Barbara Lippert's Critique

Maybe it's because from a distance of 30 years or so, everything seems depoliticized, sweeter and more innocent. Or maybe we just have a thing for polyester and splayed collars. Whatever, 1970s nostalgia is still the rage, and even if you're already (bell) bottomed out, there's a fresher subgenre of '70s revival coming this summer: the blaxploitation movie spoof (Undercover Brother and Austin Powers in Goldmember with Beyoncé Knowles, and Halle Berry is working on a Foxy Brown remake). Even Burger King has gotten into the act, with its best commercial in years, featuring Shaquille O'Neal as Shaft.But even within this 'splosion of '70-style 'sploitation, for sheer ingenuity and magnitude of talent, nothing holds a candle (or a lava lamp, maybe) to Wieden + Kennedy's "Big Bang" campaign for Nike basketball. It's funny and clever, but also deeply authentic. Directed by the Hughes brothers, the twins who did Menace II Society, the three commercials look uncannily like lost footage from the Gerald Ford age (they were actually shot in Canada in the last few months).The underlying strategy is also extremely smart: to link basketball of the mid-1970s—specifically the teams in the ABA, the "street" or outlaw league, in which the players were known for slam dunking and showboating—with the culture of mid-'70s funk, which kept the beat of soul but was more experimental and psychedelic. Wilder and freer as music, funk is the perfect metaphor for street basketball (here the ball is a psychedelic red, white and blue), and the fusion of the film and music is powerful.For starters, any commercial with Bootsy Collins and George Clinton (of the Parliamentary Funkadelics) has got to be cool. The third spot in the series, "Funk Ship," which broke last week during the NBA playoffs, has so much inspired stuff jammed into it—including famous players and musicians—that you'll still find new bits after multiple viewings. It opens with a welcome from Snoop Dogg, wearing big glasses and a fur coat, who invites viewers to another galaxy—and the "stone cold groove called the Funk Ship."Inside the spaceship (think Woody Allen's Orgasmatron from Sleeper), the crowd is dancing, and juxtaposed with that trippy scene are images on a 1970s-mod screen of basketball players (Vince Carter, Baron Davis, Paul Pierce, Jermaine O'Neal) doing mad tricks and dunks, enhanced by a Peter Max-like psychedelic, strobe-lit trail effect. (Visual effects are by Method.)Bootsy Collins, grandfather of funk, did the music for all three spots. My favorite is "Roswell Rayguns," because Boots' music, voice and personality permeate the clever faux-documentary footage. "Glory be, the funk's on me" he opens with, and we get to see a mythical ABA team (part X-Files, part Superfly, but made up of contemporary players such as Baron Davis and Jerry Stackhouse) as they barnstorm the country, shooting, scoring, showing off, riding the bus, giving autographs. There's even a shot of a bald white guy with glasses and a green sports jacket playing keyboards on the side of the court, and I'd swear that's my Uncle Mel, circa '75. In the final scene, on a basketball court, we see Bootsy playing guitar in all his '70s glory: purple sequined suit, giant purple glitter top hat, star-shaped sunglasses. The opening spot, "Rucker Park," recreating a 1975 game at that famous Harlem spot, inserts Vince Carter into the action. Still, the look is so authentic that a sportswriter for The New York Times planning on making a movie called the agency to request the footage. A fourth spot, a jokey coda to the original three, will be released soon. "The Funk Ship" ends with a woman dancing, shot from the rear, and above her tush hovers Nike's swoosh—so in this context, even the swoosh seems funkified. I call that keeping the funk alive.

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Barbara Lippert's Critique

Barbara Lippert

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Barbara Lippert