WhenDavid Lynch died near the start of the year, I mourned in the same way many other fans did. I watched his films, attended retrospectives at my local independent theater, and read countless elegies celebrating him and his impact on cinema as a medium.
I also, at some point, watched a compilation of all the commercials he’d ever directed, which included one for thePlayStation 2. It’s one of the weirder ads I’ve seen in my life, one that feels primarily vibes-based instead of message-based, which is in keeping with most of his work. It follows a man as he makes his way through a hallway. The camera work is unorthodox. At some point, the man’s head detaches from his body, floats around, reattaches, and an arm flies out of his mouth. It’s bizarre, memorable, and eerie. Peak Lynch.
Gaming Marketing Used To Be Real Weird
It also wasn’t all that odd for that era of video game advertising, or really, advertising at large. This was back when Apple was releasing its ultra cool, stylish iPod ad campaigns – I look at a trailer for MacBooks now and mourn the loss of vibes-based marketing. It’s this era of ads that David Fincher’s latest Xbox ad seems to be gesturing towards, and an era that needs to return.
Xboxonce put out an ad where a woman gave birth to a baby with such force and velocity that he shot out the window, careened through the sky while aging into an old man, and crashed violently into a coffin. The slogan said, “Life is short. Play more.” It was banned in the UK after the BBC received over a hundred complaints about it.
And of course, PlayStation was famed for its bizarre ads. One had a crying baby doll in a room with the PS3.Anothershowed a surreal, terrifying scene of humans in a city crawling on top of each other, swarming till they formed a mountain of people, all fighting to be at the very top. This era of ads felt more like strange art projects, less focused on technical specs and sleek aesthetics and more on searing images into audiences’ minds.
Before ads were weird, they were often weirdlysexual.This onefor Donkey Kong Country 3 from the ‘90s is… well.
Ads have changed a lot, obviously. I’ve neverlovedmarketing as an industry, considering it exists only to motivate consumerism, but you can’t deny that it at least used to be a lot more interesting than it is right now. Xbox’s newest ad, though, makes me wonder if this style of advertising could be making a comeback, cutting through the formulaic safety we’re all so used to.
David Fincher’s new ad for Xbox is titled Wake Up, and follows an anthropomorphic rat through a day in his boring, corporate life. He wakes up to a beeping alarm, runs on a wheel to start his day. He leaves his apartment building alongside all the other rats who have to go to work, stands on a crowded train, and goes to his cubicle. All around him are rats, except for a few humans, who seem to be gaming on various platforms, referencing Xbox’s ‘play anywhere’ messaging. When the rat gets home and turns on his Xbox, he becomes a human again. Because gaming is an escape from capitalism, I guess.
