Deconstructing is usually a Lefty
anti-commerce activity, borrowed from France (Derrida's term), and
offering itself as an intellectual tool for applying crude Marxist
analysis to literature and popular media.
Since deconstruction is an empty concept I feel free to use it to analyze a pro-commerce billboard calling out to passersby on behalf of the Toyota (global top ranked corporation renowned for superior quality) made truck with the name Tundra (model name, referring to frozen dirt above the arctic circle, and alluding to the vast isolated openness of the Arctic world where brave pioneers venture).
A billboard is inherently a pro-commerce voice, broadcasting to anyone who looks at it, for no charge, without discrimination between high class and homeless, without regard to power or merit, calling to the penniless as well as the billionaire. 'Listen, democracy, listen everyone.'
This
particular billboard is owned by Clear Channel that sells space, by the
month, to Toyota as part of a marketing promotion developed by Toyota's
ad agency. Clear Channel pays a local landlord, by the year, for a
market rate lease on the land and air-rights of the billboard. Clear
Channel was recently taken private by investors from Bain Capital and Thomas Lee Equity. Toyota uses Saatchi & Saatchi as its ad agency in the U.S. but the main global agency is in Tokyo: Dentsu.
This
media message carries the not well hidden statement that each person in
a commercial society is powerful. Each commercial person is more
powerful than any unskilled human has ever previously imagined humans
to be. The observer of this billboard is told he or she, without special training, with only a driver's license, can move 10,000
pounds, five tons, with ease, something no plant or animal on earth has
been able to do previously. Moving 10,000 pounds, with ease, is a feat
previously open only to skilled equipment operators, earthquakes,
typhoons, tsunamis and volcanoes. A human, right off the street, can be
a god with the help of this Toyota made truck.
While it is not
mentioned, this truck is made of more than a thousand parts, produced
and assembled by tens of thousands of people scattered all over the
planet. It required more that half-a-million people, working in
cooperation to create a truck like this and produce this ad.
The graphics of this billboard speak to the super-human qualities that the advertisement promotes. The billboard is lofted in the air on steel pylons, the viewer has to look up...to appreciate the super-human elevated message. The 'look up' super-human theme is carried further with the photographic prospective on the truck. The camera is placed near the ground looking up. The truck that offers super-human powers is portrayed as nearly divine.
The typography of the word Tundra,
suggests that the word is stamped on a forge, with hydraulic power,
into cold steel. Another sign of super-human power.
Indeed, the meta-message of this Toyota-Tundra billboard is that ordinary human passersby, are, by dint of their ability to buy, without effort or hesitation, a tool that gives them super-human powers. Each passerby is a member of a commercial society, that distributes power of god-like magnitude, in democratic and individualized form to anyone who wishes it.
The billboard is making a true, respectful and insightful statement.