Smug, hoodie-wearing, hands-in-pockets hipster twit looking for work

I enjoy the Mac Guy and PC Guy ads when they show up, but they've always struck me as being a bit too clever by half.  (Check in the comments later for Blue Girl's reacton to my use of the phrase "too clever by half.")  These guys don't make me think of the computers they're supposed to represent.  They make me think of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

Mac Guy is the 21st Century version of Martin and Crosby, the smooth, cool, hip, big brother, who can carry a tune, except that instead of crooning, Mac Guy probably does a passable imitation of Josh Kelley.  Meanwhile, PC guy is an uptight, squarer, actually somewhat competent, but still neurotic and prone to panic contemporary version of Lewis and Hope, the little brother trying too hard to outdo his sibling and collapsing in a heap of frayed nerves when he finds he's in over his head.

The comic dynamic between the two characters is what makes the ads appealing.  But it's also what makes them less than effective from Apple's point of view.

We all want to be as smooth and cool as Bing and as handsome and hip as Dean, but deep down we know that we're the little brother, as gawky and as clueless as Lewis, as full of it and as easily buffoaloed as Hope.  Which is why we root for them.

We know why Dorothy Lamour prefers Bing, and we would think it's a category error if she ever truly fell for Bob---which is part of what makes the ending of Road to Utopia the perfect inside joke.  Even when Hope gets the girl, he doesn't get the girl.

The other part of its perfection is its winking at the Code.  It's telling us that what we know.  "The censors won't let us show it, folks, but you and I know that when the camera isn't on them, these characters are having lots of great sex."

In the end, we identify with Hope and Lewis because they lose out.

It's the same with Mac Guy and PC Guy, with this twist.  Mac Guy and PC guy represent the two roads that diverge in the woods at about the time we hit 30.

Mac Guy is the us we could have been if we had somehow managed to avoid or put off middle-age, the us who stays young and available---for sex or adventure or fun---the kind of person who manages to remain cool and hip until 40 or even 60.  PC Guy is the us most of us become, tied to a job, tied to a spouse, tied to repsonsiblities that we never feel quite up to assuming, prematurely middle-aged, defined by our totally uncool roles as worker bee, good husband/wife, reliable adult, and on our way to becoming, most humiliating of all, known primarily as somebody's mom or dad.

The ads want us to identify with Mac Guy.  But in our hearts we know we're PC Guy.

This isn't a good way to sell macs.

From Bill Nothstine comes the word that somebody at Apple has noticed.  They've fired Mac Guy.  Well, they've fired the actor who plays Mac Guy, Justin Long.

From the Radar column in Fresh Intelligence:

Why was Long dropped, specifically? Perhaps for striking people as a "smug little twit," in Seth Stevenson, ad critic for Slate. Long, he adds, is "just the sort of unshaven, hoodie-wearing, hands-in-pockets hipster we've always imagined when picturing a Mac enthusiast.... It's like Apple is parodying its own image while also cementing it." Of the polymathic Hodgman, who has drawn acclaim for his work on The Daily Show and NPR's This American Life as well as his book, The Areas of My Expertise, Stevenson writes, "Even as he plays the chump in these Apple spots, his humor and likability are evident."

Sounds to me like they're making another mistake.  Apparently they're going to go out and find a more "likeable" Mac Guy.  (I wouldn't be surprised if the new Mac Guy turns out to be a Mac Girl whose "likeability" resides in the three inches of cleavage revealed by her low-zipped hoodie.)  They're blaming Long and not the dynamic.

What would be smart is if they make a series of ads with just PC Guy neurotically confronting a world where macs rule.   That way they could at least show the actual computer they're trying to sell.

By the way, the article in Fresh Intelligence slights Long as an actor by citing his roles in Herbie Fully Loaded and Dodgeball, forgetting Long's most important credit, the basis for his own geek appeal.

He played the leader of the fan club whose obsessive knowledge of the starship Protector's inner workings helps save the day in Galaxy Quest, which is still the best Star Trek movie ever made.

Meanwhile, PC Guy is played by The Daily Show's John Hodgman, and Bill Nothstine has figured something  out about him.

"Separated at birth?" Bill asks?
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Pointless pedantry:  Another contempory reworking of the Hope and Crosby, Martin and Lewis dynamic is Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer in Two and a Half Men.  It's something that got toyed with on Cheers where it seemed to be the basis of the friendship between Sam and Frasier.  If I wasn't writing this at 5 in the morning and had more than a pot of coffee in me I could probably think of several more examples.  But right now what's occuring to me is that the pairing of the cool, hip, smart guy with the nervous, uptight doofus must be an ancient bit of stock casting.  You can see it in the Wily Servant and his Young Lover master pairings in Greek and Roman comedies, although the most obvious contemporary version of that one is Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom in The Producers, which makes me think that a good family movie night double feature would be the original Pruducers and A Funny Thing Happend on the Way to the Forum.
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Your turn: Fresh Intelligence quotes a reviewer for Slate who wondered if the smugness of Mac Guy was a case of Apple parodying its own image.  I've often thought that a lot of ads these days actually seem to be insulting or at least making fun of the people the ads are supposedly aimed at.  Beer commercials in which homely, overweight, leering morons chase after impossibly beautiful women being a prime example.

