Box Vox

packaging as content

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October 21, 2010

The Road

Three end-of-the-world packaging scenes from The Road:



1. The underground bunker scene

The point I want to make about this scene—(aside from namechecking of packaged food brands)—is this business about “the people.“

In Tuesday’s post about fallout shelters, I included a quote from Thomas Hine about how the supermarket “replaces people with packages.”

The implications are similar here. For the man and the boy in the hidden bunker, an adequate supply of packaged food appears to be a pretty good trade-off: a huge stockpile of bottled beverages, canned foods and bags of Cheetos, replacing the presumably deceased people who had originally put it all there. In the book, the thanking of the people is little different:

Do you think we should thank the people?

The people?

The people who gave us all this.

Well. Yes, I guess we could do that.

Will you do it?

Why dont you?

I dont know how.

Yes you do. You know how to say thank you.

The boy sat staring at his plate. He seemed lost. The man was about to speak when he said: Dear people, thank you for all this food and stuff. We know that you saved it for yourself and if you were here we wouldnt eat it no matter how hungry we were and we’re sorry that you didnt get to eat it and we hope that you’re safe in heaven with God.

–Cormac McCarthy, The Road

(Two more package-related scenes from The Road, after the fold…)


Coke

2. The Coke can scene (from the book):

He sat and ran his hand around in the works of the gutted machines and in the second one it closed over a cold metal cylinder. He withdrew his hand slowly and sat looking at a Coca Cola.

What is it, Papa?

It’s a treat. For you.

–Cormac McCarthy, The Road

What worked as a significant cultural moment in the book—the last can of Coke on earth?—in the context of the film, struck some people as an overly “feel-good” commercial moment of product placement. [Note: You can see this scene online—but it’s been violated by a joke Coca Cola ad inserted towards the end—otherwise the scene seems intact, I think.] And, as dirty as Dad’s face is in this scene, I have to agree that the lighting is a little on the radiant side.

Most soda companies, however, were reportedly worried that having their products included in this gloomy, end-of-the-world movie might not be such a good thing…  

There is a moment in “The Road” where the man discovers a can of Coke and gives it to the boy. McCarthy was asked why that particular brand name shows up in the book.

“Well, it just struck me. It’s the iconic American product,” he said. “The one thing that everybody knows about America, the one thing above cowboys and Indians, above everything else that you can think of, is Coca-Cola. You can’t go to a village of 18 people in the remotest part of Africa that they don’t know about Coca-Cola.

Hillcoat [John Hillcoat, director of the film] interjected. “Here’s the irony,” he said. “There’s some people who don’t know the book and have picked up on this in the film and say, Why did they go for such a blatant product placement?’ Of course, we had to get permission, and every soft drink company was saying, ‘We’re a family brand and we do not want to be associated with cannibalism.’ That’s what they all said.”

McCarthy laughed, joking, “There was a little bit of interest shown by Dad’s Root Beer.”

Hillcoat said, “We shot that scene with all these different cans, because at that point they were all saying no. Viggo Mortensen actually ended up talking to the head marketing guy in Atlanta as a personal plea to say, ‘You’ve got to do this.’”

Cormac McCarthy On How Coca-Cola Ended Up In “The Road,” and Other Musings
John Jurgensen, Speakeasy blog, The Wall Street Journal, November 12, 2009

TheRoadDonPepino

3. The candle-lit bedtime story scene

The ad hoc light fixture is made from the same cheery Don Pepino can that we discussed back in 2009.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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