Apparently, that really is Andy Warhol, not (as I originally thought) an actor trying to look and act like Andy Warhol. Not everyone recognizes Andy Warhol, and I suspect that a Venn diagram of people who recognize (and like) Andy Warhol and people who will eat a simple fast-food burger doesn't show a lot of overlap. But I appreciate the daring of this ad. It shows so much about the fast-food burger experience. It really is rather stark and lonely. Simple. Food. It is.
As Meade said, it's like Review Brah:
Unlike Pepsi, Burger King has chosen to accept and love the enervated, wan white man. In the Pepsi Super Bowl ad, critiqued in the previous post, a young white man is targeted for abuse for his meek, bloodless manner. Black entertainers are brought in to demonstrate a preferable vigor and zesty enthusiasm. By contrast, Burger King seems to be saying, you know, it can be cool to be a quiet, gentle white male. Andy was cool. That's a certified historical fact. You don't have to wish you had the style of Lil Jon, and it wouldn't be cool for you to emulate him. Just be like Andy.
Or be like Review Brah.
If it's possible to embrace whiteness without risking accusations that you are flirting with white supremacy, think of Andy.
ADDED: Lest you question whether that's really Andy Warhol, here's AdWeek, "How Burger King Turned Documentary Footage of Andy Warhol Eating a Whopper Into Its Super Bowl Ad/CMO Fernando Machado on how the fast-food brand made the spot":
While doing research for the fast-food chain, creative shop David Miami unearthed footage from the 1982 documentary 66 Scenes in America by director Jorgen Leth. The agency brought the footage to Burger King and over the last year worked to secure usage rights to air 45 seconds of the four-minute clip as part of the Big Game.I didn't watch this ad in context. I bailed on the Super Bowl early, mostly because I hated the barrage of very noisy ads. So I missed the effect Machado talked about, the contrast with the other ads, cutting through the noise with silence.
“It’s one of those things that when David brought it to us and we watched the film our heads exploded,” Burger King’s global CMO Fernando Machado told Adweek. “What are the chances that your brand will have an asset like that? It’s beautiful!”
Juan Javier Peña Plaza, executive creative director, David Miami, echoed that sentiment. “We thought, ‘What if we put this in the middle of the Super Bowl?’ he said. “And then everyone’s head exploded.”
Peña Plaza continued, “It was like, holy shit if we manage to put this in the middle of the biggest extravaganza of the year, we’re going to blow everyone’s minds. It’s so simple, and it’s sort of meta. You’re breaking the fourth wall in a way and messing with people.”...
“The typical Super Bowl ad tends to be loud music, full of celebrities and really screaming loud to break the clutter,” Machado said. “We see our ad as breaking all the rules of the typical Super Bowl ad—our ad doesn’t have music, doesn’t have voiceover, is not 30 seconds, was not shot this year. Our ad was shot in 1982. I believe that it will act like a silent assassin during the Super Bowl—it will cut through the noise with silence.”...
Machado added, “We didn’t change the format of the film, we didn’t try to retouch to make it better. It’s a grainy film because it was shot on film. In fact, we tried to match our teaser to that. Our teaser was also shot on film to get the same grainy quality that the original film has.”
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77 comments:
But it didn't look like a Whopper at all. There's a lot more stuff on a Whopper.
I still don't get it.
Oh. Good. Lord. I watched the commercial and thought that it was the worst Andy Warhol impersonation I had ever seen.
What a surprise, I thought it was just a dollop of retro. Very cool, now that I know, this add jumps into my 3rd place behind Hundail elevator and the dude abides.
What really irritated me was the noise of the paper crinkling, the box cracking the the bottle hitting the table. This is why I refuse to go to those movie theaters where they serve food.
Not Andy Warhol
Lots of robot ads.
Andy beats them all. He's the best robot.
Also a great callout to the anticipation Heinz ketchup ads from the '70s.
I read that at the shoot, Warhol expressed regret it wasn’t McDonald’s.
Ah, remember back when they both wrapped and boxed burgers. When was that?
Heinz ketchup ads from the '70s
That's what I thought it was until the end.
flirting with white supremacy
What does white supremacy mean. Take the bad connotations and apply them to wholesome behavior, as the right handle to take hold of the bunch.
Derbyshire on what the hell does white supremacy mean
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/RadioDerb/2016-12-02.html#05
ought to get people out of the habit of saying white supremacist.
David Blaska said..."Not Andy Warhol"
That's what I thought, but I got the video at the USA Today YouTube account where it says, "Burger King's 2019 Super Bowl revives old footage of legendary artist Andy Warhol stoically eating a Whopper."
Now, wildchicken is right that it doesn't look like a Whopper...
BK had other burgers choices, not just the Whopper.
Speaking of pale wane white men.
At some point with this demonization of pale penis people, there is going to be a shift in the voting demographics.
