Eating our Icons. (Comic by Dan Piraro)

What IS the appeal of these imaginary spokespeanuts and mascots and similar characters in mass advertising that embody the very same product that their companies would have us consume? How does our brain respond to the cognitive dissonance of a cartoon tunafish selling us tunafish to eat? How does the child’s brain process the implied relationship between, say, the character of Mayor McCheese in the Playland and the Quarter Pounder available at the nearby counter at the local McDonald’s restaurant? How do we disavow the “unnatural” and “disturbing” undercurrent to advertising mascots, as expressed by this surprisingly frank commercial for M&M candies from the early 2000s?

I find this advertisement — featuring Patrick Warburton (Seinfeld’s “Putty”) vastly interesting. Beyond the “unnatural” situation — which I’ll focus on in a moment — the setting of this exchange is very telling. It is located in a convenience store that seems a nostalgic throwback to the general “candy stores” of an unidentifiable past. Why does this matter? For one, it situates the story of the ad in the context of economic exchange, but one where no exchange is really happening, save for the actor’s parental scolding and taking away of the candy. The commentary feels realistic in its dark commentary, but the story is still situated in a fantasyland, and it is one which is aligned — dreamily, hazily — with the past for the viewer. The Ms are like “kids in a candyshop” and Warburton plays the adult parent who comes into the shop to scold them.

It matters quite a bit, I think, that the proprietor behind the register is not minding the store, has his back turned when Warburton walks in, and disappears quickly from the image. This allows a situation to transpire that is odd, because normally the clerk would be the one chiding the candy to stop eating the goods he is trying to sell. Instead, we have candy doing nothing at all but hungrily eating more candy, implying a scenario where “the cat is away, so the mice must play” but also providing a parody of the consumer who merely induges his desire to consume without much thought. The M&M characters are not just cannibalistically, but hedonistically indulging themselves in the store, but doing so in a way that is represented as juvenile and childish, allowing the shopper (Warburton) to take on the role of both consumer and parental authority figure, who speaks, ironically, with the voice of reason. It is as though his consumption is valid, but there’s is not an acceptable display of it. The world without consumerism — the theater of the store prior to Warburton’s arrival — is uncivilized, or as animalistic and bestial as it is cannibalistic. The consumer’s exchange — Warburton’s chiding — employs a civilizing effect on the scenario, with the “natural law” (“you don’t eat your own kind…it’s unnatural”) being applied by the consumer’s authority.

This is not the book of Deuteronomy; this is an M&Ms commercial. Commerce is the operative word. The M&M’s try to swap their “colors” but this mutual exchange is not acceptable to the consumer, because it is not a “real” exchange with any symbolic gain. There needs to be some semblance of gain: thus, the consumer takes the candy bags away — getting it all to himself in the process. The popping of an M&M on the way out the door is a symbolic reward, but it also suggests quite clearly: you don’t eat your own kind, but a superior being is free to eat the lower forms…like the juvenile, animalistic, cannibalistic, uncivilized candy. In other words, a hierarchy between parent/child and consumer/product is reaffirmed here and that is the key lesson of the commercial’s “story”: you are not free to gobble up the goods of capitalism — you need to pay for the privilege, and paying makes consumption of ANOTHER KIND perfectly okay.

In other words, it rationalizes the exploitation of the other, in a very self-congratulatory and superior way.

Perhaps I am over-analyzing what amounts to a darkly comedic joke, but often such jokes do relate to unconscious desires, and one of the lessons of the Uncanny is that laughter is just as much a response to the return of the repressed as is a scream. As this commercial and the Bizarro comic up above make clear, there is a cannibalistic undercurrent to the funny and comedic world where animated icons and product spokesmen are normalized. Why else does the Pillsbury Doughboy giggle when we put his brethren children in the oven? Why else does the Michelin Man smile when he asks us to drive on the very rubber flesh that constructs him?

Advertisers employ the literary conceit of personification and the technologies of animation (or costuming) to lend their product an aura of “life” — this, preposterously, gives these icons the implied power “beyond nature” that comes with their status. But it is not so much the living-dead commodities that are embued with this power. It is the manufacturer — the magic machinery of the dough factory, the tire factory — that are attributed with some “secret” power in the process. This is what is meant by “commodity fetishism”; we begin to treat the products of the factory as if they were created by a god or a token of a higher being, instead of something created by the hands of man. Advertising, as Raymond Williams has put it, is a magic system that perpetuates this fetishism of commodities. This may sound like a lot of weight to put onto the back of Mr. Peanut or an M&M candy, but one of the lessons of studying the popular uncanny is that the more unnecessary and empty a consumer good, the more the supernatural is drawn into its marketing and advertising to sell us on its value. If one colored bag of candy is the same as any other, then perhaps the claim that “you don’t eat your own kind” is really betraying a secret fear that this economic system really is a form of self-cannibalism, after all, by trying to disavow it through an imaginary alternative universe, where what we eat is not us, and is not ours, but something magically Other altogether.

