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Saturday, June 1, 2013

Peanut Butter


When I was a kid I was captivated by an ad on TV for peanut butter that showed someone (I think it was a man's hand) spreading peanut butter on a slice of bread. But they weren't doing it the way you or I or any normal human would do it, that is mashing it around, going this way and that. They did it with one smooth stroke, much like in the video here. I thought that was so cool and I wanted my folks to buy some of this mystical peanut butter, but they said no.
    The ad in my mind's eye is perfectly clear. There are no extraneous elements in the scene, just the bread, the knife, the hand, and a perfectly shaped blob of peanut butter on the knife. It's also in color, and I don't think my parents bought a color TV until I was out of high school, which would have been in the 1970's.
    I always wondered how they got that shot. Even back then I suspected it could be trick photography, but I never figured out how you could fake it. After 50 years of internal debate, I am convinced that they sat down with a case of peanut butter, a truck load of bread, and just shot the same scene over and over again until it came out perfect. No wonder those Madison Avenue guys drank.

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