The Super Bowl commercial
The ad and the inventor who changed the world.
I was 10 years old when I first learned about the Super Bowl. For my school’s Grandparent’s Day open house, our assignment was to do a project about an inventor who changed the world.
“You should write about Steven Jobs,” my Dad suggested. “You could show the ‘1984’ Super Bowl commercial that put the Macintosh computer on the map.”
This was 1997. Steven wasn’t household name Steve Jobs yet.
“What’s the Super Bowl?” I asked.
We didn’t have a TV and never watched sports at home. Hilariously enough, Steve(n) Jobs didn’t know what a Super Bowl was either.
The ad’s writer STEVE HAYDEN: Jobs said, “I want something that will stop the world in its tracks.” Our media director, Hank Antosz, said, “Well, there’s only one place that can do that — the Super Bowl.” And Steve Jobs said, “What’s the Super Bowl?” [Antosz] said, “Well, it’s a huge football game that attracts one of the largest audiences of the year.” And [Jobs] said, “I’ve never seen a Super Bowl. I don’t think I know anybody who’s seen a Super Bowl.” — from 40 Years Ago, This Ad Changed the Super Bowl Forever by Saul Austerlitz for the New York Times
Dad explained to me, as the advertising executives several years earlier had explained to Steve(n) Jobs, that millions of people watch the Super Bowl every year. Since the football game had such a large captive audience, companies paid millions of dollars to run commercials.
“Everyone knows the ‘1984’ ad,” Dad went on. “It’s famous.”
Dad found the commercial on the Internet and we watched it on the Macintosh in his office. We probably had the DSL line by that point. Dad didn’t want us to watch TV, but he wanted us to have unfettered access to the information superhighway.
According to Dad, the commercial was “brilliant.” I found it weird and confusing. There wasn’t even a computer in it. Dad explained it was meant to evoke George Orwell’s book “1984,” where everyone lives in fear of Big Brother. This was Jobs’ way of showing the Macintosh would change computers forever. Dad’s explanation didn’t make me any less confused. I’d never read “1984.”
Dad loved the commercial. Dad loved Apple. Dad said Steve(n) Jobs was one of the smartest people in the world. This was all presented as fact, which meant there was no question I would do my report on Jobs.
While I read websites and books Dad had sourced about Jobs’ life to write my report, he executed his idea for my school display. Naturally, given the subject of my report, I’d have to use a Macintosh computer. Dad figured out how to transfer the “1984” commercial from the Internet to a floppy disk so it would play on a loop. I have no idea how he did that.
The final touch was to bind my report with our comb-binding machine. I liked to arrange the plastic spiral comb, place the cardstock cover, and line up the paper just so. With a definitive crank of the handle, a stack of paper could be bound together just like a real book. I considered my bound report superior to those of my classmates, who used plastic covers with clip closures. Mine was so much more professional.
The opening paragraph of my seven-page double-spaced report reads like a direct transcription of one of Dad’s Apple sermons.
Can you name some of the things you take for granted? One of those thing you might have not mentioned might be the computer. Computers today are different than they were not too long ago. They were just numbers and letters and were hard to understand. Steven Jobs changed all of that. He started the company Apple, which changed everything.
We cut a square in my foamboard for the monitor where the “1984” commercial played non-stop during the open house. To display alongside my report, Dad loaned me an issue of Macworld magazine, his copy of “1984,” and another book called “Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything.”
The date on the back of this photograph is January 28, 1997, two days after the Green Bay Packers beat the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXI. Of course, we didn’t watch the game.
Though I had four living grandparents, I don’t think any of them came to the open house. One pair of grandparents had likely already snowbirded to Florida, and we were estranged from the other pair. I think a few of my classmates’ grandparents politely stopped for a minute or two, but everyone was really there to see their own grandchild.
I remember sitting silent for the open house while the weird commercial played. My back was to the monitor, so I didn’t watch it. I just heard the Super Bowl’s most famous commercial on repeat. The two-toned bell, the snippets from the dictator’s speech, the men’s footsteps marching in rhythm, the storm troopers’ equipment jostling as they run, the hammer whipping through the air, the scream the woman makes when she releases it, the boom when the hammer hits the screen.
1984 won’t be like 1984. Over and over and over. I must have heard the commercial play 100 times.
It’s hard to know if my 10-year-old self believed Steve(n) Jobs changed the world. My Dad believed it, so I did too.
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