I don't write a lot about advertising and I don't generally have advertising on this blog. However, recently my TV has been peppered with something quite intriguing. It's an ad for Apple that they have titled Frankie's Holiday.
I have heard it said that advertising is, in a certain sense, the height of cinematic art. Most people only see a particular movie once, but advertising is meant to be seen over and over again, and it has to attract you to the product, not repel you. Major campaigns for multinationals like Apple can have bigger production budgets per minute of content than most major cinema productions. The filmmakers have no more than two minutes to tell their story. The advertisement is the cinematic equivalent of haiku. Each word and image has to count.
They often crash and burn, but this one hits the spot with precision. One of the reasons is that it doesn't actually ask you to buy an Apple product. The i-phone is simply present throughout the story, facilitating the action. It works more like product placement, or sports sponsorship. Apple appears as the sponsor of Frankie's tale.
What is this tale? Frankenstein (the monster, not his creator), living in his remote (but in this version comfortable) home, records the sound of a little old-style music-box on his phone. Then he shambles into town and makes his way through the crowds (who gasp and shrink away from him) to the foot of the Christmas tree in the town square. Here, as the crowd looks on warily, he begins to sing his song - There's No Place Like Home (for the holidays), a sentimental Christmas number written by Robert Allen and Al Stillman and originally recorded by Perry Como in 1954.
Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays
'Cause no matter how far away you roam
When you pine for the sunshine of a friendly gaze
For the holidays, you can't beat home, sweet home
He grinds to a halt at the end of the first line but is helped out by a young girl who accompanies him on the second line, before the rest of the crowd relent and join in the following two.
As a story, it hits all the buttons and avoids all the possible causes of offence. The awkward outsider finds acceptance, the child inspires her elders to compassion, everyone is allowed to come home for Christmas. All the messages are inclusive - the song is sugary but religiously generic, the two main characters are male and female, the whole town is gathered in the square. The story is a two-minute version of one of those sentimental Christmas moves in which, thanks the the magic of Christmas and the goodwill of a precocious child, everything works out OK in the end.
What gives the story extra depth and makes it genuinely intriguing is its link with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, published in 1818. In Shelley's tale, Dr Frankenstein creates a living, intelligent being out of materials which aren't made explicit but appear to be parts of corpses, animating it by channeling lightning into its body. Once he sees his creation alive he is horrified by what he has done and flees, leaving the creature to his own devices.
The creature wanders alone in the world, exciting fear and loathing wherever he goes, before he finally tracks down his creator and and demands a companion of his own kind. When Frankenstein refuses the monster wreaks a terrible revenge. Eventually, Frankenstein realises that he needs to accept responsibility for his creation and gives chase in his turn, tracking him down and destroying him.
At the level of plot, the drama centres around the question - is the monster essentially evil, or is he made evil by suffering rejection from his maker and other humans? By his own account, he yearns for love and acceptance, but every time he reaches out for community he is greeted with fear and loathing. Eventually he feels he has no choice but violence and destruction. Frankenstein himself is not so sure, but Shelley allows the question to stand.
Psychologically, the monster represents Frankenstein's shadow self, to use Jung's description - the aspects of himself that he would like to deny and suppress. Jung suggests that if we attempt to suppress this shadow it will come out in uncontrolled and often destructive ways. To be psychologically healthy we need to own and become familiar with it in order to turn it to good use and become mature people. This means that the popular attribution of the maker's name to the monster itself, while technically incorrect, is psychologically perceptive.
Apple rewrites Shelley's story, turning it from a tragedy to a comedy. The monster is initially rejected but ultimately accepted. The child who first approaches him takes a huge risk - Shelley's monster is superhumanly strong and resilient, and not to be trusted. Yet just as Shelley's monster has a tender, even sentimental side, watching the lives of loving families from afar and yearning to join them, so Apple's monster longs for a home and eventually the townspeople provide him with one.
This is an important message for us to hear, despite being brought to us by an ethically questionable global mega-corporation. We are so quick to demonise people, to assume the worst and to ostracise those we fear - Muslims, black people, bikers, homeless people, terrorists. Yet the message of Christmas (whether or not we like to use that word) is that grace is available for all of us, that those we most despise are likely to be the most loved by God.
Yet by making the monster a gentle, misunderstood sentimentalist Apple is letting us (and itself) off the hook. Evil and danger cannot be simply wished away or airbrushed out of the story. It is not simply misunderstood, it really is evil. Nor is it simply "out there" in the monsters and criminals of the world, it is also "in here", in each of us.
Jung does not ask us to whitewash our shadows, or to pretend that they are really glowing lights. He asks us to look them in the eye, own them as part of ourselves and deal with them appropriately. If we do so early enough, and skillfully enough, we will not have to follow Dr Frankenstein's path and chase a relentless enemy in a fight to the death across the arctic tundra. We will have them close beside us, directed constructively and thoughtfully rather than allowed to roam unchecked.
I suspect this shadow includes Apple, a corporation that makes clever gadgets but uses third world sweatshops, planned obsolescence and tax avoidance to boost its profits at the expense of the poor. But it also includes me, with my laziness and self-centredness which often deprives these same poor people of my more modest resources. And it includes you, with whatever your shadow consists of. The message of Christmas is that we need not fear these shadows because, as John, tells us, the Word has become flesh and dwelt among us.