What ads do you think are clever and what ads do you think are like the Mac Guy and PC Guy ads, too clever by half?

Comments

[blue girl]

Totally observing the obviously negative usage of the phrase too clever by half...

[Elayne Riggs]

Great essay, Lance. I love the Hope/Crosby comparison! I'll have to give your open question some thought. My most loathed category of ads right now is "Assholes Use Our Product," which message rather belies the one I suspect the "too clever by half" makers of those ads are trying to convey about how cool and fun the product is.

[Exiled in New Jersey]

Great comparison, Lance. I always thought the MAC guy symbolized those true believers back before Jobs returned and restored the product to its pre-eminence. In those days, we called them MacInSnobs. I think there is something too of Hawkeye Pierce about him, but for such an example there is no one to place in the position of the PC Guy.

Ads that make me flip the channel now? Any Coors Light commercial.

[drat fink]

i disliked those hummer ads where someone gets bullied in some fashion and goes out to buy a hummer to prove their toughness. do you really want to tell your customers that they are wimps and need this symbol of virility to instill a false sense of confidence?

at the moment i like those creepy lebron james as many different people ads, but that wont endear the swoosh to me. im a three stripe man myself.

as for hope-crosby, how about the odd couple? or cary grant and ralph bellamy in the awful truth and his gal friday? bellamy also takes it from fernand gravey in a carole lombard film fools for scandal.

ok, its true, i watch to much turner classic movies.

and as long as im here talking tv, you should check out the minor accomplishments of jackie woodman on ifc. light years better than 30 rock as sitcoms go.

[blue girl]

The MAC/PC guy commercials sort of remind me of the Holiday Inn Express commercials with the three business guys. They're not quite right for some reason, but I do like this one ... The Unicycle.

[Jennifer]

I have to agree with the hummer ads. I couldn't believe they came right out and said how shallow and spineless their customers were!

Almost any car commercial makes me not want that specific car.

[charlie]

umm, lance, one of your weaker essays. I am quite sure that neither the Mac guy or the PC guy are having sex off camera. It is entirely possible that the Mac guy has never gotten laid. Then again, I lost the most gorgeous blossom of a girl to a 5' 5" version of Justin Long, so I may be biased.

I won't make any shamless plugs here, but part of the analysis needs to be something that came out this summer -- the fake Wifi hack against Macs -- where it was very clear that many computer users wawnted to stick a cigarette in Justin Long's smug litle eyes. A big deal in the computer security world, a minor deal in the real world, but one that Apple PR and marketing was very, very aware of.

And where are the fireworks for Studio 60 renewals....

[Susan]

Bob/Jerry and Bing/Dean:

Movie - The Philadelphia Story, Macauley "Mike" Connor and C.K. Dexter Haven

TV - Perfect Strangers, Larry Appleton and Balki Bartokomous

[Tom Bozzo]

I think identifying with PC Guy is a feature, and not a bug, of the ads. See, e.g., "Counselor" (where PC Guy disparaging creative applications on the Mac is a slightly off note, though the punch line is great). Self-parody is an admissible advertising technique when the message of the ads goes beyond "Buy this PC! It's just $399!!!11!" Even given that, "annoying twit" is still not a good impression to convey. But I think Seth Stevenson took the campaign a little too personally or something.

My nomination for "too clever by half" (negative connotation) would be an underwriting message for McDonald's that appeared (and may still appear) before Sesame Street when my four-year-old was at the Sesame Street maximum a couple years ago. Obviously, this was meant to hawk McDonald's to a vulnerable audience without arousing excessive ire from PBS-contributing parents. The result was far too sub rosa for him, and he still can take or leave commercial fast food.

And while the ads for the Lexus Christmastime sales promotions almost make me want to key the paint on my own car (I want to think of myself as the guy commuting by bike well into the Wisconsin fall, not a smug upper-middle-class McMansionite, however perfect their kitchen cabinetry might be), I've heard much sentiment to the effect that the ad showing the LS 460's self-parking system is really cool, if only for the novelty of the product being demonstrated.

[blue girl]

Mr. Bozzo,

My nomination for "too clever by half" (negative connotation)

The way you wrote that leads me to believe you think there might also be a positive connotation when someone uses that phrase.

Is there?

[Jennifer]

BG- I'm sorry, but I'm still one of those who thinks "too clever by half" is negative and associate it with someone thinking they are too hip for the room...

Why is my Swiss Cheese memory now flashing back on this leading to whether sarcasm can be affectionate/romantic??? I fall into that camp as well. I don't know many women who don't like multiple sarcasms if delivered by the right person. :)

[Tom Bozzo]

BG - um, actually, no. I was being too clever by half there.

Though as such idioms go, I think someone *could* turn around for an ironic reversal of the ironic reversal of its literal meaning -- and take off the "by half" and I have heard "too clever" used in speech to mean "very clever" without the negative connotation. But that was not the case with my previous comment.

[Tom Bozzo]

Urk, make that "turn it ['too clever by half'] around."

[blue girl]

Thanks, Mr. Bozzo.

