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Rotten Apple
If you thought the Cingular ads featuring MLK's historic I Have a Dream speech was appalling, Apple has gone and raised the bar. Their homepage recently featured an image of Rosa Parks on the bus with, presumably, the embodiment of Apple graciously sitting behind her.
Think Different, my ass. Whatever the flaws with the Cingular commercial (from the grotesque use of a symbol of our country's greatest ambitions to use cellphones to the participation in the devaluing of Rev. King by his estate), at least Cingular didn't pretend to be heroes in the struggle for black emancipation.
Apple should be ashamed of themselves. I'm surprised that nobody reported rumblings from the Capitol Rotunda, were Rosa Parks was certainly rolling over in her coffin.
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Also from Stay Free!: Advertising Claims the Dead (issue #17, 2000)
Posted by Charles Star on 10/31/2005 | Permalink
Comments
The picture is original and is not touched. It is idiotic to draw a connection between the man behind Rosa Parks and any supposed statement by Apple. Apple actually used this same picture years ago in their original Think Different campaign, so you are a little late to the party to be criticizing them.
Posted by: Colin | Oct 31, 2005 11:36:16 PM
The bottom line is that this image is a fantastic historical document; a memorial to the race struggle in your United States. It's not a marketing tool that is designed to sell products for apple. Apple tried to turn, what could have been, a fitting tribute into an advertising asset by adding their 'think different' slogan overtop the image within convenient clicking range of the apple store.
Posted by: chris | Nov 1, 2005 2:52:33 AM
It's amazing when you think about it: If I used the Apple trademark to sell something, the assholes would sue me. But, if they want to sell their products using something like this photo, they can pimp it all they want. Everything's for sale or ad copy: this is still America, buddy.
Posted by: Robin | Nov 1, 2005 9:58:31 AM
I was actually appalled during the first iteration of Apple's "Think Different" campaign, when they used Rosa Parks, MLK, and all sorts of folks that should stand for a lot more than selling computers. I think a lot of the hipster set gives Apple more leeway than they do other companies for whatever reason. If Ford or Exxon used MLK in an ad campaing, people would lose their minds (and rightly so), but somehow, Apple gets cut slack that others don't.
Posted by: Max Roswell | Nov 1, 2005 12:55:50 PM
If you are angry with them for using Rosa Parks you may as well get mad at them for using Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, Jim Henson and Gandhi in their "Think Different" advertising campaign. I don't believe Apple was trying to exploit anyone, especially at the time of the advertisement. They were simply lifting up these heroes for thinking different and as the commercial said, "We see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
Not only was Apple a struggling computer company trying to make it at the time this advertisement was aired (or posted), they had the aspiration of changing the world with what they did. I wouldn't say that they expected to do something as monumental as Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, but can't a company honor such a figure when they're dreaming just as any young 8 year old would?
I think it was an honor to Rosa parks by taking down the advertisement for the new iPod or iMac from the main page. They went back to their advertising archives just to celebrate the amazing life of Rosa Parks.
Posted by: Melanie | Nov 1, 2005 1:15:36 PM
Apple sells computers as tools for innovation and forward thinking, and they have millions of hits on their web site every day. If Apple can fund a tribute to an American hero with minimal advert interference than they're doing a good thing for the world. It's not any more out of bounds to encourage nobility with computer ads than it is to put it into song or on TV with commercials.
Or they could have Jeff Goldblum. Which do you really prefer?
Posted by: Jeff | Nov 2, 2005 4:47:55 AM
It comes down to the role you think the white guy is playing. As I said, the way the photo struck me, he was a self-congratulatory synecdoche for Apple and I found it disgusting. I see where everyone else is coming from, and it moves me from disgust to mild queasiness. Paying tribute to great figures in history with your logo isn't much of a tribute - all glory points back to you.
Then again, Jeff, if your plan is the only alternate I may have to reconsider.
Posted by: Charles Star | Nov 2, 2005 9:46:31 AM
I'd like Apple to "think different" by a) extending the battery life on its portable devices; b) making those batteries simpler and less expensive to replace at the very end of their life so that it is not more economical to replace the whole device rather than a battery; and c) develop a comprehensive plan for the safe recyling/disposal of the millions of pounds of garbage that their obsolete/broken/elderly branded equipment becomes every year.
If Apple were in the intelligent design game it could make the world's coolest looking, funkiest locust but no matter how it looked it would still be an environmental nightmare. The iconoclasm of Steve Jobs is useless unless its is accompanied with a holistic awareness of the whole life of Apple products.
