signs of aging and how j.c. penny missed its target in my case

Have you seen the commercial? J.C. Penny is selling teen clothes by appropriating famous scenes and dance moves from The Breakfast Club, to a cover version of Don’t You (Forget About Me).

There’s nothing like a baaaaad cover version of a favorite song from your teen years by an unknown band to make you feel old. The commercial is equally disturbing and jarring in its familiarity and cheap imitation. Who are these children and why are they messing with my memories of one of my favorite movies ever?

How can I explain? Not just mem-o-ries. I memORIZED that movie back in the day. The actors, their movements, the soundtrack, are as deeply ingrained in my body as the experience of prayer to a religious person. The repetition, the ritual. Not that I think John Hughes should be compared with G-d. No. Please. Really. I’m just trying to explain.

Watching this commercial is like feeling movement in someone else’s phantom limb.

The version on TV is only 30 seconds long, and is actually more disturbing than this 1-minute plus one via YouTube.

So, my first analysis is that by JCP’s accounting, I should have a teenager by now. I should see this commercial and want to dress my kid in clothes that I will thus associate nostalgically with my high school years.

And then, in Googling around for the video clip, I find this adweek article detailing the multi-tiered reach of the campaign (ooooh, an interactive storyline and virtual lockers where I can store my purchases) and the overt goal which is apparently not specifically to seduce me, Julie, into a nostalgia-fueled shopping frenzy, but rather to provide the retailer with a convenient hook for promoting five clothing lines based on the movie’s archetypes.

Cringe.

End of rant.

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I was going to go on and talk about how my parents always taught me that TV is not real. How I may hate JCP for this commercial but I’m a slave to most of the latest trends at Baby Gap. I might have even worked in something cute about the boy today. But it’s 10:14 p.m. and my husband is reminding me that now that our son sleeps through the night, I should try it too.