a manufactured haunting

Music: David Sylvian: Dead Bees on a Cake (1999)

Last Wednesday night Nike broadcast their newest commercial featuring Tiger Woods on a cable golf channel. It was strategically planned to come before Wood's Master's tourney appearance on Thursday and after his press conference on Monday. Reaction to the commercial has been mixed. While almost everyone I've heard or read who has seen the thing seems to agree the spot is "creepy," folks are divided about whether or not the commercial is appropriate, ethical, or shrewd. The division has everything to do with the way in which the commercial makes explicit its purpose: it announces itself as a statement of authentic affect, and at the same time, is unapologetically commercial with the foregrounding of the Nike swoosh (it's doubled for that smack-on-the-forehead effect). Having studied the commercial and thought about it for many days, I agree with Donny Deutsch that the ad is, in fact, genius. Just in case you haven't seen it, here we go:

So, why is the ad genius? The party line of commentators on television seems to converge on the notion that any publicity is good publicity, however controversial: "people are talking," and ultimately, this supports the brand. I think this is exactly right. The ad walks the line of taste, but the black-and-white and slow-zoom communicate the kind of "respectful" production values of Shindler's List (I'm sure the ad agency discussed, but decided against, making the swooshes red). I'm not sure what to make of the flashes at the end (except, perhaps, to communicate "this is in the past"). In other words, the aesthetic values communicate "taste," however tasteless the ad actually is.

But, what accounts for the creepy? Certainly the overall effect of a sepia-toned gossip chic is part of it. Some say it's the fact that the voice is of Wood's father, who is dead. Some say it's manipulation of his father's voice for different ends (it turns out the father's statements were made about Wood's mother in a documentary, and that the address "Tiger" was spliced in). Some say that creep has to do with the fact that someone's pain---er, and lack of shame---is being used to sell athletic clothing and equipment. Some say the creep has to do with credibility (Wood's father was, apparently, a philanderer too).

Of course, it's all of these things.

Because I've been working on a book about disembodied voices, of course, I'm drawn to the way in which Wood's dead dad haunts: it's Hamlet warmed over. In the popular imaginary, the narrative of Tiger Woods is, pretty much, an Oedipal narrative: the driving discipline of the father molded Wood into one of the most successful and popular athletes of all time. This makes the Freudian effect rather obvious: if it's the case that the superego---what most folks would recognize as the voice of conscience---is really the internalized expectations of our parents, then we have a staging of the charioteer. The bad horse of the "id" was let loose for years on end, and now, the good horse of the internalized father is reasserting it's dominance. Never mind that the good horse, in reality, was in the end a naughty horse. The staging of the commercial is that Woods' internalized voice of conscience is back and calling the shots.

The brilliance of the ad, seems to me, is in the moral ambivalence---something all of us can identify with. It's that moral ambivalence that humanizes Woods in a way that allows us to allow him to be a great athlete, and to sell Nike goodies. It's the fact that Wood's father was also a philanderer that makes this ad so powerful. This is to say, the labor of the ad is not in its immediate impact, which is "creepy." It's in the commentary, in thinking about it, in "working it out" that the ad does its brilliant work.

Ok, so what do I mean?

Well, upon first viewing the ad, the spectator identifies with the voice of the father. Viewers are not encouraged to identify with Woods, with his puffy, puppy-dog eyes. Rather, the viewer is asked to identify with the father, the voice questioning him. We're asked to identify with the law and to take a side with the moral high ground. As viewers, we get to punish Woods "at a distance." It reminds me of Chris Hansen busting would-be pedophiles in those abhorrent To Catch a Predator television shows. The enjoyment offered immediately by the ad is one of emasculating Tiger.

But then, upon reflection, we're caused to reflect on the construction of the ad itself. The commentary about Woods' father this past week has been precisely about his shortcomings, and the logic, "like father like son" quickly comes to mind. Now we're dealing with hypocrisy as one of the fundamental truths of the human condition.

In the end, the commercial is fundamentally Freudian---it relies on a Freudian logic and the shock most of us feel as we become adults. Let me be clear: I'm not saying that Freud helps us to make sense of this ad (even though he does); rather, I'm saying that the ad draws on the Freudian logics now soul-deep in our culture. The ad announces itself as a psychoanalytic ad. It does not make sense unless one knows about basic Freudian ideas.

That said, the creepy factor is also based on common experience. There are two truths of adulthood that are devastating: (a) love is not enough; and (b) adults are just kids with experience. Who among us has not been shocked to learn that someone whom we looked up to and admired turned out to do unsavory things? Who among us has not been disappointed to learn an authority figure did something that was contrary to the law he or she ceaselessly intoned? Isn't this the basic plot of (melo)drama?

In the end, the advertisement stages what it means to become an adult, it replays the shock of leaving behind the idealism of childhood. It stages the realizations we all have about getting to a space of responsibility. In some sense, Nike's ad shifts the locus of Woods sins to the father, however subtly. I would submit that is what is so creepy about the ad. Or in other words, it stages something uncanny and all-too familiar: the possibility there is no God.