Original_To:  BITNET%"mbu-l@ttuvm1.bitnet"
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Date:         Thu, 1 Oct 1992 06:53:00 EDT
From:         "Composition Digest (Robert Royar,
              Moderator)" <R0MILL01@ULKYVX.BITNET>
Subject:      The Morphology of American Auto Sales (1)

Date:         Fri, 25 Sep 1992 15:10:38 EDT
From:         IN%"RobertRoyar@Delphi.com" Robert Royar (C&CD Moderator)
Message-id:   <1992Sep25.151038.1.Grendel.Lair@Cratylus>
Subject:      The Morphology of American Auto Sales (1)
Reply-to:     IN%"R0MILL01@ULKYVX.LOUISVILLE.EDU"  C&CD
Organization: Cratylus Educational Software

                  Some Musings on a Cloudy Friday at Home

The new darling of the animatronics industry is a technique called
morphing. While morphing has been around for many years (a decade or more)
it's only recently found use in popular media.  The first well-known morphs
were from the second terminator movie--the scenes where the evil terminator
changes before our eyes into other persons or forms.  More recently Michael
Jackson's "Black and White" video used morphing for a number of
scenes--probably the most memorable being the extended scene in which one
human face changes into another.  However, few may recall the first
television uses of morphing in automobile ads of the late 1980s.

It was a time of lagging US auto sales and the beginning of yet another
round of US auto layoffs.  The US car manufacturers had misspent the
profits they received as a result of tarrifs and quotas imposed on imports,
purchasing real estate and speculating rather than reinvesting in their
plants.  Despite this fact American-built automobile quality had improved
and ironically (coupled with high interest rates and a poor economy) had
led to Americans buying fewer American autos each year.  The new American
cars held up better than previous models and offered longer warrantie
periods.  It became more attractive for consumers to hold on to their aging
American-made autos than to purchase new ones.  American manufacturers
(having failed to upgrade their plants) were forced to reduce the number of
design changes each year; therefore, the American auto
consumers--especially those who purchased a American-made automobile every
two to three years--were further dissuaded from purchasing new autos that
looked so much like their present ones.

Morphing to the rescue.  Chrysler (and later Ford) were the first to use
morphing in auto commercials during the late 1980s.  The premise was
simple: design changes are minmal--almost imperceptible--but by showing the
progression from old to new using the morphing technique the illusion of
change can be created.  Thus we first see arm rests in a van becoming
streamlined, dashboards transforming slightly, and finally the nose of the
auto becoming more petit (and more Europeanized).  The over-all effect,
because the morphs are done one at a time and spread throughout the entire
commercial, is the sense that the new autos and minivans are not only
changed from previous years but that those changes are organic and part of
an overall design process, rather than being simply cosmetic.

While no media watchers of the day seemed to notice this subtle rhetorical
ploy, it did have a minor effect on the buying public--or at least
increased sales of the morph-promoted autos coincided with the commercials,
and the commercials were adapted for new autos for over a year.

Neither did anyone note that the morphing technique helped the auto
companies present a new image of their products which happened to meet some
of the criticisms aimed at the American manufacturers head on, namely
Detroit reluctantly made changes in autos either to meet new environmental
or safety standards--remember that Lee Iacococa argued vociferously against
seat belts while at Ford, but that his present company has turned the
inclusion of air-bag technology into an asset--or for the sake of
attracting new buyers with cosmetic changes to the autos they already
owned.  The morphing techniques actually allowed the manufacturer to focus
attention on the cosmetic changes and simply declare them to be more than
cosmetic.  Morphing also allowed the companies to focus attention on the
idea that their manufacturing processes were changing (although that turned
out to be largely illusion).  During this period changing the design of the
factory, upgrading facilities, and modernizing manufacturing techniques at
the shop-floor level were supposed to lead to revitalization of the
manufacturing capabilities in this country.  Morphing helped Chrysler and
others create and perpetuate this illusion.

Because morphing allowed relatively large segments (5 or more seconds of a
60 second spot) to focus on a few minor points, it made those changes
appear greater than they were and also made it appear that much work must
have been involved in creating those changes.  It's no wonder the retail
prices of those automobiles increased well beyond the cost of additional
production, marketing, or even beyond that returned to investors.  The auto
companies in the late eighties and early nineties were beginning to feel
the pinch of the junk funds they had purchased and lamenting the loss of
the high profits from a few years earlier.  Of course they blamed the
Japanese rather than their own insolvent investment practices and high
executive salaries.

Since the first auto commercials used morphing some years ago, it has found
it's way into a number of movies and into other commercial presentations.
And it has come full circle back to Chrysler which is currently running a
commercial mimicing the Jackson video's trademark face morphs.  In this new
commercial Chrysler is presenting it's design and management workers
(although one line worker is represented) as a team that works as one
person.  The individuals morph into one another, and eventually a line of
them walking toward the camera merge into the one lone representative of the
corporate identity.  They are a team--but interestingly, or ironically not a
team of individuals.  The team is tauted as the creators of the automobile
for the next century (still nine years away remember).

The corporate image Chrysler now wishes to promulgate is one of stability,
leadership, and team-based management.  It's interesting to note that the
team concept of automobile manufacturing is supposedly part of the Japanese
business mystique.  So despite the Japanese bashing from Iacoca and George's
"busho sura" in Japan after downing too many Halcyons, the best promotion
the modern advertising dollar can buy perverts the American team of
individuals concept into a misconceived notion of the Japanese working
group.  Or perhaps Chrysler is trying to attract an aura similar to that
surrounding "team Xerox" but without inviting the same employee cultivation
and individuality that supposedly characterises that corporation.  Either
way the image that one gets from the Chrysler commercial is a bit unsettling
with its image of incorporation into the Jungian collective consciousness.
When we add in the connotations of the morphs used in the movie T2 with its
more than evil shape-shifting android and the Jackson video with its images
of exploiting Native Americans and Bopal mega-death made commercial, we get
a complex of allusions and interpretations that create a corporate image of
control over the individual and suspicion about the "real" nature of any
corporate "soldier."

At the most recent Computers and Writing conference in Indianapolis, Cyndy
Selfe talked about the power of the Cyborg and Stephen Marcus discussed
Virtual Reality space.  While morphing does not make cyborgs, nor does it
need or relate directly to VR, it too is part of the mind manipulation
available to the computer professional.  Its applications in popular media
offer the rhetorician many opportunities for both deep and surface
structural analysis, and it should become yet another hot topic for our
intellectual focus.

[I'm not sure what the previous "essay" is or whether it has an audience,
but I figured a few of you guys may have noticed some of the same
connections or others who've overlooked these adverts might like to begin
cataloguing the ways morphing can carry (not-so-subtle) messages to the
unwary viewer. -rdr]

 -- Robert Royar (RobertRoyar@Delphi.com) New York Institute of Technology
    "Do not search for the truth. Simply cease to cherish opinion"
                                           - Sengstan, Third Zen Patriarch

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