One of the PBS stations I get had a documentary about President Reagan recently, and they mentioned this idea of America being a “shining city on a hill”, as Reagan stated in one of his speeches. President Obama has also used this expression in his speeches, and people on both sides of the aisle still reference it to this day as a metaphorical exemplar of American Exceptionalism. And seeing as how we’re a capitalist country, I thought it might well be repurposed for an ad: for Windex.
We see a shining city on a hill in long shot, and the announcer says: “America is a shining city on a hill. But how did it get that way?” Then the camera makes an extreme zoom shot onto one of the skyscrapers in the city, and we see, amongst all of the glittering windows, a team of window washers on a platform washing skyscraper windows with Windex, and the shot zooms forther into the label so we can read it. Then we see a product shot along with a slogan, which says: “America is a shining city on a hill, and Windex is how it got that way.”