A black woman can scream and shout in support of Farrakhan. Forgiven.
One can be a congenital idiot like Maxine Waters. Forgiven.
One can dip one's wick with impunity if one is a black man like Willie Brown. Forgiven.
One can think an ISLAND will TIP OVER and still be a respected Democratic Swarthy Penised Person. Forgiven.
One can ignore federal law and destroy evidence like HRC or Lois Lerner. Forgiven.
One can BEAT one's white girlfriend before an election and still win. Forgiven
But can a pale penis man make the moves on an arguably crazy academic or wear blackface three decades ago?
HELL THE FUCK NO. He must be destroyed.
If there is even a 3 or 4% move in the voting demographic of America by white people from Democrat to Republican, or if they just decide to sit this one out, it is game over for 2020 and very likely a lot longer time than that.
I believe that the Democrat party's time is almost over. Bill Clinton TRIED to course correct from the disastrous push by the mini-skirts in 1968 toward socialism, but his wife, like Chairman Mao's Jiang Qing, decided to help foster the Feminist Cultural Revolution (despite sending so many of Chairman Bill's whores to the reeducation camps herself. See Brodrick, Juanita and people that the WaPo won't ask questions) and all the good he did is long gone.
Can you name a single white man besides the Fauxspanic 'Beto' who is both prominent and less than 65 years old? Hard to come up with such a name.
This identitarianism is post modernistic poison and the Democrats are slurping it down like an Andy Warhol burger (head nod to the post involved)
I will support a black republican, an Asian republican, and certainly a white republican. I supported Palin Sarah Sanders and Nikkie Haley. Because the important part is 'Republican' (which puts me over Chuck who, like Mikey, won't eat anything)
The Democrats can no longer do that. They have no room for pale penis people because the Slot C's, and the swarthier fellows want their jobs and it only takes one to character assassinate their white men (see Kristin Gillibrand, BO and Kamala Harris)
I am Burger King.
I thought the ad was great and I loved the comment about the ketchup, “it won’t come out.” As if he had never really seen a ketchup bottle like that before.
Read my update to the post.
It absolutely is Andy Warhol.
And it is a Whopper.
Like Meade, I thought of Review Brah immediately. As for thew rest, enough already.
And it likely is a whopper hold everything.
I vaguely recall when this was making the artsy rounds in the 80s (full disclosure: was also working at Burger King) so when I saw it I instantly assumed it was authentic. I loved the ad idea as it embodied what I find interesting about Andy and appreciated how the starkness and the banality stood out from all the quick cuts and virtue signaling. I can't remember any of the products from those commercials.
Did it work that way on millennials?
It’s a plain whopper. The best thing about a Whopper is all of the stuff they put on it that makes it a mess to eat. You can’t eat a regular Whopper in your car.
I briefly thought it might be an ad for Heinz.
This doctor says that bacon causes colorectal cancer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td3T573yW88
Probably more alarmist vegan crap.
In conclusion, you should wash the bacon burger down with a Coke, fries, cookies, & ice cream.
Then, you won't know what gave you cancer of the arse.
I bet it was a McDonald's hamburger.
Back in the 1980s, the ad was part of a series showing rich and poor ordering and eating the same thing.
My burger came in a box the last time I was in Macdonalds. That was maybe five years ago, on Market Street, San Francisco. When the boys were little we would go once a week or every other perhaps, and they always came in boxes.
Are these ads supposed to get the male Superbowl viewer to buy their product?
Or is there some less obvious corporate purpose to them?
I'm 66 and did not know it was / was supposed to be Andy Warhol and did not get the whole #eatlikeandy hashtag. So I imagine most of the audience was younger than me and also did not know who it was. Therefore, I decree it was a dumb ad.
They expected peoples' heads would explode, but by now most don't remember Warhol. I thought he vaguely looked like him but thought no, just a guy with a ridiculous wig.
How many got it like Ann did? Seems way past its sell-by date.
They were gonna use a genuine Burger King product, but it took so long for the order to come they were starting to get a little pissed, then when it finally came the order was wrong and they didn't want to wait again so they said fuck this and went across the street to McDonalds...is what happened.
Next up Chik Fil'A finds stock footage of Warhol eating a chicken sandwich and thanks god for improving deep-fake technology.
Also Warhol is trash art and overrated.
Fight me.
Dipping seemed weird at first, but it might be better at keeping the meat and other innards from sliding out when eating or when separating to apply the ketchup. The McNugget debuted in 1980, but Warhol may still have been avant about dipping.
How many people though it was David Bowie?
Comparing that scene from Basquiat to the Burger King commercial I have to say that Andy Warhol does himself better than David Bowie does Andy Warhol.
It's still a great scene.
I thought it was a ketchup commercial until the logo.
