David Duneman

1/26/13

English 220

Joe Serio

Would Success Spoil Us All?

            I must say “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter” was a humorous surprise. It’s simply a big spoof on the business of advertising and it does a good job at that. It begins with a series of dramatic ads where someone is trying to convince you to buy a product while they’re using the product and it’s not working. We see ads everyday where there’s a perfect product that can do anything the user wants it to do. In “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter” these types of ads are shown how the products actually work when they are used. This was a great intro to this movie. In one instance this lady is trying to convince you to buy this amazing comb while she’s combing her hair and the comb is pulling out chunks of her hair. This is the type of advertisement we would see if they showed us a non-exaggerated form of the product.

            They also criticize the wealthy, top-of-the-pyramid business men. The head business men, at Rock Hunters’ advertisement company, are portrayed as lonely, pill-popping, ignorant idiots that only got to where they are because of pure luck. When we first met Hunters’ boss he was laying on a massage chair taking some pills. In actually reality the boss of a big corporation is viewed as an idol, someone with a lot of money, like how Hunter views the head of his corporation. The boss’ are viewed as emotionless jerks, until the head of the corporation, Irving, later on, spills his feelings on Rock Hunter, saying that he is lonely and didn’t end up where he wanted to be at all, he actually wanted to grow flowers for a living instead. He later leaves the corporation to Hunter, and goes to gardening for a living and has a flower named after him. So the wealthy business men are highly criticized in “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter”. The wealthy movie stars are highly criticized as well. The main pop-star, Rita Marlowe, is portrayed as a ditzy, blonde girl with the most annoying, high-pitched squeal of a laugh that you’ll ever hear. At one point, when Rita Marlowe is being interviewed, her manager tells the press that Marlowe wants to go into seclusion for a while, and Marlowe, dim-wittingly, thinks that “seclusion” is a sexual term. So the highly idolized pop-stars are under criticism in this film as well.

            On another hand, the average people of the world are under criticism as well. There’s an assumption going around that everybody wants fame and fortune. Rockwell Hunter is the metaphor for this. Hunter is the “average” American civilian that works all the time and just wants to make it to the top. I believe not everybody wants to be rich and famous. They also criticize the fanatics that follow the pop-star, like Rita Marlowe. Rockwell Hunters’ niece is obsessed with Ms. Marlowe. She ditches school to keep the house clean for Ms. Marlowe, when she probably doesn’t clean house for anybody else. So this movie is a big spoof on advertising and pop-culture, and is a movie I would recommend to watch.