Reid About It

With the current financial crisis, I'm going to take today to go get a warm coat, a trash barrel to light a fire in, and a new spoon to take down to the soup kitchen. My retirement account is paying out in wampum, so I'm going to take advantage of the day off to go sell some blood, urine, and kidneys.

In my place today, I've asked an old friend to step in for a guest column. Whit Watson is a cohort of mine in ye olde television sweatshop. He's the lead anchor for Sun Sports Network in Florida, and blogs at Sun Sports website. He's a pretty big deal. He has his own wikipedia page, for crying out loud. Not even Julie Tam has that.

Whit's like me, a sports guy who also has an eye for pop culture (like John Hughes movies, Sonia Dada, and pre-cocaine arrest Barenaked Ladies).

Thanks to Whit for stepping in to pinch-hit for me, check out his columns over at Sun Sports and tell him I sent you.

---

This, I believe, is the first sign of the apocalypse: JCPenney is doing "The Breakfast Club."

For those who haven't seen it, the venerable department store chain recently released a TV ad campaign for its line of teen clothing that features spot-ond reenactments of the 1985 John Hughes classic. Here, an exterior shot of Shermer High School; there, a kid with a passing resemblance to Emilio Estevez pulls on the drawstrings of his hoodie. The dancing scenes in the library are absent the pot smoke, of course, and the montage shots of the kids sliding around in the hallways while evading Principal Vernon are not terribly true to the original, but for the most part, the ads are scary good. Even the camera angles and lighting appear completely accurate. The film's iconic title track, "Don't You (Forget About Me)," is acknowledged by way of a very catchy cover - it's not Simple Minds this time, but New Found Glory. Not surprisingly, an EP with five different cover versions of that tune was available for purchase online as soon as the ads were released.

Sigh.

The obvious has been stated many, many times already, particularly on blogs that follow the advertising industry: the movie is 23 freaking years old. Which means, of course, that the subtlety and accuracy of the ads is completely lost on the kids who might actually wear this stuff. Sure, maybe they've seen it on DVD, but they didn't grow up with it. It was no seminal film of their youth. For that matter, I have no idea what films might fall into that category for a teenager today, and won't embarrass myself by hazarding a guess.

(Sidebar: I have an 8-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter. The last movie I saw in a theater was "WALL-E." If there's a film in theatrical release from the last nine years that doesn't feature an animated version of a talking car, animal, robot, mythical creature, or toy, I haven't seen it. I'm digressing.)

The obvious conclusion - the painful, grating, pisses-me-off-more-than-it-should conclusion - is that these ads are not aimed at the kids. They're aimed at their parents, who not only can identify with these scenes, but will theoretically bask in the warm glow of nostalgia as they pull their credit cards. And seeing as how I've just identified "The Breakfast Club" as a seminal film of my generation, well...

Those ads are aimed at me.

In my case, they missed. As noted, my kids are too young for the clothes being peddled. For that matter, I was only 14 when the movie was originally released. However, if one were, say, an 18-year-old high school senior in 1985, that would place one at or around a 41st birthday right about now, plenty old enough to have a child of at least 12. Further, if 1985 was your graduation year, there's a pretty good chance that your memory of that movie is further romanticized - Hell, it's 50-50 that "Don't You (Forget About Me)" was the theme of your senior prom. If that doesn't get you skipping off to Penney's with your sullen teenagers in tow, I don't know what will.

Naturally, someone at Penney's ad agency (in this case, the giant Saatchi & Saatchi) thought of all this. In fact, I predict that the concept, when pitched, was considered a "home run," or some other cliche typically spouted by advertising people. But it's not, for two reasons:

One, because it pisses me off that this film, which was such an integral part of my most impressionable adolescent years that I can nearly recite it verbatim to this day, has been co-opted into an ad for JC freaking Penney's. And no matter how terrific those ads may look, no matter how expensive they may have been to create, "pissing off the viewer" cannot possibly be on Saatchi & Saatchi's to-do list. And I cannot be alone. If this were to become a trend - if the JCPenney ad were to be followed by similar treatments of "Pretty in Pink" or "St. Elmo's Fire" or, God help me, "Fletch" - there will be torches and pitchforks, people. Torches and pitchforks. We are in denial about our age. Don't screw with us.

The second reason why this ad fails the mark is because JCPenney ignored the Disney Principle (which should probably now be renamed the Pixar Principle) of any form of entertainment that hopes to attract both kids and parents: you must entertain Mom and Dad without Junior realizing it.

If Junior thinks that Mom thinks a commercial/movie/song is cool, Junior will reject it out of hand. I guarantee that right now, legions of teenagers are resisting parental attempts to go shop at Penney's precisely because Mom thought those ads were "cute." It's a kid thing. If, however, Mom and Dad are snorting at subtle jokes that only they can understand, while Junior is laughing at the obvious, kid-friendly humor - THAT is how one hits a "home run."

Exhibits: "Aladdin," "Little Mermaid," "Toy Story," "Finding Nemo," "The Incredibles," "Cars," "Madagascar," and a dozen other animated films I’m too lazy to go look up. What they all have in common is a sufficient supply of in-jokes and subtle nods at adult sensibilities to keep Mom and Dad entertained, while leaving the scenery-chewing antics intact for the kids. "Aladdin," in particular, is probably the alpha dog of this category thanks to Robin Williams, who could barely keep it clean for the entire film - the exact sort of razor's-edge humor that will compel the parents to stay seated.

Put it this way: during the "Prince Ali" number, Williams' Genie makes a 2-second reference to the old Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade broadcasts -- "Aren't they lovely, June?" - complete with visible breath, as if it were cold outside. I have seen that movie 20 times with my kids, and I chuckle at that line every...single...time.

Further, I would submit that the "High School Musical" phenomenon falls into that category. Fact is, the kids can dance, and they can sing. The music is reasonably catchy, decent enough to play in the car with the kids and not drive oneself batty. "Barney" it's not. Again: keep Mom and Dad entertained without Junior knowing it.

The JCPenney ads, while brilliantly executed and cleverly conceived, miss on this front, because the kids aren't going to get it. And if you only go for the parents, you're only starting the battle, not winning it.

And seriously - if I see "Weird Science" as an ad for anything, I'm gonna start cracking some skulls.

-- Whit Watson