I don’t normally like to get this cheesy up on all of you, but I feel this has to be said. The first year of grad school, like all the others, I’m certain, has its fair share of soul-searching, its fair share of question marks and uncertainties. There are rampant efforts at community building, but it’s never quite enough, right? Well, the most recent commercial by TIAA-CREF has me all up in a tizzy. At first, I couldn’t tell why I liked it so much—and then I realised it was since I really liked the song, the finale from West Side Story. Apparently, it’s sung by David Sylvian, but the version online (click on “For the Greater Good” on the TIAA site) sounds different (audio mp3) than the one on television. Anyway, the finale, with the opening lines of “There’s… a… place… for us…” just completely breaks me every time I hear it in that silly commercial, even though it doesn’t include those Debussy-like open-ass arpeggios on the piano. The play itself is quickly rising in esteem in my head, more or less ever since the Gap appropriated the dance at the gym music for one of their khaki ads, but even songs like “A Boy Like That,” with its lines of “one of your own kind, stick to your own kind” really just echoes with a lot of the concerns over ethnicity I’m dealing with in my work, for example, and that’s helpful. In any case, TIAA-CREF, who have sort of cornered the market on financial services for people who get 403(b)s instead of 401(k)s (like academics) makes me feel like part of a community (though I liquidated my teeny-weeny retirement plan last year) in a dumb commercial just by including a song from West Side Story. So there you go. I’m played.
[UPDATE 10.09.2004 17:17] Apparently there’s a second (or third) version of this commercial now; I saw it on the tube the other day. It’s not as good.
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