Redstick SF

So, it’s Earth Day. I’ve never really been sure how to celebrate it because I’m not really sure what it is (uhm, are we going to appreciate the Earth today only?). This year, though, I thought I’d observe the day by talking about a commercial that has been bugging me.

Enter a commercial from Chevron’s “Human Energy” series.

Now, what you should notice about this commercial first and foremost is that it makes no sense when we pay attention to what it’s actually saying. Grammatically, it’s not possible to “drill respectfully.” It’s your classic dangling modifier. And here, honestly, it’s hard to shake the mental image of oil company workers standing at attention while working a rig. Instead, it’s a good example of how people hide behind words that sound good but say nothing. George Orwell wrote about this in Politics and the English Language (an idea he incorporated as “Newspeak” in his great novel, 1984).

The slightly disturbing and definitely hilarious aspect of this commercial is the pun on “Human Energy” which inevitably comes to mind. Essentially, saying that the next step in global energy…is…people!

I’m not sure if they’re advocating a mouse wheel/treadmill generator approach or a Matrix-style harvesting mechanism but I think this commercial obliquely suggests that, in the future, oil companies are planning to enslave the human race.

But besides that Soylent Green moment. There is a much more subtle manipulation occurring in these commercials that exists purely on the aesthetic level.

If you take a look at each of the commercials in the series you’ll notice a trend towards large scale images of the planet, humanity, cities, oceans, etc. The effect of all of these images is that they constitute a sublime aesthetic, that is, a sense in which human beings are dwarfed and awed by the overwhelming power and scale of nature. And that seems strange for a oil company to do until we realize that the effect of organizing the commercials around these images is to perpetuate one of the frequent criticisms of global warming (and one of the most ignorant) that, essentially, the Earth is too big and complex for our mere human machinations to damage it.

This is why we never really get images on the everyday, human level. Instead, we see image of deserts, oceans, shots from space, etc. They simply don’t want you thinking that anything you do can affect the planet. In other words, it says, “this is bigger than you…so why try?” Meanwhile, thoughtful piano music plays in the background to lull us all asleep.

Sweet dreams. Happy Earth Day.