Homecoming

Watch the video clear to the end. It made me laugh; it made me vomit; and it made me cry at the same time.

Thanks to and via Lenin's Tomb


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Comment by lenin - read it after you've seen the complete video -

Oh let's review it then:

1) a white, privileged family, with a tradition of military service: the target audience.

2) a lot of glances, and unspoken words, indicating difficulty with an emotionally constipated father, reaffirming a traditional American masculinism, with the traditional mater there to soften the edges. An awkward handshake and difficult words. Touching moments of teenage revelation. Both father and son are apparently unhappy about returning from war: not going there, but actually getting brought home. That's "difficult". (In reality, the soldiers are complaining of being overstretched, of having their families torn apart by prolonged absences etc). The coldness is finally overcome with the presentation of the gift, the fucking car, after which the father can finally put his arm around his son.

3) too many fucking cars. The kid drives one, the father's got one, now the little bastard who's come back from wars has got one. And the father claims that it was thinking about a fucking car that kept him going while he was killing Vietnamese peasants. Everyone else took up drugs, found prostitutes, or started fragging, but not this guy: he only wanted a desirable consumer item. He dreamed about it, and all his friends did.

4) perhaps a cynical hint is involved, namely that this war needs to be won or you can't have your three cars in the driveway.

The total picture is a 'Middle America' fantasia, unbearable wholesome, into which Ford has woven its cars as an irreplaceable part of the story. The irony is that a lot of these boys who are going to kill for the American government are from formerly respectable suburbs which had reasonably well paid blue collar work available, but which have been devastated by repeated waves of lay-offs and the flight of production facilities introduced by mass manufacturing corporations like Ford.


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wow what colossal marketing dunderheads. The war is widely unpopular. I’m not sure that people want to really be reminded of it.

Well, I think their target audience - privileged, white, 'red-state' Americans, who overwhelmingly continue to support the war. Even those that don't support Bush or the war are all for the troops, and are ready to subscribe to a romantic notion of their bravery and so on. What's more, as I say, the whole thing is apple pie 'American values', oriented around loving two-parent families with leafy streets and girlfriends and gatherings and so on.

Also, there appears to be an implicit reference to the war's unpopularity, when the sister hugs the little bastard soldier and tells him "we're still proud of you".

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