Never seen an ad for a product in which the main (in this case only) character in the ad appears to find the product distasteful. Even if you knew it was Andy, it still makes the product look bad.
I asked out loud after the Burger King ad, "Who's Andy?" Nobody had clue.
I was thinking at the time the guy looked like Andy Warhol, the hair especially, but he was young looking and I thought, 'I'm pretty sure Warhol's dead. Maybe he's not. Maybe he had some work done.'
Then I thought 'There must be a pop star or something who cultivates a Warhol vibe and goes by just 'Andy', no last name, and if I wasn't old and out of touch I'd know exactly who it was and why I should want to eat like him, but I didn't know and I even didn't care.
You tap on the '57' to get it to come out, Andy.
Actually, the Bud Lite/Game of Thrones crossover kind of trashed the Bud product too.
I thought superbowel ads were direct messages to the enlightened few who see the end of time in everything
tommyesq said...
Actually, the Bud Lite/Game of Thrones crossover kind of trashed the Bud product too.
My thought too. Bud built up that beer-drinking king character as the unflappable ruler of suds. Then they used the Superbowl to destroy the whole concept to promote someone else's product. I hope whatever percentage HBO paid them was worth it.
"If it's possible to embrace whiteness without risking accusations that you are flirting with white supremacy"
There are no highs and lows, there is no noble or ignoble, there is no good or evil, there is no truth or lie, there is just white noise. That leads to totalitarianism.
Also the statement is made by a person who considers herself supremely smart and better than the common man.
trashed the Bud product
My father complains about every bizarre or stupid ad, one reason I mute. The entire idea is to attract attention. The Bud/GoT conclusion was unexpected both when the knight fell and the dragon incinerated everyone. The Warhol ad seemed to be for Heinz. They both work with the sound off.
“ tommyesq said...
Actually, the Bud Lite/Game of Thrones crossover kind of trashed the Bud product too.”
I’m going to pile on since this was the only one I really noticed. The game and the commercials were duller than dust. But yeah, the salient image of that little narrative was the Bud robot wiped out on the ground. Odd bit of salesmanship. And does the relentless SJW preening really sell anything (including the game) to a football audience? The whole Super Bowl felt like a tone-deaf vanity project.
The Bud Lite/Game of Thrones one only makes sense if you know who the victorious knight was and that ALL THE GOOD PEOPLE DIE. Not literally all of them, but they do get killed off at a pretty high rate.
It's still a stupid ad. I would have done the Red Wedding, but had someone go tap a keg and, by being off to do that, survive. The downside to that one would be, no dragon.
chyron!
I thought it was, indeed, Andy Warhol, I blurted out "Hey that's Andy Warhol" and the 5 teenagers & 4 adults in the room either said,"Who the fuck is Andy Warhol" or "So what".
I guess Andy Warhol posthumously ain't sellin' a lotta burgers these days.
I liked the BK ad and I didn't know who the guy was. Just seemed simple.
Infinite Monkeys said...
The Bud Lite/Game of Thrones one only makes sense if you know who the victorious knight was...
My son did and tried to explain it to me, but it still didn't make sense.
No soup for you.
I can't find a link but CNBC occasionally shows a parody with Ronald McDonald eating McDonald's food.
I liked the Planters Peanuts ad. It was funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BTYEXLlFdQ
I wonder how much of the audience picked up that it was in any way related to Andy Warhol. I’m pretty well-read, and I assume about the average age of Super Bowl viewers (39), and it definitely didn’t cross my mind. I was wondering if “Andy” was some sort of existing reference, or a new character they had come up with just to be weird.
But it did catch my attention, so I guess it worked. Didn’t make me hungry for BK, though.
If I could be any one of the things
In this world that bite
Instead of a dentured ocelot on a leash
I'd rather be a kite
And be tied to the end of your string
And flying in the air, baby, at night
Cause you know what they say about honey bears
When you shave off all their baby hair
You have a hairy minded pink bare bear
Thirty years from now there will be a similar commercial with Donald Trump eating a burger and people will debate if it is really him.
Is my take correct that all those folks in the photo calling for Northam to resign are Democrat office holders? A cynic would say they are doing so for short term political gain and long term ability to do the same to any Republican found to have similarly run afoul of current race rules.
Republicans that similarly demand Northam's resignation are tacitly agreeing that acts committed in one's youth and a long time ago may be used to attack and undermine a political office holder or opponent.
The BK spot was advertising made for other advertisers. The idea that someone wouldn't immediately know that was Andy Warhol never entered their mind, because they don't know anyone like that. Kind of like the old 'how did Nixon win, I don't know anyone who voted for him' story.
As someone who used to work in the industry, I loved it! But it's not clear at all how it would hit the target audience.
They should have put polka dots on the letters of #EatLikeAndy. Absent other clues, I thought it was an SNL character.
