ABSTRACT
Early in 2003, a pair of IKEA commercials aired on American television. Created by fi lm director Wes Anderson, both of these offbeat, postmodernist television spots featured the same quirky concept.1 In the fi rst, entitled “Kitchen,” a man and woman are caught on camera in the midst of a diffi cult marital confrontation in a modern kitchen as the wife accuses the husband of being “out there prowling the streets” while she is “stuck in here like some prisoner.” As the argument heats up, an off-screen voice interrupts with a tentative “So . . . ” As the camera pulls back to reveal the larger setting of an IKEA showroom, the salesperson comes in from the right edge of the screen and continues “ . . . what do you guys think?” Quickly shifting tone, the couple responds with “It feels good,” and “Yeah, we’ll take it.” The second ad, “Living Room,” shows a similarly uncomfortable (if clichéd) family scene, with a pregnant teenage daughter breaking the news to her parents. As accusations get tossed around and the argument heats up, the same inquiry comes from an off-frame salesperson. This couple also reports that the model living room works just fi ne, and they decide to buy it. Each of the ads plays with the difference between a mode of participatory performance in which each family momentarily goes too far in making the room its own, and that of a more detached consumerism, the level from which the viewer watches and the sale is made. That difference left some viewers confused: Lewis Lazare, reporting on the upcoming ads for the Chicago Sun-Times in 2002, called the ads “ill-conceived” and added, “The new spots probably will leave you thinking the world is one big, hugely unhappy and terribly dysfunctional family unit. An odd way to sell household goods? You bet.”2
