Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...
Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...
Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...
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Advertising 3<br />
diabolical is still striking enough that it catches<br />
people’s attentions, making the Devil <strong>and</strong> hell<br />
attractive for marketing purposes.<br />
As long as they are used carefully enough to<br />
avoid overly <strong>of</strong>fending individuals who are<br />
devoutly religious, infernal images can be alluring<br />
<strong>and</strong> even glamorous. This is partly because <strong>of</strong><br />
Satan’s carnal associations, making certain<br />
portrayals <strong>of</strong> the demonic sexy. As early as the<br />
nineteenth century, advertisers deployed such<br />
images. Thus in an 1880 French café ad, Parisians<br />
are invited to a “Party in Hell.” The poster’s graphics<br />
showed an enthroned, smiling Satan overlooking<br />
a gr<strong>and</strong> dance by citizens who were obviously<br />
members <strong>of</strong> the upper crust <strong>of</strong> society.<br />
One early television commercial drew from the<br />
same association. This 1950s era ad for cosmetics<br />
shows a rather demure housewife transformed<br />
into a sexy demon after a couple <strong>of</strong> drops <strong>of</strong><br />
perfume. She curls up with her husb<strong>and</strong> (the<br />
1950s was not ready for portrayals <strong>of</strong> unmarried<br />
seductiveness on TV), who is obviously highly<br />
responsive. The commercial ends by asserting that<br />
even the most quiet woman should get in touch<br />
with her “dark side” every once in a while.<br />
A more long-st<strong>and</strong>ing tradition has been to<br />
portray one’s enemies as aligned with the Prince<br />
<strong>of</strong> Darkness. This propag<strong>and</strong>istic utilization <strong>of</strong><br />
the diabolical is very old, as reflected in medieval<br />
Protestant woodcuts portraying Catholics as<br />
Satanic <strong>and</strong> vice versa. More recently, in both<br />
world wars propag<strong>and</strong>a posters were produced<br />
that showed the enemy as evil or as somehow<br />
allied with the Devil. Political cartoonists have<br />
also relied upon infernal associations to attack<br />
opponents.<br />
Then there are ads <strong>and</strong> products that rely upon<br />
hell’s association with heat to promote their products,<br />
such as the names <strong>of</strong> <strong>and</strong> ads for hot sauces.<br />
The product name Red Devil was taken from the<br />
company’s line <strong>of</strong> canned, deviled meats (deviled<br />
meat <strong>and</strong> deviled eggs are so-called because <strong>of</strong> the<br />
hot spices that are sometimes included). This<br />
association can also be inverted. In a 1997 radio<br />
commercial for Cool Iced Tea, for instance, comedian<br />
Penn Jillette begins by saying, “I’m in Hell,”<br />
seated “next to some former IRS auditors.” In the<br />
background, one hears various sounds associated<br />
with the underworld—shrieks, flames, <strong>and</strong> the<br />
like. Despite the heat, however, Jillette stays cool<br />
because <strong>of</strong> the iced tea he is drinking.<br />
Other product names are more indirect. Dirt<br />
Devil, for example, is the name <strong>of</strong> a very popular<br />
vacuum cleaner. The name is derived from a<br />
short-lived circular wind pattern that briefly stirs<br />
up dirt like a minicyclone. The quasi-spectral<br />
appearance <strong>of</strong> the cloud <strong>of</strong> dark, moving dust may<br />
be responsible for its name. The connection with<br />
vacuum cleaners is straightforward, although Dirt<br />
Devil pushes the association one step further by<br />
including a curved, pointed tail under its br<strong>and</strong><br />
name as a logo. Yet other ads are harder to classify.<br />
In a Roy Rogers restaurant ad in the early 1990s, a<br />
fellow who had recently died in an automobile<br />
crash comes before what appears to be a kind <strong>of</strong><br />
review board. The backdrop for the scene is a pair<br />
<strong>of</strong> escalators, one going down <strong>and</strong> one going up.<br />
Asking if they “cook anything” in the celestial<br />
realm, an angel interjects that he must be “thinking<br />
<strong>of</strong> the other place.” Immediately fire <strong>and</strong> smoke<br />
belch out from a black chimney as a voice cries,<br />
“Yow! I hate this place!” Although the association<br />
between cooking fires <strong>and</strong> hellfire is straightforward<br />
enough, this ad otherwise trivializes eternal<br />
damnation: The point is not that this fast-food<br />
chain is somehow linked to hell, but, rather, infernal<br />
imagery makes for a humorous ad.<br />
Playing on the theme that everyone’s punishment<br />
in hell is unique to the individual, an advertisement<br />
for British Knights athletic shoes features<br />
a “basketball player’s nightmare” in which Derrick<br />
Coleman dreams about a dark realm in which a<br />
group <strong>of</strong> overweight over-forties play as well as<br />
Coleman because they are wearing this specific<br />
br<strong>and</strong> <strong>of</strong> shoes. A smirking demon laughs at the<br />
basketball player who wakes up abruptly from his<br />
nightmare. The devil’s laughter, however, still<br />
echoes in his bedroom.<br />
<strong>An</strong>other amusing ad using the theme <strong>of</strong><br />
damnation is one <strong>of</strong> the creative “Got Milk” TV<br />
commercials. As a heartless business executive is<br />
on a cell phone firing his own mother from her<br />
job, he is hit <strong>and</strong> killed by a bus. Awakening in the<br />
next life, a s<strong>of</strong>t unseen voice says, “Welcome to<br />
eternity.”After asserting that he must be in heaven,<br />
the ex-businessman starts eating giant chocolate