OK. I have six deadlines in the next week and I shouldn’t be writing this but I’m struggling with my loyalties here. I have loved Audrey Hepburn since I was a kid. As only a short, kind of rounded young woman can look up to a sleek icon with a heart. AND I love the Internet. And technology. And sampling. And now, I don’t know what to think.
The Gap has taken a scene from Funny Face, when Audrey Hepburn, the young existential book store clerk turned model, on her first trip to Paris, runs off to a smoky coffee house where her philosopher hero (of course he’s a fake and a bit of a cad) hangs out – and decides to dance. The Gap has taken this essentially sweet scene and sampled it, mashed it up, stuck it into hip hop and multiple-image edits and generally made a cute little commercial about black pants. It isn’t disrespectful to her – just jazzed up. And it isn’t in bad taste. Or anything. It’s even clever. It’s also the first time I’ve been this ambivalent about altered images. I hate colorized movies. I love sampling in music. I’ve heard Larry Lessig speak and think he’s right about a lot of his Remix theories. But this one seems to bring out all of the above. Here’s the link – what do you think?
I admit I had heard about it but hadn’t seen it yet until just now. The advertising person in me says that it’s clever, tasteful, incredibly well-produced, and the use of ACDC is pretty funny. It will get them a lot of attention and the pants will be a huge hit.
But the me in me – it makes me uncomfortable. I can’t quite put my finger on it yet but I don’t like seeing her this way. I can live with her being used to sell their pants simple by being herself (the way they used Marilyn and James Dean to sell khakis way back when). But seeing her this way somehow turns her into a trained monkey at the circus, performing against her will while a manic trainer cracks a whip and screams, “dance! Dance”
I’m the same way–I think the commerical is really clever and catchy, and I can’t help watching it every time instead of skipping right through it like all the rest of the ads. But at the same time it makes me uncomfortable. I wonder if I would feel the same if I wasn’t such a Hepburn fan, if they had used an actor I wasn’t familiar with.
It wasn’t a hip-hop song, it was ACDC’s back in black. It is a song about meat band ACDC’s lead singer coming back from the dead (literally) and rocking out. So if your definition of “good taste” is a reanimated corpse of Audrey shilling pants, then great. The beauty of the ad is that the ad agency is kind of laughing out of the side of their mouths at people who don’t know about the song. funny stuff.
Hi,
I just saw the Gap commmercial that uses Audrey Hepburn images to sell peg-legged black pants. Liz Gumbiner wrote in her blog that she was struggling with images of Audrey cut to meet today’s nano-second editing style and backed by “hip-hop” music. The music is not hip-hop. It’s 80’s rock group AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” which is in and of itself quaint and retro. Gap used an image from the 60’s, and music from the 80’s to sell vintage-style pants in 2006. They are depicting the ever-evolving versatility of a simple black pant. Good advertising if you ask me.
Tracy Gilchrist,
writer for Curve magazine.