"1984" – The Famous Super Bowl Ad

The historical “1984″ ad, which was shown on January 22, 1984, during Super Bowl XVIII to a TV audience of nearly 100 million in the USA, cost approximately two million dollars, of which about 800,000 dollars were used simply to purchase time during advertising breaks during the CBS television network’s broadcast of the game as well as another 900,000 dollars for production costs. The spot was produced by the Chiat/Day agency. Steve Hayden, Lee Clow and Ridley Scott, who had filmed the movie “Blade Runner” two years earlier, were involved in the work.

The sensational commercial shows a young athletic woman who is chased by gloomy-looking security forces with helmets and night sticks. The woman is sprinting past rows of shaven-headed people wearing dusty clothes and looking like forced laborers. Apathetically, they are listening to the ideological speech of Big Brother on a large video screen, based on the model of George Orwell’s “1984″.

My friends, each of you is a single cell in the great body of the State. And today, that great body has purged itself of parasites. We have triumphed over the unprincipled dissemination of facts. The thugs and wreckers have been cast out. And the poisonous weeds of disinformation have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Let each and every cell rejoice! For today we celebrate the first, glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directive! We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests purveying contradictory truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!

The young woman, who is wearing red athletic shorts and a white Macintosh T-shirt, hurls a sledgehammer towards “Big Brother” and destroys the screen. A voice-over says:

On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.

The Mac itself was not shown in the advertising spot at all – however, the message was clear: Apple wants to relieve humanity of IBM’s suppressive PC of conformity. After the football championship game, in which California’s Los Angeles Raiders defeated the Washington (DC) Redskins 38 to 9, many TV stations referred to the controversial spot in their local newscasts again and again, and some even repeated it in part or in full. Experts estimated then that the media’s reaction alone created an advertising effect that would actually have cost several million dollars.

Further Reading

• Cellini, Adelia. “The story behind Apple’s ‘1984’ TV commercial: Big Brother at 20.(Mac Beat).” Macworld, January, 2004.
• Clow, Lee. Lee Clow: His Masterpiece – 1984
• Friedman, Ted “Chapter Five: Apple’s 1984.” Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture. New York: NYU Press, 2005: 100-120.
• Apple’s 1984: The Introduction of the Macintosh in the Cultural History of Personal Computers
• Hansen, Liane. “A Look Back at Apple’s Super Ad: Landmark 1984 Spot Smashed ‘Big Brother,’ Launched the Mac.” NPR, February 1, 2004. (Steve Hayden interview)
• Leopold, Todd. Why 2006 isn’t like ‘1984’. CNN, February 3, 2006.
• Maney, Kevin. “Apple’s ‘1984’ Super Bowl commercial still stands as watershed event.” USA Today, January 28, 2004.
• Mr. Showbiz. “Interview with Ridley Scott
• myoldmac.net. “In Memory of Jef Raskin … He Thought Different: The Making of 1984.”
• Moriarty, Sandra. “AN INTERPRETIVE STUDY OF VISUAL CUES IN ADVERTISING,” University of Colorado.
• Roszak, Theodore. “Raging Against the Machine: In its ‘1984’ Commercial, Apple Suggested that its Computers Would Smash Big Brother. But Technology Gave Him More Control.” Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2004.
• Scott, Linda. “For the Rest of Us”: A Reader-Oriented Interpretation of Apple’s ‘1984’ Commercial.” The Journal of Popular Culture, Volume 25 Issue 1, Summer 1991: 67-81.

Source:

Article: 1984 (television commercial). (2008, July 20). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 21:47, August 12, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1984_(television_commercial)&oldid=226800138

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