What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
I have heard it said that advertising is, in a certain sense, the height of cinematic art. Most people only see a particular movie once, but advertising is meant to be seen over and over again, and it has to attract you to the product, not repel you. Major campaigns for multinationals like Apple can have bigger production budgets per minute of content than most major cinema productions. The filmmakers have no more than two minutes to tell their story. The advertisement is the cinematic equivalent of haiku. Each word and image has to count.
They often crash and burn, but this one hits the spot with precision. One of the reasons is that it doesn't actually ask you to buy an Apple product. The i-phone is simply present throughout the story, facilitating the action. It works more like product placement, or sports sponsorship. Apple appears as the sponsor of Frankie's tale.
What is this tale? Frankenstein (the monster, not his creator), living in his remote (but in this version comfortable) home, records the sound of a little old-style music-box on his phone. Then he shambles into town and makes his way through the crowds (who gasp and shrink away from him) to the foot of the Christmas tree in the town square. Here, as the crowd looks on warily, he begins to sing his song - There's No Place Like Home (for the holidays), a sentimental Christmas number written by Robert Allen and Al Stillman and originally recorded by Perry Como in 1954.
Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays
'Cause no matter how far away you roam
When you pine for the sunshine of a friendly gaze
For the holidays, you can't beat home, sweet home
He grinds to a halt at the end of the first line but is helped out by a young girl who accompanies him on the second line, before the rest of the crowd relent and join in the following two.
As a story, it hits all the buttons and avoids all the possible causes of offence. The awkward outsider finds acceptance, the child inspires her elders to compassion, everyone is allowed to come home for Christmas. All the messages are inclusive - the song is sugary but religiously generic, the two main characters are male and female, the whole town is gathered in the square. The story is a two-minute version of one of those sentimental Christmas moves in which, thanks the the magic of Christmas and the goodwill of a precocious child, everything works out OK in the end.
What gives the story extra depth and makes it genuinely intriguing is its link with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, published in 1818. In Shelley's tale, Dr Frankenstein creates a living, intelligent being out of materials which aren't made explicit but appear to be parts of corpses, animating it by channeling lightning into its body. Once he sees his creation alive he is horrified by what he has done and flees, leaving the creature to his own devices. The creature wanders alone in the world, exciting fear and loathing wherever he goes, before he finally tracks down his creator and and demands a companion of his own kind. When Frankenstein refuses the monster wreaks a terrible revenge. Eventually, Frankenstein realises that he needs to accept responsibility for his creation and gives chase in his turn, tracking him down and destroying him.
At the level of plot, the drama centres around the question - is the monster essentially evil, or is he made evil by suffering rejection from his maker and other humans? By his own account, he yearns for love and acceptance, but every time he reaches out for community he is greeted with fear and loathing. Eventually he feels he has no choice but violence and destruction. Frankenstein himself is not so sure, but Shelley allows the question to stand.
Psychologically, the monster represents Frankenstein's shadow self, to use Jung's description - the aspects of himself that he would like to deny and suppress. Jung suggests that if we attempt to suppress this shadow it will come out in uncontrolled and often destructive ways. To be psychologically healthy we need to own and become familiar with it in order to turn it to good use and become mature people. This means that the popular attribution of the maker's name to the monster itself, while technically incorrect, is psychologically perceptive.
Apple rewrites Shelley's story, turning it from a tragedy to a comedy. The monster is initially rejected but ultimately accepted. The child who first approaches him takes a huge risk - Shelley's monster is superhumanly strong and resilient, and not to be trusted. Yet just as Shelley's monster has a tender, even sentimental side, watching the lives of loving families from afar and yearning to join them, so Apple's monster longs for a home and eventually the townspeople provide him with one.
This is an important message for us to hear, despite being brought to us by an ethically questionable global mega-corporation. We are so quick to demonise people, to assume the worst and to ostracise those we fear - Muslims, black people, bikers, homeless people, terrorists. Yet the message of Christmas (whether or not we like to use that word) is that grace is available for all of us, that those we most despise are likely to be the most loved by God.
Yet by making the monster a gentle, misunderstood sentimentalist Apple is letting us (and itself) off the hook. Evil and danger cannot be simply wished away or airbrushed out of the story. It is not simply misunderstood, it really is evil. Nor is it simply "out there" in the monsters and criminals of the world, it is also "in here", in each of us.
Jung does not ask us to whitewash our shadows, or to pretend that they are really glowing lights. He asks us to look them in the eye, own them as part of ourselves and deal with them appropriately. If we do so early enough, and skillfully enough, we will not have to follow Dr Frankenstein's path and chase a relentless enemy in a fight to the death across the arctic tundra. We will have them close beside us, directed constructively and thoughtfully rather than allowed to roam unchecked.
I suspect this shadow includes Apple, a corporation that makes clever gadgets but uses third world sweatshops, planned obsolescence and tax avoidance to boost its profits at the expense of the poor. But it also includes me, with my laziness and self-centredness which often deprives these same poor people of my more modest resources. And it includes you, with whatever your shadow consists of. The message of Christmas is that we need not fear these shadows because, as John, tells us, the Word has become flesh and dwelt among us.
What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
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