Differing perspectives
Remember this commercial from the 1960’s? I do. Take a minute — and it is one minute — to watch it, then return here.
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Okay. You’re back.
To some of us, this commercial is about, well, Crackerjack. (Which I used to enjoy at the midget car races with my father in Atlantic City Convention Hall when I was a boy.) To me at some point this also became about comic acting; Jack Gilford’s pantomime here reminds me of the silent era, which makes me think of Buster Keaton — ironic because Keaton’s face was frozen, while Gilford is mugging.
This morning my two youngest children, ages 8 and 4, ran over to watch this commercial on my laptop screen. To them, this entire commercial is about the missing parents of the two children in the commercial.
“Where’s their parents?” asked one.
“Maybe they’re dead,” said the other.
Viewed from this perspective, the commercial does seem oddly deathlike. These kids get one last treat from a friendly, helpful envoy (akin to Charon, ferryman of the dead, who assists one on one’s final journey). Liberated and with prize in hand, the children run down the pier, not an adult in sight — in fact, no one else in sight — and as the camera descends on them enjoying their final moments, we see them ascend into the clouds.
To most viewers of the time, this commercial was about candy-coated popcorn that even the helpful candy man can’t get unstuck from his teeth. (You’ll note Gilford’s elaborate mouth action.) To my kids, it’s a cautionary tale of children abandoned to their own fates on an isolated boardwalk, far from the watchful eyes of parents.
April 16th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Jack Gilford. You loved him in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and you love him in a Crackerjack commercial.
Obviously, what this piece was really about is the universal childhood fantasy of escaping parental authority and eating stuff that comes with a prize in it. Nowadays, however,the prizes are made out of paper, which kind of kills the magic.
April 16th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
They’re not all paper — sometimes you get a dead bug.
April 16th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
If I get to have Jack Gilford be my Charon, then death is going to be a blast! Like, at the ferry station on the other side, Michaelangelo will be playing Pinochle with my Dad (who would be 102 now). Both of them smoking Pall Mall unfiltereds and swilling back Ballantine and Four Roses like it’s going out of style.
When it started rolling, before the music was going to play, I thought it was the beginning of that ONE RUN Lyndon B. Johnson TV commercial from 1964, the one he used to trounce Barry Goldwater in the election that year. Right after Mr. Goldwater said that “Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice…etcetra”
I’d still like to have Gilford be my envoy across the River Styx…but not tomorrow or the next day or even the day after that…