2001jul14. There is a new television commercial for a piss-green-colored caffeinated sugar water product. It wholly consists of elements, styles, costumes, movements, and themes from the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. It also includes on-screen captioning. At the end of the commercial, where the captions have been shown, the following disclaimer appears in even smaller type (sic): “THIS ORIGINAL PRODUCTION HAS NO RELATIONSHIP TO ANY MOTION PICTURE.”Is this supposed to (A) be “ironic,” and if so, why would anyone involved with Crouching ... go for it or (B) cover poor-corporate-decision ass? I only bring up (B) because there have already been numerous cases (going back the last 100 years) of corporations performing outright theft of current “hot” culture in a brazen attempt to bolster consumption. Also I figure it’s (B) because the whole “selling with a wink-and-a-nudge-to-Gen-X” thing is getting really old. So the question I’m asking here is are the people who created this commercial idiots, or are they idiots?
