We’re not sure whether or not the person responsible for the Super Bowl’s Andy Warhol ad is getting a promotion or fired, but the clip definitely stood out among the other blockbuster commercials that were played during one of America’s most-watched hours of TV.
The fast food chain chose to play a condensed version of the Warhol film 66 Scenes From America, where the pop art icon takes five minutes to eat a Whopper, dipping it into ketchup and half-way through removing the top bun to roll it into a wrap. As an art piece it plays with the discomfort of waiting for someone to finish mundane tasks – this is part of what makes it so shocking as a commercial, even if the experience is only reduced to 45 seconds. Another way the clip subverts the normal advertising structure is that it showed a real burger and not one that has been manicured and Photoshopped in order to look good for an ad spot. While other ads featured big budgets, elaborately scripted jokes and perfectly scored music, the Burger King spot stood out for its relative silence and stripped back appearance. While it didn’t feel like an ad, it also didn’t quite feel like you were watching art.
The thing about art is that you usually choose to consume it. You go to a gallery, buy a ticket or engage in some other form of consensual action before being confronted with it. But when it is thrust upon you unexpectedly, with a call to action (#EATLIKEANDY) and logo at the end (BURGER KING), it feels less arty. It even feels less like art than Warhol’s other commercial appearances. For instance, in the 1980s he filmed a commercial for Japanese TKD videotapes, where he speaks slowly while holding a mid-century TV showing SMPTE colour bars. It is still an odd commercial and a touch uncomfortable, but his willing participation in the project gives him more creative control over the ad and its format, making him an author. He is subverting the commercial format, rather than the commercial format subverting his work.
But when it comes to Warhol and marketing it seems melodramatic to bemoan any lack of artistic purity caused by a company using his work to make money, because the artists literally built his career (and made good money) off of reimagining brand design. In a way, it seems like the most natural way to recycle his work.
Check out the Burger King clip below: