Lights, Camera, AMERICA!

AmEx (a.k.a American Express) is a multinational financial services cooperation located in New York, founded in 1850. The company is renowned for its credit cards, charge cards and traveller’s cheques and is said to account for approximately 24% of the total dollar volume of credit card transactions in the US.

The clip above is a commercial from a 2000 American Express commercial released on the night of the first Oscar Awards of the millennia. The man in the restaurant is writer/director and actor M.Night Shyamalan, who that year was nominated for ‘Best Director’ and ’Best Writer, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen’ for his classic film The Sixth Sense starring Bruce Willis. Unfortunately, he lost his awards to Sam Mendes and Alan Ball for American Beauty. Shyamalan is also famous for films such a Signs (2002) and The Village (2004).

I found this commercial, along with many others for American Express and I found something they all had in common – film and celebrity. It is a topic that without even a second thought we will immediately relate to America, seeing as its film industry is the largest in the world. But this commercial isn’t only revolving around film; it’s also linked with another large aspect of America – the money. Put them together in a commercial and they represent some of the most respectable factors of the world’s most powerful nation.

The clip is set in a restaurant and a very high class one too. Could it even, deep between the lines, be portraying the American dream?

M. Night Shyamalan is from Pondicherry in India, can he came to America to succeed and it would seem that he definitely has reached success and living the high life.

The commercials below are just a small minority of other American Express adverts. One is from 1985, starring American author, Stephen King, author of Carrie, The Shining, IT and many other classics that were ground-breaking in American literature and have all been made into Oscar winning movies. The second, is a littler longer but stars characters from 'The Adventures of Seinfeld and Superman'. Superman particularly is an excellent representation of America as the superhero figure brings out the superiority America feels they had over the rest of the world.

Stephen King - 

Seinfeld and Superman -