I just can't "hear" how that phrase could be used in a positive sense. And Jennifer, you're right. Someone said that it could be used affectionately. I think it's still negative. I mean, you could say all kinds of things to someone, getting a dig in and then when they call you on it, you could say...I was saying it affectionately!

Like...

You're a complete idiot!

What?!!

Oh, come now. I was just saying that affectionately! You know I don't think you're a *complete* one!

[Jennifer]

HEY!!!! BG!!! Were you just calling me an IDIOT??? :(

I see your point, but I believe there has to be a BIG level of trust for someone to do it affectionately... You can call someone on being an idiot about something and still love that they are an idiot about something. At least that's what I think... but then again... you called me an idiot. Were you being affectionate? :)

[Jennifer]

Hey Lance- Not to go OT, but I am SO glad that your ad picturing Santorum is GONE! Every time I would click over and see him it took a second to wonder if I hadn't accidentally gone to Pammy at Atlas's instead.

[blue girl]

...but then again... you called me an idiot.

Nuh, uh. I did not. I think it might have been Pinko Punko who said the whole affectionate thing. Or Res. I don't know -- don't remember and can't find my old post on my blog. Because I was too clever by half or a complete idiot when I made up my category names.

I've got posts about Bush in my Recipes category. Because I was probably thinking at the time...Yeah. What a recipe for disaster!

:)

[Jennifer]

Was Bush under the vegetable category?

[blue girl]

Oh man. Don't give me the idea to put categories within categories ... cuz I'll think ... what a great idea! and then my blog will explode! You don't think it makes any kind of sense now? Just wait.

:)

[M.A. Peel]

I'm so tickled by the Hope/Crosby reference. I'm a huge Crosby fan, which, in my generation, is a very lonely thing to be. There's no doubt Crosby would have been an actual Mac guy, given his interest in technology that led to the development of radio recording.

[DuWayne]

O.k. So I tried the "your a complete idiot" runthrough with my roomie and his boyfriend - they think I'm a bully now, even though I explained I was just being affectionate, as per your line. Honestly, I kind of feel like a bully now. . .

[sfmike]

Boy, this thread exploded. The Mac vs. PC guy ads are interesting. Justin Long looks like he just got out of bed with someone and his dick is still half-hard while the PC guy looks like he's all sweaty and anticipatory but the sex is just not going to happen.

Which is the classic Crosby/Hope, Don Giovanni/Leporello, cool/non-cool stock figures two-guys archetype, and it happens a lot in Real Life.

The fact that real geeks HATED this commercial goes right to Lance's point, that the archetype has shifted. And "Galaxy Quest" is not only the one great "Star Trek" movie, it's the one great Tim Allen movie besides.

[Lance]

SFMike, perfect description, and thanks for the opera reference. This is one highbrow blog, I'm telling ya.

MA Peel, Bing is a family tradition in the Mannion clan. My grandfather passed his love of Bing to my father who passed it down to me and now the teenager is a Bing fan.

NJ, Hawkeye would have been the Dean/Bing/Don Giovanni character on MASH if there'd been a character to take on the role of Young Lover or Bob Hope. Sometimes Radar was the Young Lover but in those few episodes Hawkeye either faded to the background or became more of big brother than a rival. Frank Burns sometimes seemed to want to be Hope to Hawkeye's Bing. There was always a part of Frank that wanted to rebel against his own superego. I think one of the things that made MASH more of a drama than a comedy was that the writing and acting rarely traded on stock characters or stock situations.

[Lance]

Oh, one more thing.

sfmike: "Galaxy Quest" is not only the one great "Star Trek" movie, it's the one great Tim Allen movie besides.

Mike, I beg differ. Allen has two great movies under his belt. Don't forget Toy Story 2.

[mac macgillicuddy]

I always kind of liked the PC guy and, truth be told, I wanted to punch the Mac guy in the mouth. He's not cool; he's condescending.

But as for the ads, any Levitra or Viagra ad. Levitra and Viagra sort of have that Mac guy attitude vs Cialis, which seems more willing to admit to me that I have the problem I think I have.

[Anne Laurie]

Most car commercials set the standards for Sucky Advertising, but Volkswagen's had some great ads. The first time I saw the Hummer ad which unselfconsciously advises those bullied by the universe to find their bliss in an overpriced bus, the VERY NEXT AD was the one with the Brand-over-Sanity buyers hanging out of their tinted power windows shouting things like 'My father never loved me!' and 'I'm overcompensating for my body issues!' Tagline: "Volkswagen, if you don't *need* to broadcast." I laughed so hard I scared the cat off my lap!

[KathyF]

I'm just pissed that there are no Mac Girl commercials.

I'm also pissed that I don't have cleavage, but that's for another story.

[gkru]

Gee, all this time I thought PC Guy was supposed to be Bill Gates. Talk about separated at birth!

[roxtar]

Re: Mash

Looking at it through the Hope/Crosby lens, Hawkeye IS Hope, but cast in the role of Top Banana. BJ Hunnicutt is Crosby, but playing the role of foil. It's Hope and Crosby in Bizzaro World. See also, Seinfeld/Costanza