Spike Jonze and Escaping Through Advertising

Anyone who has ever seen a Spike Jonze movie knows how he likes to mix the real and the surreal to make a fractured reality that is strikingly similar to our everyday life, and yet completely otherworldly. His art is taking the idea of "escaping" and showing that no matter what we imagine, our lives, and even our fantasy lives and dreams, are inextricably tied to the life we live and the world we inhabit. In directing advertisements, Spike Jonze takes his trademark style and poetics and condenses them into brief glimpses into his idea of what the product or company he is representing means, often taking the viewer's ideas of "escape" and "advertising" and twisting them inside out within seconds.

I want to focus on the 2005 ad he created for Gap retail clothing stores. The ad is simple: a typical clothing ad where people are standing around the store looking at clothes, but it's atypically quiet. Someone starts slowly pushing clothes onto the ground. People see this, and follow with doing the same. Things escalate quickly:



The obvious argument for what appeal that can be seen in this ad is the "aggression" appeal. One could argue that the violent actions and editing style may be an attention grabbing and even cathartic sight to see in a clothing ad. But i want to make the argument that it also uses the "escape" appeal. This type of appeal generally presents the viewer with an idea or situation they could not experience in their normal lives, and is thus attention grabbing and pleasurable to watch. It provides a needed source of adventure, escapism, or even a break from societal conventions, even if these are provided only for a moment, and through images on TV instead of in real life.

The ad is appealing because it halts societal convention and plays with the idea of escapism in an especially ironic way. By infusing so much unexpected chaos and violence into such a monotonous company (Gap) and such a monotonous task (shopping for clothes at Gap), Jonze is providing an escape for not only the average viewer of any sort of clothing ad, but also an escape for the kind of people who shop at The Gap. The ad is an antithesis to it's customer base, who are generally families and adults. In that sense, it is an especially pointed form of the "escape" appeal; it takes any viewer by surprise and gives no logical reason for why someone should shop at Gap. Yet the ad works perfectly in the fact that by being so unique and creative in how it plays with audience expectations, and the medium of advertising itself, it draws attention to a store that everyone feels they understand already. This is by providing an escape from both reality and conventions, through the "escape" appeal.