Monday, February 28, 2022

"[A] force connecting those divided by distance"


Today is the last day of Black History month and I can't let it pass without asking why a beloved actor who once played Nelson Mandela signed-on with a dictatorship to promote its state airline?

The ad, which debuted two weeks ago during the Super Bowl and now has over 24 million views, has the actor sitting in a First Class aisle seat, a glass of water to the right of him, while he looks out a widow at the world below. Seconds before that, a piano key is struck (middle-A), then a drum beat, before French horns bubble, strings are bowed, etc.

Still looking out the window, the actor begins:

Three million years ago, there was no Africa, Asia, Americas or Europe.

Just one, big supercontinent ... [looking at the camera] Pangea.

And today there is still a force connecting those divided by distance, reversing millions of years of rifting.

Making far feel close.

Bringing there to here.

Turkish Airlines. 

What is being communicated in this 46-word corporate poem, apart from encouraging air travel? That we need to get back to those good ol' pre-historic times, when places were not so much nameless but one place, a supercontinent from the late-Paleozoic?

Or if not a geological period, then its analogue: a single world government (neo-liberal? totalitarian?) enabling a single mode of production (late-capitalist? feudal? kleptocratic?), while the planet floods when it isn't on fire?

Just what is this "force connecting those divided by distance"? It can't be Turkish Airlines.  

No comments:

Post a Comment