Spidey at the plate...
Y'all have probably heard about this by now, as it's getting a ridiculous amount of press coverage, but just in case here's the scoop:
Sony and Major League Baseball have teamed up for a cross-promotion by which the bases at MLB ballparks will sport ads for "Spider-Man 2" from June 11-13. Hm. The imagery of Geek Iconography placed onto the "sacred" tools of a sporting event... think sports fans are happy? Didn't think so. (for the record, I love baseball. GO YOU REDSOX!)
The New York Yankees are mad as hell about spoiling the "purity" of the game, as the AP reports:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=8&u=/ap/20040506/ap_on_sp_ba_ne/bbo_spider_man_on_base_13
It makes sense that the Yankees should be the ones to get mad about this. After all, we all know that among all of the MLB the Yankees are the last oasis of the pure, old-fashioned sportsmanship and pluck of old-school, classic baseball, right? Um, wait... no they aren't! The Yankees are the most ultra-slick, commercial-age, hype-driven team in either league, their the Donald-flippin'-Trump of Baseball; and THIS is too much for them??
Ahem.
I should preface this by saying that, yes, the commercialism of modern sports IS a big problem. The most eggregious example is the "sport" of Nascar Racing, where the obscene spectacle of it's drivers and their cars covered head-to-toe with promotional logos has reduced what was already not much of a "sport" to begin with into a surreal "everything-wrong-with-America" visual metaphor in which crowds of thousands pack stadiusm to watch BILLBOARDS ON WHEELS DRIVE IN A CIRCLE.
That being said, the venom being spewed over this I actually find amusing and, dare I say, delightful. Especially since, as you can see in the AP link, the "eyesore" is little more than a tiny web-pattern symbol in the center of the base. For DECADES, geeks have had to "put up" with "mainstream-appeal" stuff being shoved into, say, comic-based films (hip-pop tie-in soundtracks, miscast "name" actors, etc.) so it's hard to feel anything but a sense of "how do YOU like it!?" glee watching the ULTIMATE 'normal' pastime, the sports event, enduring the opposite.
Oh, don't look at me like that. C'mon, think about how cool this is, especially the part about the MLB heads agreeing that this will help them "reach" more fans. You read that right: The SPORTS WORLD feels it needs to associate itself with a movie about SPIDER-MAN in order to remain "cool" and "relevent." Again: A SPORT now needs to be associated with a COMIC-BOOK HERO in an attempt to make the SPORT cooler.
New Age Of Geek Cinema? Don't say I didn't warn ya.
BTW, back to the AP story, how funny is it that they found time to go and get a downer quote from Ralph Nader about this? Money quote from His Spoilerness:
"It's gotten beyond grotesque," Nader said. "The fans have to revolt here. Otherwise, they'll be looking at advertisements between advertisements."
Less than a year away from the election, a major war effort turning to muck before our eyes, a MAJOR war-related scandal breaking over the week, and a candidate for the U.S. presidency finds time to publicly dennounce... Spider-Man 2 logos on bases? Huh? Must be all part of Nader's (thus far) campaign-wide plan to inform everyone who thought he was "cool" compared to Bush and Gore four years ago what a PILL he tends to be overall...
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