Today's Your Day To Be A Rip-Off

Call me what you will, but classic movies are something I hold very dear - it's a little extreme, perhaps, but they truly are very important to me, and my interest in them has allowed me to meet people and travel to places that otherwise, wouldn't have held the significance that movies give them. So when I see my beloved actors and stories used for mere advertising these days - especially when the product being advertised really has no correlation to movies whatsoever - I must admit, I am perhaps more disgusted than your average consumer.

Case in point: The new JC Penney commercials. They depict contemporary actors re-enacting the greatest scenes from classic film as part of their 2007 "Today's Your Day To Be A Star" campaign. I actually thought my head was going to implode from the sheer force of so many of my favorite movies in the span of about thirty seconds: Holly Golightly, Mary Poppins, that unforgettable scene on the lamppost - they're all there, set to a delicious song from 1973's Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. If you haven't seen it, check out the video below:

I know, I know, it's a cute and respectable commercial, but it still feels like sacrilege to me...And besides, has anyone ever shopped for clothes at JCPenney? Come on!



Discussion Junction: Do you consider using iconic scenes, images or sounds to advertise products in the current day and age to be an homage or an affront to those scenes and images? Do you feel that enough people, particularly those at whom such marketing is aimed, will recognize and appreciate these images in 2007? Post your answers below.