You pays your money and you takes your choice ...
McDonald's Big Flavour Wraps (2016) [a]
Vs Jamie Reid's Vicious Burger (1979) [b]
I.
In the second part of Ian Trowell's dead knot essay, he discusses a 2016 TV ad by the "multinational fast-food franchise" [c] McDonald's for a new summer range of Big Flavour Wraps:
"Whilst not all of my observations and
suggestions will be intentional on the part of the creative teams associated
with the instigation and production of the commercial, my own intentions are
to examine the ubiquitous, neutralized and atemporal representations of punk
that resonate within the images and actions." [189]
Having established that, let's go ...
II.
Via a detailed, imaginative, and theoretically-informed analysis of each scene, Trowell is very good at relaying the anachronistic tension present in an ad that seems designed to appeal to old punks on the one hand and disorientate them on the other:
"How are we meant to feel, how did we
used to feel, what has changed?" [190]
Of course, the assimilation of punk began a long, long time before 2016: what is The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) if not a brutal exposure of the way in which big business indecently exploits young flesh and rapidly co-opts, commodifies, and mythologises groups like the Sex Pistols?
Anyone who felt genuinely shocked and outraged by "such an unholy alliance between McDonald's and punk" [195] - or by Virgin Money's issuing of Never Mind the Bollocks and 'Anarchy in the UK' credit cards the year before [d] - clearly wasn't paying attention to what McLaren and Reid were warning about in the Swindle and clearly hadn't read their Guy Debord [e].
Punk - and the very word is already a misunderstanding - may have initially wished to "disrupt cultural, social and
historical forms and habits through a multitude of methods" [195], but it didn't take long before the majority of punk performers were looking to build long-lasting careers in the music business.
If rock 'n' roll died when Elvis joined the US Army in 1958, then perhaps we can say punk died when John Lydon decided to trust a hippie and sign an eight album deal with Virgin. McLaren and Reid fought a kind of resistance campaign operating behind enemy lines in those months following the breakup of the group - and, personally, I think the work produced in 1978-79 is some of the most provocative and amusing - but the game was basically up.
Ultimately, no matter how much some of us wish it were otherwise, the majority of Brits like their Big Flavour Wraps [f]. And, as Trowell rightly notes, for all the faux outrage expressed from some quarters when the McDonald's 2016 campaign was launched, what we didn't hear were the voices of "disgruntled and disgusted [...] customers outraged at the linking of punk and the safe, normative environment of McDonald's" [195].
Notes
[a] The McDonald's Big Flavour Wraps campaign (2016) was devised by the American advertising company Leo Burnett - the home of so-called populist creativity. It featured ersatz punk imagery and also incorporated the Buzzcocks' 1978 single 'What Do I Get?', written by Pete Shelley, into a TV ad. Morrissey, like many other old punks, was not best pleased.
To watch the 30 second TV ad, dir. Jason Lowe, click here. For further details of the people who worked on the campaign, please click here.
[b] Jamie Reid's promotional poster for the Sex Pistols' single 'C'mon Everybody', released from the soundtrack of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979), featuring a photo of vocalist Sid Vicious by Bob Gruen. For more details see the V&A Jamie Reid Archive: click here.
The Vicious Burger was just one of many imaginary products featured in a fake cinema ad in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980): "Feeling uptight, violent, or tense? Why not take it out on a sizzling Vicious Burger; the gristle ball that gives as good as it gets!"
[c] Ian Trowell, 'Punk's dead knot: Constructing the temporal and spatial in commercial punk imagery', Punk & Post-Punk, Volume 5, Number 2 (2016), pp. 181-199. Page references given in the post refer to the essay as published here.
[d] See the post of 12 June 2015: click here.
[e] Debord used the term récupération to refer to a process by which politically radical ideas and subversive art works
are defused, incorporated, and commodified within mainstream culture
(usually with the full collaboration of the media). See the post of 26 June 2023, in which I discuss this idea: click here.
[f] According to statista.com, 96% of Brits were aware of McDonald's as a brand in 2023 and 60% not only liked to eat there, but expressed loyalty to the company.
Musical bonus: Buzzcocks, 'What Do I Get?', (United Artists, 1978): click here for the remastered 2001 version that appears on Singles Going Steady (Domino Recording Co., 2003). And for the official video, which Trowell provides a nice reading of in his essay (pp. 191-92), click here.
To read part one of this post, click here.
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