Sunday, September 7, 2014

Is Stanley Kubrick selling Nissans from the Great Beyond?

Top: A banner ad for Nissan. Bottom: (left) the carpet from The Shining; (right) a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The power was restored a little after eight this morning, and I immediately got back to the hard work of mindlessly bumming around the Internet in search of entertainment. One of my first stops, of course, was YouTube. And it was there I discovered an intriguing banner ad for the Nissan Altima. Apparently, they have some new model with what they're calling "zero gravity seats" or something, and their marketing wizards have cooked up a little animation involving a floating spaceman looking at various glowing information screens. I couldn't help but notice the resemblance between the ad and a couple of Stanley Kubrick movies. The astronaut himself (or herself; it's tough to tell under those suits) looks like something from 2001: A Space Odyssey, while the background pattern seems to resemble the carpeting from the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. I wonder if the homage was intentional. Look at the images above and draw your own conclusions.