Pfizer's Super Bowl Ad: Pedagogy of the Elite & "Exceptional"

 

It’s one of my favorite Queen songs – Don’t Stop Me Now.

And for a moment, I was back then, the 80’s, listening to the percolating power in Freddie Mercury’s plea –“I’m a shooting star leaping through the sky. Like a tiger defying the laws of gravity”.  Not as tame as Wicked’s “Defying Gravity.”  Back then, tame didn’t cut it.  

But then, there's this cadaver lying on the table, bone white, eyes popping open as if he's suddenly not really dead. And his grotesque mouth moving while all these stunned pilgrims are looking on.

And these paintings of these old white men on the wall, and their mouths are moving too.  

Oh, I get it. They’re Freddie Mercury wannabees. 

No. it’s the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer's idea of what a high-profile message about the power of “science” and the history of science should look like. 

Using an elitist version of “How many famous Western scientists can you find in the picture?” Pfizer employs a host of classical, romantic, and often masculine tropes to make its point in this Ad. Privileging the likes of Hippocrates, Galileo, and Copernicus, Pfizer’s founders Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart, Albert Einstein, Rosalind Franklin and Katalin Karikó.  Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp thrown in for a bit more gravitas. 

I can imagine the creative team conceiving the ad:

Creative 1 We need some star power.

Creative 2 Beyonce? 

Creative 1 No Copernicus (motioning to the stars) 

Creative 3 Cool, and how about Galileo & Copernicus!

Creative 4 And some haunting work of art – you know that                                      autopsy painting. Rembrandt?

Creative 5 And scientists, when they wore those wigs. 

Creative 2 Well, if not Beyonce, we definitely need women. 

Creative 2 And books, lots of beautiful books, in beautiful library                         – like the Peabody.  I love that place.

Creative 1 Yes.  Powerful

Historically, Americans’ trust in science has been fraught. A longstanding, populist (some would say, a healthy) suspicion of elites and experts runs deep in American political culture. PEW Research Center’s research look at Americans’ trust in science is sobering. About  ¼ (27%) say that they have “not too much” trust or confidence. Overall, 57% of Americans say science has had a mostly positive effect on society, down 16 points since before the start of the coronavirus outbreak.

As trust in scientists has fallen, distrust has grown: Roughly a quarter of all Americans (27%) vs 12% in 2020 say they have “not too much” or “no confidence” in scientists to act in the public’s best interest.  

4 in 10  Republicans (38%) now say they have not too much or no confidence at all in scientists to act in the public’s best interests, and less than half of them (47%) see science as having had a mostly positive effect on society. (For a richer understanding of these important trends, see the full PEW Research Report, Americans’ Trust in Scientists, Positive Views of Science Continue to Decline.

Why would Pfizer think that using images from predominantly Western philosophical, theological, and scientific traditions, and with a touch of light-heartedness, communicate the power of science to the millions watching the Super Bowl?  

These images may be iconic for an educated elite who went to schools with paneled walls lined with austere portraiture and walked among precious marbles on one of their many museum assignments. 

For many others, these images are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, triggering colonialist empires, hegemony, and a continued refusal to acknowledge the innovation found in every country and peoples of the world.

Why did Pfizer take this posture -touting this particular form of exceptionalism? 

  After all, they’re a multi-billion dollar giant.  Is that the answer?

My last question about this remake of Night at the Museum - Just what was that cute manatee all about?