Pea Green Boat e-magazine on The Uncanny

Pea Green Boat is an online magazine of curious and compelling miscellany, publishing issues that collect articles and snippets on unique themes. The current issue of PGB (Spring 2012) focuses on The Uncanny.

I should say up front that one of my articles, on “Eyebombing,” is reprinted from this very site. But PGB’s Uncanny issue includes a diverse mix of variations on the topic, which makes for a compelling if not downright entertaining and thought-provoking read. There are plentiful discussions of robots and cinema (Tintin, Tron, Metropolis, Real Steel), interviews with relevant figures and creators (a new interview with author Tanith Lee is a headliner here, along with interviews with bio-ethicist James Hughes and owners of a museum of automata, Michael & Maria Start), and samples of poetry, research, reviews, humor and more on all things uncanny, from the proverbial uncanny valley to the creepiness of dolls and optical illusions. It even includes a reprint of Freud’s seminal essay on “Das Unheimliche” and a nicely-illustrated version of ETA Hoffman’s “Der Sandmann,” which Freud copiously analyzes in his essay.

Cabbage Patch Kids in the Maternity Ward

My favorite contribution in the Uncanny issue of Pea Green Boat is the historical article on “The Uncanny Valley of the Cabbage Patch Dolls,” which traces the frenzied events surrounding this weird-headed phenom from the 80s, citing a book by William Hoffman on the subject that really got me thinking, paired up with a great discussion by Ramona Creel on “Babyland General” — a Cabbage Patch theme park in Cleveland, Georgia that sounds genuinely fascinating. [See Roadside Attractions for more on this real world 'patch' -- or better yet, drop by the Cabbage Patch Kids website for information on how to set up a visit or to 'adopt' your own doll, fresh from the sprout!]

Now Available!

“…the uncanny return of the body in all its messy “bodiness” against the ineffective mediation of words, of culture, of technology, of all idealizations that try to move us toward abstraction and away from our smelly, gurgling selves, is characteristic of Arnzen’s work. Not new in horror, of course, it may nonetheless be the kind of horror those in the grip of the promise of new technology and its seeming power and mastery over the world needs to hear.”

I recommend the hardcover edition, which includes several additional articles and bonus poetry, as well as a “horror poetry writing workshop”. If you’re curious, investigate this book at amazon.com or directly from the publisher at Raw Dog Screaming Press.

What makes this commercial so great is all the horror film iconography — from the ever-present scream to the use of ambulatory mannikins — to treat its, admittedly, very vague subject. I think my favorite spot involves a woman opening her mailbox and screaming at the endless stream of junk mail that pours out of it, reminiscent of horror films where rats stream out of a sewer. The commercial ranges in references to Invasion of the Body Snatchers to They Live. It is clear to me that the message is about getting rid of fine print and weaselly language in direct mail and sale materials, but judging from the commentary this campaign is generating on facebook, not everyone understands this and most people are simply annoyed by it).

The ad is really a build-up in anticipation of (as of this writing, tonight’s) “reveal” of a special change in the department store giant’s marketing structure. JCP even brashly announces on their facebook page that “On 2.1.12 we’ve got the biggest news in jcp history (Yeah. We’re talking big time here, since we’ve been around for 110 years).” This commercial also has a great tie-in app on its facebook page called “The No Meter!” in which you can literally scream “Noooo!” at the website and the meter will measure your rage and give you a cheeky comment about how potent your screams are.

Scream at JC Penney's No Meter

Whatever JCP has in store for us, I find it fascinating that this advertising campaign appropriates consumer rage at ads into an ad that is a ploy for consumer loyalty. There’s something inherently contradictory here. And it is using the appeal of tropes of the uncanny to sell us on it. But it is using more than just the directorial horror film references that one can easily spot in the commercials. It is using extratextual parlor tricks.

The No Meter is an excellent example of a modern day “fortune teller” machine, an automaton of sorts that invites humans to interact with its mechanism (or in this case, program) in order to “uncannily” respond with an interpretation of their emotions. It plays on the concept that the computer “app” can really “listen” to you and respond. It is, in other words, the domestication of the funhouse parlor trick, the exotic stuff one used to only find on Coney Island, now broadcast in your home office, living room, laptop, and cell phone.

This folksy sort of hokum reminds me of the horror movie ballyhoo of William Castle — who, in his classically campy title, The Tingler, had Vincent Price taunt audiences to “scream for your lives” by yelling at the movie screen in order to kill the monster that was loose in the theater. The gimmick — called Percepto — notoriously included wiring theater seats with joy buzzers that would go off to try to induce screaming.

I’ll be watching the development of this campaign. I can only imagine what it will be like in the shopping mall next time I visit… I suspect that fun-loving folks familiar with this stuff will scream for laughs whenever they walk in or near the store, and for as long as this cultural memory survives, the mall will echo with these goofy “nooooo!” shouts, reminiscent of a scene from Dawn of the Dead.

The Tingler: Scream for Your Lives!

