Mon, May 10, 2004

Read this week's Average Mulder over at the 'Porter. Do it now. Don't make me come down there.

This time around, Arksie is applying his eternally insightful and entertaining perspective to the issue of Major League Baseball putting little spider-webby things and Spider-Man 2 logos on their bases to promote the movie. His point is that baseball shouldn't do this, not because of the "crass commercialism" argument you hear so much, but because it degrades baseball's individuality among sports. It's a good column. Read it. (Read... It...)

[I was trying to come up with a way to invoke, typographically, that tone that Homer Simpson gets when he angrily shakes his fist and repeats whatever he last said in a stern, low, and slower voice for coercive emphasis. If I've failed, I'm sorry – but now you'll know for next time!]

[B]aseball may get so much crap for this that they decide not to go through with it (in which case they probably have to give Columbia Pictures their money back. Meanwhile, everyone spends a month talking about "Spider-Man 2," for free. Well played, Columbia Pictures).

For reasons that should be patently obvious – but even if they're only known to me, what the hell – I find this hilarious and incisive at the same time.

Also, Arksie makes the excellent distinction between turf sports (football, etc., where you're invading each other's territory) and games like baseball that are about competition and running in a loop. Sadly (or not; at the very least, interestingly, for Arksie's point), the other main loop-running sport succumbed to a new level of "crass commercialization" when a court rejected Churchill Downs's ban on jockey-based advertising. (Yeah, that's what our courts should be busying themselves with right now.)

Anyway, I was kind of happy about the jockey thing because it just brings the world one step closer to the 'Porter article about spray-painting advertisements on greyhounds (which is one of those articles I like because I seeded the idea by doing the Photoshop work first). Heck, for that matter, let's take this to its logical extreme and put advertisements on porn performers, á la the Dixie Chicks' alluring "Entertainment Weekly" cover.

Anyway, back to baseball. First off, I give Spider-Man 2 a pass on this one, because I give Spider-Man 2 carte blanche. Doc Ock can throw ought eight first pitches for all I care. As the only summer blockbuster movie this summer with any potential to be any good, I'm inclined to let Spider-Man 2 rape my sister, if that's what it really wants. (Oh stop! She was asking for it! What was she doing alone in that hotel room with a $200 million blockbuster?!) The first Spider-Man very nearly lived up to the colossal hype, and it looks like this one will, too. Switching the villain to Alfred Molina (Radiers of the Lost Ark, TV's Bram and Alice) from Willem Dafoe (The English Patient, cheap Dafoe family home porn) is a genius stroke. Plus, all signs point to a more interesting character arc for Kirsten Dunst, who spent the whole last movie being a damsel in distress and doing that crying half-squint that's so unattractive it almost makes you forget how hot she is. My point is, "superliminal" marketing isn't necessarily crass commercialism if it's done classy. Due to the financial woes of MGM and the penny-pinchery of Michael G. Wilson, the super-classy James Bond franchise has been doing heavy product placement for years, but it doesn't feel cheap because they always select elegant brands to partner with. In the same way, putting Spider-Man 2 insignias on your baseball diamond is leagues better than spray painting the country bears from The Country Bears in the outfield.

But Arksie says he isn't arguing against tacky marketing in baseball just because it's gauche. He's arguing against it because it's too gauche for baseball. Which is a pretty fine distinction, but I get the point. He constructs some excellent examples of the differences between baseball and other sports, but I'm not convinced that advertising saturation is one of them. Baseball players have Adidas logos on their batting gloves and Russell Athletic logos on the sleeves of their jerseys, similar to Nike swooshes on football jerseys. Advertising banners crowd the outfield wall as well as the pitcher's backstop and the between-level sections of the stadium. Adding spider webs to the bases (while it might make stealing second a sticky proposition) doesn't change that in any drastic way. It's a pretty subtle change, and if anything it provides a way for baseball to get in on the excitement of Spider-Man 2. (Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying "baseball needs Spider-Man more than Spider-Man needs baseball," although it seems to me there's not much danger of people forgetting that Spider-Man 2 is coming out this summer.) It's a promotional push by the studio, absolutely. But it's one that seems to add fun to baseball games rather than sully baseball's good name or anything. In fact, if anything, it adds to baseball's cachet – no other sport is putting ads on its bases! What makes baseball more and more indistinguishable from other sports is the performance-enhancing drugs, the out-of-control salaries, and the players' egos which marginalize teamwork in order to increase individual players' endorsement value. Work on rectifying those transgressions, and end the public outcry over advertising.

Let Spider-Man be Spider-Man.

***

Update: Baseball has since called off the Spider-Man 2 promotion. Rather than go back and change all the "is" to "might have been," I'm just adding this little bit, here. Yah!

POLL:

Spidey-Sense

Putting Spider-Man 2 logos on bases? (If they had done it.)

	Dumb
	Awesome

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