Angry in the Great White North

Watch the video of this Superbowl commercial.  Yes, it's very funny:

Now the scene that I think is so cleverly subversive happens at the end.  The Green Police about to arrest two cops for using Styrofoam cups.

Maybe you have to be an American to get it, but I don't think so.  In any case, Americans were the intended audience.

Think about what the scene means.  Here are the police, the enforcement branch of the State, being arrested?  Police get arrested by other police when they break the law, of course.  But in this video, the suggestion is that there is an Orwellian Green Police, going through garbage, peering in windows, walking uninvited on people's private property to inspect light fixtures or measure their hot tub water temperature, performing invasive spot checks on public highways.and arresting police!

When the Green Police have the power to arrest cops, that suggests something significant.  This isn't just about the State exceeding its constitutional powers.  If so, the video would have had regular police doing the arrests.  When the State does go too far, you can always look to the courts for redress.  To me, the scene suggests the Green Police are somehow deriving their power from something outside of the Constitution.  Something that they alone enforce, and that subordinates the State and the Constitution to its power.  That's why the cops, who swear an oath merely to uphold the Constitution, have to submit to the Green Police.

Am I reading too much into this?  I don't think so, only because I think the image of police being arrested on the spot by some other force will resonate in the minds of most people, but especially with Americans, for whom things like Constitutional rights and separation of powers is bred in the bone.  Even if viewers of the video don't articulate it, at some level they'll understand that the road being offered by global warming alarmists (and environmentalists in general) leads to a place where the Constitution is not the highest law of the land, and where something else, something outside of government, will control their lives, running roughshod over all their Constitutional protections.

When Americans see that, even if delivered in a humorous manner, they'll respond.  And there is no way they'll ever let Barack Obama or any other liberal/socialist politician turn their country into a place where something else ranks higher than the Constitution.

So even if I doubt the person who wrote the script for this commercial was consciously thinking of this, I can't help but wonder if subconsciously he or she was encoding a message that American viewers would understand.  It is a disturbing message that would stick with them.  Which is why the commercial works from an advertising point of view.

The more I think of this commercial, the more I think it will hurt the environmental movement.

It's not easy to be green without some green: A thought provoking interpretation of this commercial:

And while Audi in it's web page wants to encourage "green activities," what really struck me about this ad are several things. The rich can avoid penalties because they can afford to buy carbon credits and Audis (furthering the divide between the rich and everyone else), the paramilitary way environmental laws and regulations may be enforced, and the other message that the rich can continue with their consumptive life style as long as they buy expensive ""green goods."

Good point.

Nazi references?  Audi, a German company, didn't miss this, but their research suggested no one would remember the other Green Police, also known as the Ordnungspolizei:

The Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) was the name for the uniformed regular German police force in existence during the period of Nazi Germany, notably between 1936 and 1945. It was increasingly absorbed into the Nazi police system. Owing to their green uniforms, they were also referred to as Grene Polizei (green police).

During the invasion of Poland in 1939, Police Battalions [a special class of unit within the Ordnungspolizei] committed atrocities against both the Catholic and the Jewish populations[9] and as security forces patrolled the perimeters of the Jewish ghettoes of Poland (SS, SD, and in some cases the Criminal Police were responsible for internal ghetto security issues in conjunction with Jewish ghetto administration[10]). Starting in 1941 Police Battalions and local Order Police units helped to transport Jews from the ghettoes in both Poland and the USSR (and elsewhere in occupied Europe) to the concentration and extermination camps, as well as operations to hunt down and kill Jews outside the ghettoes.

Anne Frank met her end thanks to the Green Police:

On 4 August 1944, following information given to the Nazis by a Dutch informer, the "Green Police" (the Nazi Secret Police) broke into their hiding place and transported the eight people living there to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. Anne's mother, Edith, died in Auschwitz a few months later. Anne and her sister, Margot, were sent to Bergen-Belsen where they died of typhus early in 1945. Except for Otto Frank, who was found alive in Auschwitz when the Allied forces freed the camp, all those who lived in the hideout died.

Bastards.  And I'm talking about the guys at Audi.  As soon as they realized the reference, they ought to have deep-sixed this commercial.

It gives Eco-Nazi a whole new meaning.

From Around the Blogosphere:

The Volokh Conspiracy concurs.  Michelle Malkin is creeped out.  I expect other American bloggers are saying the same thing.

Audi CMO Scott Keogh talks about Audi's thinking behind the commercial.