounter, featuring the same personnel, we might feel a certain threat of
approach, but each momentary threat, such as the young black man seemingly
approaching the car only to interest himself instead in the newspaper he is opening,
seems to be diverted elsewhere. In fact, no one pays any attention to the car as it
stealthily makes its way through the city streets. However, interwoven carefully
and symbolically amidst the individual scenes as we move through this commercial’s
urban tapestry is the color red\ it appears on the walls of buildings, among the
apparel of the players on the street, in the flashing turn-signal of the Jetta itself,
and especially on the heavy handed red hand-warning flashing on the signal light
- all to the harmonious beat that brings together the interior and the exterior of the
Volkswagen. Why the red-light warnings - caution, stop, danger? Why, in fact,
would a commercial trying to persuade us to feel good about owning an automobile
go to these detailed extremes in creating these symbols and scenes which obviously
are there to momentarily remind us of the dangers of a young white entrance into
an urban area?
Engagement. We are drawn to scenes that remind us of an elemental
understanding of social and personal reality. The urban scenes prevalent on
American television, MTV, BET, sitcoms and a host of commercials bring the
middle-class white teenage consumer a constant representation of a sensual
existence through black urban experience. The arena is, after all, the center of
dance, rap, trouble, risk, sex, and drugs. If you’re not alive there - and the '‘danger”
only makes it more real - you’re not alive anywhere, especially in the “virtual”
safety of the suburbs. We are drawn there, like the couple in the Jetta, in order to
experience a “life-affinning encounter.” Volkswagen, via Arnold Communications,
needs to engage a new generation, since sales must climb in the next ten years in
order for Volkswagen to compete with both Japanese exports and American cars.
They need to bring not just young consumers into the fold, but they need to get the
attention of teenagers for the not-so-distant future - the way Bud-wei-ser gets the
attention of kids who, ten years down the line, will know the name of the alcohol
product through the adorable lizards as if it had been rhymed endlessly in a dozen
Dr. Seuss books.
O f the over fifty percent of young adults who have tried illegal drugs in
their lifetime, more than half made their connections through some urban channel