I've been thinking lately about advertisers' use of crime-and-justice images to sell their products.It all started when I saw this Swiffer television commercial the other day:
Certainly, the concept's not very original (note the heavy reliance upon Hollywood courtroom cliches: the suspenseful music, the judge's slight head cock to indicate her intent listening, the exaggerated "Objection!" and "Please point to the defendant!" phrases). But I was intrigued by the following sentencing pun: "Put your broom away for life". Witty, eh?
This made me think about another commercial from years ago for a bar soap alternative (exactly which product it was I can't remember for the life of me...Neutrogena? Noxema?) that made a similar pun: "Get out from behind bars".
All of this made me contemplate how entrenched the criminal justice system is in our public consciousness, to the point where images and phrases associated with it are used in everyday advertising. I was thinking that other examples of commercials using these types of crime-and-justice images might be useful for demonstrating to students how important an institution the criminal justice system is in our society. Anybody else have other examples? All I could come up with was the Hamburglar (he of the inmate stripes and burglar mask, natch).
2 comments:
This is not an advertising example, but there are a lot of media examples. J has a learn to read book on Spiderman and it describes how Spidey was first a professional wrestler but turned to crime fighting after his uncle was killed by a burglar.
Damn! Now I'm hungry.
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