This ad is a really fun play on that popular VW commercial where the kid dressed-up as Darth Vader is surprised/startled by the reaction of the car to his attempts to use the force upon it, after having failed with everything else he tried it out on before. And even if I don’t think this Greenpeace ad actually has the desired effect, it’s definitely super fun, cute, and basically all-around awesome! It has something for everyone to love, even if you vehemently disagree with the message. I mean, come on: how can you not love those kids all dressed up in the Star Wars costumes? When I was a kid, I would have blown up Alderaan for one of those costumes! (Well, as long as it was a fake planet, uninhabited by people, because otherwise it might cause a disruption in the force, after all!)
So this ad actually sends a very different message to me when I watch it than the intended one, and it has nothing to do with the environment, global warming, or climate change. But it’s bad for VW, so I guess mission accomplished for Greenpeace! So here’s the deal: this spot is actually showing us more about VW than it is about environmental policies, emissions standards, carbon dioxide, etc., and it’s not something I think VW would like to broadcast themselves! And that’s the fact that VW was founded by Adolf Hitler.
Yes, it’s true: Adolf Hitler conceived of the “Volkswagen” (the people’s car), an affordable, no-frills car that everyone could afford, and that was going to make it so he could destroy the world with global warming by spewing out tons and tons of carbon dioxide from all these cars. So the Nazis founded the Volkswagen company, and they’ve been trying to keep it a secret all along. And so Volkswagen is still carrying on this tradition of global destruction today, simply because they are still secretly being led by Adolf Hitler’s head in a jar, just like in the movie They Saved Hitler’s Brain, and like they’d do in Futurama if they ever got tired of bashing Richard Nixon.
So I don’t know how, but Greenpeace somehow stumbled upon this conspiracy, and now it’s going to be dangerous for them! Having exposed the big secret that the Fourth Reich is coming from the automotive world, the Earth may become quickly too small for them to hide in no matter how much they profess to love it, especially when they’re always easy to find out protesting something or trying to undermine the profitability of some big corporate interest. Kind of like they’re doing here to Volkswagen, actually!
So let’s look at how Greenpeace let the cat out of the bag about this whole Hitler climate conspiracy through this charming ad. When you see this commercial, you see the VW logo on the death star, and that shows that they’re part of the evil empire from Star Wars. Well, I’m pretty sure that when George Lucas thought up and designed this whole Star Wars universe, he based the evil empire on Nazi Germany. And, probably completely by accident, these hippies at Greenpeace (or their ad people) decided to make fun of that famous VW Star Wars ad, and then they associated VW with the empire, simply because in that original VW commercial, the VW car responds to (a kid dressed-up as) Darth Vader's commands (!). But it just so happens that it’s totally appropriate to do that anyway, regardless of any green agenda, because the VW company was actually founded by Adolf Hitler!
So what an unusual coincidence, to have this fact referenced purely by chance! If I were part of the Volkswagen advertising department, I would have made it my job to know about the history of the company (actually, the ad executives at their advertising agency should have done this as well!), and so I would have noticed instantly (I hope I would have, anyway!) that this Darth Vader ad was hitting a little too close to the truth of the company’s Nazi past! So by having a Star Wars-themed commercial for VW, it was bound to come out eventually that people would inevitably be reminded of the truth of their association to the Nazi Party in real life, and that’s really bad for business!
So, whether intentionally or not, Greenpeace may have sent a torpedo blasting a hole in VW’s market just by virtue of suggesting this link between Volkswagen and the empire, which reminds us of the Nazis, and the fact that VW was founded by Nazis in real life! Or perhaps a more apropos metaphor would have been to say that they may have “wrecked” their market. In any case, the truth sometimes really is stranger than fiction, and Volkswagen may have just asked for a pile of trouble simply because they were not alert enough to their own company history to recognize the danger of doing a Star Wars-related ad in the first place, especially one where their car is seeming to obey Darth Vader’s commands (!). Oh well; I guess shit happens, as they say…
Here is the Greenpeace ad:
And here is the original Volkswagen Darth Vader “The Force” commercial that it is based upon:
