Historical ecomagination. I'll reserve judgement, for the time being, on whether the green-technology initiatives recently announced by GE under the (moronically Disneyfied) slogan of "ecomagination" represents an encouraging corporate commitment to environmental progressivism, or is just an unrepetant old (and continuing) polluter's attempt to buy itself a little greenwashing. But I don't need to reserve judgement about the ad campaign that accompanies it, specifically the TV ad that promotes GE's coal-gasification project.

Here's Lew Lazare in the Sun-Times with a glowing account of the spot:

"Model Miners" is an even more dramatic effort. Set in the bowels of a coal mine, the spot piques the imagination when it becomes apparent that the miners are a mix of men and buxom women who, except for their coal miner togs, look as if they could have stepped directly from the pages of Vogue or GQ.

As the models strike various fashion model poses and go through the motions of "mining," the soundtrack regales us with a forceful rendition of that classic tune "Sixteen Tons." This jaw-dropping montage of brilliantly lit and photographed images is there -- the voiceover finally announces -- to impress upon us that GE is working on new emission-reducing technology that makes harnessing the power of coal look more "beautiful" every day.

Well, my jaw certainly dropped, to hear a song that protests the serfdom into which miners were forced in the last century ("I owe my soul to the company store") being used to sell the idea that I ought to trust a corporate environmental criminal to make coal green, but I guess that's just me. Lazare, who apparently has a higher tolerance for corrosive irony than I do, thinks the work is "genuinely intelligent."

Perhaps Lew, or the anonymous Adrants poster who calls the ad "the really fun element" of the GE campaign, would like to enjoy some hot, sweaty, sexy fun doing endless backbreaking labor in the dangerous bottom of a coal shaft? Do the ad guys think this sounds like a pitch for a beauty regimen?

At work you are covered with dust. It's in your hair, your clothes, and your skin. The rims of your eyes are coated with it. It gets between your teeth and you swallow it. You suck so much of it into your lungs that until you die you spit up coal dust. Sometimes you cough so hard that you wonder if you have a lung left. Slowly you are getting short of breath when you walk up a hill. Finally, just walking across the room at home is an effort.

The history of coal mining in American has seen thousands and thousands of men—and boys—dying horrifically in those shafts. Hundreds of thousands more have had their lives shortened, and ended in misery, from black-lung disease—the direct product of the mine operators' greed for faster and greater exploitation. And hundreds of men, women, and children, for the unforgiveable sin of trying to organize to improve their conditions, have suffered violence and death at the hands of company thugs. I wonder what any of those people might have had to say about GE's beautiful dummies striking poses on the stage of their oppression. I wonder, for that matter, what any of their still impoverished, still disenfranchised descendants might have to say on the subject, if anyone were to ask them.

I've worked in an ad agency, and I should know better than to be outraged by the depth of privileged ignorance any of them harbors. But I can't help myself: this is disgusting. Smug impertinence doesn't even begin to cover it. Dave Lubars, creative director at BBDO/New York, and his team of yuppie shits who produced this ad—not to mention the GE suits who approved it along the way—ought to be ashamed of themselves. But I doubt they'd have even a clue what I was on about.

posted by michael  11:29:51 AM  
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