Note how Freudian these ads are in their symbolism. The number one pick is literally a series of dream scenarios offered up for viewer interpretation. The truth is, ALL ads are dream scenarios to begin with, so Nudd’s selectio of this one — while being the most “freakiest” — is also at the same time the most honest.

I am always interested in advertisements for chewing gum (the first chapter of The Popular Uncanny focuses on the history of gum advertising in fact), because they must go out of their way to grab our attention and “sell us” on buying something akin to food — that is, something we chew but never swallow, in a simulacra of consumption.

Here’s one from the list that is the most audaciously Freudian I’ve seen in quite awhile: a video from the “Unexpected Turn” campaign for Vivident Gum:

Another uncanny ad that struck me from the “freakiest” list is the giant ear that moves of its own accord, in ESPN’s Sports for Your Ears advertisement. An obvious example of animism, with an ambulatory body part taking on all the characteristics of a sports fan, but it’s more like a wacky dream than an advertisement. I find it telling that in the opening of the ad, the ear is shopping, and when it is at work it is a psychologist (subtly recalling (if not directly referencing) the faux radio host Frasier from TV: “I’m listening”).

Some in the list are hilarious. Some are disturbing. Some are not safe for work. Most employ the uncanny to sell a product. See them all at AdWeek.

Leave a post if you want to tell us which ones you’d put in your top two.

“Eyebombing” is the art of sticking “googly eyes” (a.k.a. “wiggly eyes” — the glue-on sort of craft store kind) onto an inanimate object in the public sphere in a way that cleverly lends the object the appearance of a living creature.

The purpose? According to eyebombing.com, it’s “humanizing the world, one googly eye at a time.” A wee bit subversive in nature, like drawing a mustache on a billboard celebrity.  Take a snapshot of this public (de-?)facement, post it to eyebombing.com, link to it on a facebook group or flickr group or some other social network, and you have a mounting trend that — while nothing new, really — is emerging as a cute internet “meme.”  We could possibly also call this meme an instance of the popular uncanny.  But maybe not in the way you might, at first, suspect.

Sure, it’s just anthropomorphizing. Such gestures — which give the attributes of life to an inorganic object — often are “uncanny” because they confuse the assumed boundary between what makes something an object and what makes something — anything — a subject, capable of “returning the gaze.” We might feel an aura of weirdness for just the first moment we look at the object and see that it is “looking back” when it’s not supposed to. This reaction harkens back to what Freud once termed the “surmounted” childhood beliefs in an animistic world, in this case rendering everyday urban life as fantastic as the trees that talk in fairy tales or the Muppets of television childhood. Only now Oscar the Grouch doesn’t live a trashcan — he IS the trashcan. From guard rails to postal boxes, as the result of eyebombing, the objects of everyday life become doll-like with those cheap stick-on “googly” eyes so familiar to us from craft stores.

But googly eyes are plastic simulacra to begin with.  They do not “move of their own accord” per se — in fact, it would probably be far more uncanny and disturbing to see human beings with plastic eyes like these on their faces instead.  In other words, this is a representation of the gaze, a plastic staging of the uncanny, rather than a genuinely haunting act of defamiliarization.

Yet it is still — at least at first glance — a little uncanny.  Indeed, it is the eyes themselves, far more than the objects they transform, which I would say are the harbingers of the popular uncanny.  Is it not the familiarity of the googly eyes — not of the defamiliarized postal box, but the plastic eyes themselves — used in such a strange way, that makes them seem so odd, if not haunting? The googly eyes themselves are displaced from the faces of dolls and other crafts and are now potentially looking at us from anywhere, especially places where we would not expect to encounter them.  The “bombed” site — a guard rail, a trash can, a light switch — is surprisingly looking at us when we turn around, precisely like those eyes on the GEICO dollar bill stack from advertising (“I always feel like somebody’s watching me.”)

Of course, this is not really scaring anyone.  Disturbing a few, momentarily, perhaps. But we remain “surmounted” because we are not fooled by the eyes — they are not realistic the way that, say, fantastically  customized contact lenses or the eyeballs from a “reborn doll” are.  No — these “craft” items are virtually two-dimensional in all their clitter-clatter spinning disc glory, and are located more in the realm of concepts than animals.  Indeed, they seem to make a statement more than talk for themselves.  The subversive act of rendering a public, hard object as a personalized and personified object is still potent; it can defamiliarize in a very palpable manner, like all good art — but it does so in a way that is not felt as threatening.  Its unreality is domesticated — which, while seemingly lacking in the haunting power of the uncanny is nonetheless a a defining element of many items of the “popular” uncanny, which sublimates but never entirely buries repressed desire in its attempt to make the unfamiliar more familiar — often by employing the tactics of childhood fantasy. 

Eyebombing is the Fozzie-Bearification of the community property — the Jim Hensoning of the public square.  There is a return of the repressed invoked here, but it very well may a repressed belief in the power of folk art, which has been increasingly “surmounted” by technology — or even just a psychological reawakening of some relationship to a children’s puppet from days gone by — which here returns with a twinge of uncanny recognition.

Bombs away.