We sat on a couch with my sister as we watched the Super Bowl. She laughed heartily at many the commercials and said she thought they were especially good this year. We see so few commercials we really have no reference point. The big budget ads featured a parade of celebrities, Beyoncé, J.Lo, Arnold and even Messi but that only cheapens the appeal for me. I like to think I still have a sense of humor but I didn’t find them funny. There was one I found really interesting though.
Called, “He Gets Us,” (there were a few in this series that ran last year) one ad grabbed my attention with a simple technique. A series of still photos. Or rather carefully crafted, staged and lit illustrations of hyper real people in role reversal parts. A policeman washing a Black man’s feet. The ad is payed for by the Hobby Lobby family and their hate group foundations. There are multiple layers of deceit in the one minute ad and then a tag line that reads, “Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet.”
The illustrations were surely created with AI and the concept was probably generated with twisted prompts. The Times ranked the ads, Best to Worst, and included this disclaimer. “Religious, political and social advocacy spots were not included so He Gets Us was not included. USA Today ranked them all and He Gets Us came in at 44. For me, this one stood out from the pack.
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if that video was on rotation in a MoMA installation, it would generate a lot of art conversation.
(I didnt intend that to read so poetically)