Posted by: WisdomWeasel | Nov 2, 2005 10:41:19 AM
Apple wasn't "lifting up" any heroes, nor were they engaging in anything "noble." They were, and are, trying to sell more computers. Period.
Posted by: Max Roswell | Nov 2, 2005 2:49:04 PM
Would like to know what the stay free intelligensia would say when a local grocery store posts a picture of a historical figure of someone who has passed. You live in Park Slope, right? So what about all of the bodegas that had pictures of Tito Puente up when he died? Was the same bile expelled towards them.
And Charles, you should do some research. The photo used was this one.
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/083_afr.html#ParksR
Description: ROSA PARKS, seated on bus, looking out window, her face in profile. Photographed at the end of the Montgomery bus boycott, 21 Dec. 1956. United Press photo.
Location of Original: New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection, SUBJ/GEOG - Racism
Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-111235 [Rights status not known.]
Who is the guy behind her? Don't know. But the pompousness of your assessment bellies the historical reality of this image.
It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness? What did stay free do when Rosa Parks died? Oh, bitched and moaned.
Posted by: Wise One | Nov 2, 2005 8:57:04 PM
That the picture was once "real" (seems posed, no? not that I mind, but it is hardly a historical document) has little to do with what that image means once it has been recontextualized. Using it in an ad changes its meaning; why having an opinion about the meaning I took from it on first sight is pompous is a mystery to me. My arrogance certainly pales in comparison to a company that deigns to compare itself (or the savvy purchasers of its products) with Parks, Einstein, Gandhi.
As for your hypothetical bodega, I guess I wouldn't care unless there was a note in the corner that said "1% Milk - $1.59."
Posted by: Charles Star | Nov 2, 2005 11:33:26 PM
Nice point. I actually have a Met Food calendar from after 9/11/2001. And the thing is filled with memorial pictures of what happened. And has coupons for food in it. People rescuing survivors. Two-for-one coupons for turkeys right beneath.
Your outrage at Apple is pompous because such pairings are quite common and not all unusual. And not as horrible as you think.
It's more horrible that somehow Rosa Parks is dead and she's gettig respect for what she's done to advance race relations. Yet this year some of the people who are desecendents of the supposed freedoms she fought for died in the floods in new orleans thanks to hurricane katrina.
You get mad at supposed marketing issues but real issues are ignored. That's pathetic.
Posted by: Wise One | Nov 2, 2005 11:39:28 PM
I think maybe "wise" doesn't mean what you think it means.
This blog/magazine is about consumer culture, and Charles' post was about how that culture intersects with real historical figures, real historical heroes, and whether or not its appropriate to use those things as marketing tools.
Whether or not Rosa Parks' legacy was betrayed by the tragedy in New Orleans is indeed an interesting topic, and one that seems to me to be completely outside the purview of this particular magazine.
Also, you seem like something of a douchebag.
Posted by: Max Roswell | Nov 3, 2005 3:56:48 PM
Personally, I find the iPod style homage to both Parks and Apple disturbing. It looks like it should be a parody, but the guy who created it seems to have done so in earnest. Usually these days when I see an iPod ad style image online, I tend to expect it to be a satirical gag.
Posted by: frippy | Nov 3, 2005 6:04:45 PM
'This blog/magazine is about consumer culture'
That seems to change as often as the sun rises and sets. Looking through the stay free archives you can see that varieties of topics are touched on all over the place. Consumer culture might be at the core, but there are tons of things that stay free discusses that has little to do with consumerism.
And to that end this is the first sentence of what stay free claims to be from the main page of the site.
'Stay Free! is a Brooklyn-based magazine that explores the politics and perversions of mass media and American culture. '
I think that honoring the legacy Rosa Parks and ignoring the reality of African Americans affected by Katrina is a perversion of politics via the media and an affront to American culture.
But I guess trowing spitballs at advertisers is easier than tackling real though issues.
Posted by: Wise One | Nov 3, 2005 6:18:29 PM
So, "Wise One" (I can't even TYPE that without giggling), why are you complaining to Stay Free about "honoring the legacy of Rosa Parks" and ignoring the reality of African Americans?" Shouldn't you be bitching at, you know, APPLE? They've got a little dough stashed away that could probably rebuild house or two. If anyone's offering empty tributes without doing anything concrete, it's them. I understand your concerns, but I don't see why you think StayFree has anything to do with them.
Posted by: Max Roswell | Nov 4, 2005 5:04:20 AM
