That Feel-Good Feeling
Star-Spangled
Bonds , produced by Peter Mullett Films/Kershner & Co. for U.S. Savings
Bonds.
Star-Spangled Bonds
strings a series of luminous limnings aimed straight at the heart. It taps--and
markets--the image of America as the land of milk and honey, of opportunity and
prosperity, of freedom well earned and much valued. Nothing novel about the
advertising techniques here: But they're put to effective use, and are unlikely
to offend in this era of peace and plenty, where the political battles in
Washington seem so completely irrelevant that pollsters are hard pressed to
elicit strong reactions from their public. Not that the spot raises the
specters of isolation and apathy, of course. Star-Spangled Bonds '
America is involved, concerned, and while the spot does draw explicitly on the
country's speckled history, it is careful to take the edge off.
Set, appropriately, to the
"Star-Spangled Banner" (à la Jimi Hendrix), and presented montage-style, the
spot mines the collective memory for its material. There are shots aplenty from
times of war and protest: the curve of a fighter jet; Iwo Jima, in black and
white; a Black Panther's finger snap; battlefield comradeship; a civil-rights
clash; the dun and dunes of what appears to be Operation Desert Storm; an
anti-Vietnam War rally; then the Vietnam War Memorial, in sunset silhouette.
And there's plenty of fuzzy stuff--a shot of a child playing with fluffy white
pigeons; of a fiercely bespectacled towhead whooshing down a slide; of a happy,
freckles-and-ice-cream-spattered face. No in-your-face politics, perhaps, but
children and their rights remain sacred in the public eye--even Republican
conservatives didn't dare oppose the Kennedy-Hatch plan of health care for kids
paid for by cigarette taxes, part of this summer's bipartisan budget bill.
Threading the collage is the
word "freedom," presented on the unlikeliest of canvases--on a scrap caught on
a wire fence, on the black-leather back of a biker's jacket, on a green road
sign. In each case, the word is first brought to life with a few images, then
rounded off by a question that is answered by the images that follow. For
example: A shot of the wire fence merges, via the pigeons in the park, into
sepia scenes--winged feet in the wild West; an ancient merry-go-round--and
comes to brief rest on a sign emblazoned on the side of a bus: "What is it?"
The montage continues, familiar scenes reminding us what freedom has come to
mean. It's about popping a wheelie on your mountain bike, framed by the Golden
Gate. It's about acing a race, tasting the rain, reaping a new harvest,
mourning a loss, watching a rocket blast into space. This is freedom hard-won,
the fruit of wars and sacrifice and struggle. "How much does it cost?" "How do
we protect it?" The unlikely--and more than slightly jarring--response reminds
us that freedom is as tenuous as it is precious, that the current sense of
plenty must be zealously guarded: "Take stock in America," we're told. And,
against a shot of a savings bond, backdropped by a waving flag: "Buy U.S.
Savings Bonds." A discordant note, this one, but an effective reminder that
there's more to the feel-good feeling than just feeling good.
--Robert
Shrum
