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TechnoratiGE Uses Yip Harburg to sell its Oz Mythology
You've heard of pre-emptive strikes. Now welcome to the era of pre-emptive co-optation. That's the kindest word for what millions of viewers heard during the 2009 Superbowl, when GE used the work of the Great Depression's most famous songwriter to sell its myths about prosperity.
In its first Superbowl ad since 1981, GE riffed on the classic, the Wizard of Oz, to make the case that if America updates its power-grid we will see brighter days ahead. With Yip Harburg's "If I Only Had a Brain" playing in the background, the ad closes with the Scarecrow walking off into the sunset toward a radiant city on a yellow brick road.
What viewers may not know is that Harburg was a committed socialist who spent three years in South America opposing US involvement in the First World War. He was a victim of the Hollywood blacklist and was best known for his depression era anthem, "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?"
That song, which was all about the cheating of the American worker by the bosses, begins, "They used to tell me I was building a dream..." and ends with the refrain: "Say, don't you remember, I'm your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?"
That one of the world's most powerful military/media-mega corporations would use the bard of the laid-off worker is creepy. But there's more. GE, which among other things owns NBC, reportedly spent $3 million on their Superbowl ad in order to launch a campaign called NOW, with the tag line "innovation we don't have to wait for." While we can all get behind alternative energy and a smart new power grid, the idea that prosperity and growth are right around the corner is nothing more than smoke and wizardry. Moreover, will GE share the profits if public money buys the grid? Unlikely.
The fact is, for most American workers, there's no rainbow, only more pain and losses coming. "If I Only Had A Brain," might be a good anthem for GE. "Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime," is back for workers.
3 Comments so far
Show AllGE should not have used the song for commercial gain. An American treasure like The Wizard of Oz should just not be exploited. And speaking of the Wiazard of Oz, the book and movie do differ in some aspects.....
History of Money by Weatherford, 1997, Excerpts
The most memorable work of literature to come from the debate over gold and silver in the United States was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, by journalist L. Frank Baum, who greatly distrusted the power of the city financiers and who supported a bimetallic dollar based on both gold and silver.
After the cyclone violently rips Dorothy and her dog out of Kansas and drops them in the East, Dorothy sets out on the gold road to fairyland, which Baum calls Oz, where the wicked witches and wizards of banking operate. Along the way she meets the Scarecrow, who represents the American farmer; the Tin Woodman, who represents the American factory worker; and the Cowardly Lion, who represents William Jennings Bryan.
Marcus Hanna, the power behind the Republican Party and the McKinley administration, was the wizard controlling the mechanisms of finance in the Emerald City. He was the Wizard of the Gold Ounce - abbreviated, of course to Wizard of Oz - and the Munchkins were the simpleminded people of the East who did not understand how the wizard and his fellow financiers pulled the levers and strings that controlled the money, the economy, and the government.
In the end, all the American citizens had to do was expose the wizard and his witches for the frauds they were, and all would be well in the bimetal monetary world of silver and gold.
In the book, Dorothy’s magic silver slippers got her back to Kansas.
http://theformofmoney.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2005/10/12/1296570.html
Yip - lyricist for "The Wizard of Oz," "Finnian's Rainbow," "Bloomer Girls." The last two were vehicles for Yip Harburg's socialist thinking.
I think Laura is interpreting a bit much into this ad. "Only had a brain" referred to a smart electrical grid. Virtually no Americans watching the Superbowl know who Yip Harburg was, or that the Jews in show-biz in those days - from Yip to the Three Stooges were all good, capitalist-ass-kicking Marxists, rather than capitalist ass-kissing, Arab kicking Zionists. Nor are they least familiar with socialist movements of the 1930's, or programs like the federal theatre and arts projects of that era.
But along with banking and health care, complete nationalization of this new smart power grid would be a good idea too.
---USAn---