Advertising runs in cycles. One year it sings of Honest Workers, the next it extols the virtues of Triumphant Capitalists. These frightening archetypes still pop up, but 1989 saw the birth of a peculiar new fashion as well: meaninglessness. Having discovered how profitable it can be to sing the praises of both Young Babbitt and the horny-handed son of toil, admen this year wised up to the value of inane, lofty-sounding babble.
Even more important, however, is the “natural” theme evoked by the rocks and by the “transcendental” name “Infiniti.” These are hints to the prospective car buyer that owning an Infiniti is an act in harmony with the universe–a kind of Wordsworthian vision quest. Here we have a subtle attempt to trade on the prestige of Japan’s fabled enigmatic culture. The Germans–the ad seems to tell us–are cold, authoritarian maniacs in lab coats who march in goose step. Japanese, on the other hand, are mystics and aesthetes–a people who love sex, and death, and rocks, and luxury cars.
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Almost as peculiar as the Nissan campaign was the interminable Germanic sermon on the meaning of life offered up by the head of Porsche, an aging gentleman named, if memory serves, Mr. Porsche. As grainy black-and-white film clips of racing cars rolled by on the TV screen, Mr. Porsche spoke gravely, and for what seemed an eternity, of the endless search for human perfection and meaning in the universe. His attempt to link automobile engineering and Aristotelean theoria failed miserably, leaving the hapless viewer to stare in confusion and impotent rage.
Here are a few philosophical doctrines and their advertising updates.
Traditional Boring and Incomprehensible Meaning: Man’s existence is radically contingent and his consciousness is nauseated by its own absurdity. He is condemned to circle endlessly around the ultimate questions of his existence.
Lenin’s Critique of “The Withering Away of the State” and the Theory of Class Struggle
