Creepiness

[Mark Thibodeau]

An excerpt from the forthcoming book Creepiness

Beginning in the mid-2000s, the fast food chain Burger King began running a
series of deeply disturbing advertisements. They star a revamped version of
the company’s mascot, The King, who has left the world of animated
children’s advertisements and is now played by an actor wearing a large
plastic mask featuring a crown, a beard, and an alarming perpetual smile.
One typical ad features a man waking up in the morning to find The King in
bed with him, staring at him inches away from his face. The man is
initially alarmed, but becomes calm when The King hands him a breakfast
sandwich. As he eats, he and The King become friendlier, joking, laughing,
and even briefly brushing hands—and then they both flinch away and face
forward in the bed. In another, a man wakes up, opens the blinds, and finds
The King standing there staring at him. He starts to become agitated until
he notices that The King is holding a plate with a breakfast sandwich.

Adam Kotsko Creepiness Zer0 Books (137 pages)These ads, whose mascot was
widely called the “Creepy King” in the press and among viewers, generated
considerable word-of-mouth attention for Burger King, and in a sense, they
could be viewed as one of the most successful “viral marketing” campaigns
of all time. Unfortunately for Burger King, the attention was almost
uniformly negative. In light of the public’s revulsion, the firm’s
advertising agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, tweaked the formula slightly.
In one later ad, The King crashes through an office window in a relentless
quest to replace a woman’s microwaved lunch with a huge hamburger, while in
another, he engages in a “reverse pick-pocketing” scheme wherein he sneaks
money into people’s pockets, apparently symbolizing his commitment to
saving customers money.

The shift to surrealism was not enough to shake the “Creepy King” image,
and ultimately the mascot was retired. Yet The King lives on, seared into
the American cultural consciousness as an enduring archetype of creepiness.
I’ve been researching the topic for years, primarily by asking people what
they think of creepiness. Every definition I attempted was rejected as
inadequate, and every creepy pop cultural character seemed open to other
interpretations—except for one.  The King is the one example that always
receives unanimous consent.

Continued

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/nice-to-meat-you/?utm_content=bufferd0c1d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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