You know what struck me about that ad? Look at all that packaging for one burger! What a waste!
(Also, I misread the Hashtag as "EATLIKEALADY")
Might have worked better if Andy was having soup.
I was tucked into a corner of a hotel lounge reading during the game. The game was on and I saw this ad without sound. The way the burger and wrapper looked I thought it was a Jack-in-the-Box ad. You should be able to easily identify the product.
My son knows who Andy Warhol is due to MIB III.
On the bright side, the Culver’s ads featuring Pablo Picasso are going to be lit.
The ad stood out, but it didn't particularly make me want to eat a whopper. I like the Carl's Jr. Ad where a hot girl in minimal attire performs an obscene act on her burger. That doesn't particularly me me want to buy their product either, but it's more fun than watching Andy Warhol eat a burger in his fastidious way.
Honest question: Does anyone care, one way or another, whether their beer contains corn syrup? .......I can see why young men would choose a beer that makes them absolutely irrestible to women, but where's the percentage in choosing a beer that is proud to proclaim that it contains no corn syrup?......I saw the Bud/GOT crossover ad. A genuine wtf moment. It made me eager to see the new GOT but it didn't do much to trigger a thirst fir Bud.
Maybe in this #metoo moment the advertisers can no longer use sex to sell products, but corn syrup and Andy Warhol are pale substitutes for sex.
Burger King seems to be saying, you know, it can be cool to be a quiet, gentle white male.
--
Avoiding that pesky Toxic Masculinity. Valerie Solanas approved.
It's okay to be white, as long as you're a sexless, inoffensive, expressionless, non-smirking soy boy (even if you eat real hamburgers).
If it's possible to embrace whiteness without risking accusations that you are flirting with white supremacy, think of Andy.
I think I'll just risk those accusations.
Hey, eat a BK Whopper and be JUST LIKE ANDY!
Yeah, no.
Yeah, that's definitely Andy Warhol.
He eats his burger as I do. While I almost never eat hamburgers with ketchup, when I do, I tap out a bit of it on my plate and dip the burger into it.
"They expected peoples' heads would explode, but by now most don't remember Warhol."
People interested in art remember Warhol, even if they don't like him.
I love the ad. It silenced the room at the party I attended, so in line with what the agency had hoped. It was just so strange and quiet.
wild chicken said...But it didn't look like a Whopper at all. There's a lot more stuff on a Whopper. I still don't get it
--
It's a nothing-burger
Real Andy, Fake Andy...
if you've seen wan, you've seen them all.
#EATLIKEANDY
BK Just Got Woke!
Introducing the new BurgerQueen Soyburger !
"It's what the effete eat!"
Oh..just an FYI for those not familiar:
Beginning in late 1965, she repeatedly tried to get Warhol to produce a play she had written called Up Your Ass, with little success. Warhol never promised to produce the play, but he gave the perpetually broke Solanas a role in his 1967 film I, A Man, for which she was paid $25. “The play was considered vulgar, humorless,” Diaz explains. “Even Andy and his crew thought it was a bit too much.”
Solanas’ masterwork was her SCUM Manifesto, which she wrote between 1965 and 1967. It envisioned a world without men, calling on “civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females” to “overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex.” As Breanne Fahs writes in her 2014 biography of Solanas, Valerie tried to get Warhol to help promote SCUM, even asking him in a letter in mid-1967 if he’d like to join the “Men’s Auxiliary,” the group of sympathetic men who were, according to the manifesto, “working diligently to eliminate themselves.”
https://www.history.com/news/andy-warhol-shot-valerie-solanas-the-factory
Worhol reminds me of Tom Brady.
Now we finally know how Robert-Cookie--Cook eats a burger.
We can move on now.
That biography of Valerie Solanas was fascinating. It made the obviously abrasive Solanas actually sympathetic.
Andy adored Trump!
"Donald Trump is really good-looking." ~ Andy Warhol
"Passed out Interviews this morning. Had to meet Donald Trump at the office (cab $5.50). Marc Balet had set up this meeting. I keep forgetting that Marc gave up architecture to become an art director, but he still builds models at home, he told me. He’s designing a catalogue for all the stores in the atrium at the Trump Tower and he told Donald Trump that I should do a portrait of the building that would hang over the entrance to the residential part. So they came down to talk about that. Donald Trump is really good-looking. A girl named Evans was with him and another lady. It was so strange, these people are so rich. They talked about buying a building yesterday for $500 million or something. They raved about the Balducci’s lunch, but they just picked at it. I guess because they go around to so many things where there’s food. And they didn’t have drinks, they all just had Tabs. He’s a butch guy. Nothing was settled, but I’m going to do some paintings, anyway, and show them to them."
— From "The Warhol Diaries" (Friday, April 24, 1981) http://amzn.to/1Jlylga
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