Covert Advertising
and the Demonization of Minority Criminals:
a Content Analysis of the Hollywood Film Baby Driver
Baby Driver is a 2017 comedic action movie, written and directed by Edgar Wright, starring Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Eiza Gonzalez, Jon Hamm, and Jamie Foxx. Baby Driver takes place in Atlanta Georgia, USA, in an unspecified area. This essay will begin with a brief summary of the plot of the movie. Like all modern films, this one contains several product placements. However, it is worth exploring whether or not these examples — Apple and Mercedes — effectively portray the products and companies seamlessly with the themes of the movie. This will further be discussed in the essay. Another major theme to Baby Driver is that minorities are either burdens to society or menaces to it. It is worth exploring whether or not these racist undertones add or detract from the film. This social issue will be expanded upon later in this essay.
The protagonist of the story is Baby, played by Ansel Elgort. Baby is a quirky young man, who loves music and driving fast cars. At the start of the film Baby pulls up with a crew of three other guys to rob a bank, as the others go in to do the job Baby stays out and dances to get into the mood. The opening chase syncs perfectly to the music and the crew gets away. The next morning Baby brings coffee to the crew and has a moment with the love interest of the film (Lily James). The crew splits up the cash and go their separate ways. Doc (Kevin Spacey) reminds Baby that he has one more job to pay him back for the debt he owes him and takes the majority of Baby’s share. Baby goes to his favorite diner in town and reconnects with the love interest and new waitress Debora (Lily James). Baby meets up to plan the next heist with the new crew and meets Bats (Jamie Foxx) and the rest of them. Doc explains the plan and the next day they meet up and begin the robbery. After the crew makes their move they hop in the car where Baby freezes, he sees that Bats killed the guard and does not do well with violence. After some coaxing they getting moving again. When a veteran customer of the bank catches up to them and begins firing his sidearm. He chases them down in his truck and Bats tries to execute him with his shotgun. Baby swerves and causes Bats to miss. The gang escapes and goes their separate ways but Bats lets Baby know that he is on to him. Baby goes out to celebrate with Debora, and runs into Doc at the finest wine and dine joint in the town. Doc tells Baby that if he doesn’t keep doing jobs with him he’ll have to kill Debora. Baby reluctantly agrees to keep working with Doc, and scopes out their next target, a post office, with Doc’s nephew. Baby makes plans with Debora to escape in the night but is caught by the crew and forced to continue with the job as planned. Baby then attempts to botch the job and get the rest of the crew either caught or killed starting with the trigger happy Bats. Baby then makes a run for it with Buddy (Jon Hamm) with the cops close on his tail. After killing Buddy, he is then caught by the police and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Throughout the film the titular character Baby cannot be seen with one of his many, many ipods. “A different one for every day”. Apple’s Ipod is even shown in a flashback scene where Baby is recalling a happy Christmas memory before his parents died. This product is so closely tied to his character that he is seen in almost every scene with Apple earbuds in his ears, it’s written in to the story that the car accident that killed his parents caused some brain damage and made him constantly hear buzzing and ringing when he is not listening to music. The viewer might take away from these covert and not so covert Apple placements that, Apple is ever present, Apple is for interesting, young, sexy people and finally that Apple is perfectly fit to be personalized to the consumers tastes. The vague era of the films, mixed with the heavy nostalgic undertones implies that Apple, has and will always be around. Baby is almost never seen without his headphones in which further enforces this idea. Baby is quirky, interesting and above all else charming. He is put right into the middle of a world of boring citizens or overly violent criminals. A consumer can be just as interesting as Baby, with Apple gear. Baby owns several different ipods for different days, with different music tastes, one even is bejeweled. This implies how customizable Ipods can be to fit any lifestyle.
Mercedes are for the wealthy. As the story progresses, it is revealed that when Baby was a young orphan he stole a Mercedes from Doc with stolen goods in the back. Doc let him steal it and has been making him pay it back over the years with his driving. Doc as a character is the mastermind behind all of the heists. He symbolizes wealth, success and intelligence. Owning a luxurious car, like a Mercedes and putting it as such a valuable piece to the story, tells the viewer that to be fixated on a Mercedes. It’s a status symbol, one that will be fought over. An owner of a Mercedes is smart, rich and successful. A negative message one could take from the context of these scenes and more notably Doc’s character is the fact that Doc threatens Baby, he threatens his life and lives of the people he loves. This idea might put a bad taste in the viewers mouth, but in the end Doc turns out to be a good guy and saves Baby from the rampaging Buddy, and angry mobsters, redeeming him of earlier misdeeds. This is what can be decoded from these scenes.
Baby Driver presents minorities, specifically African American Men, as either incapable or criminally insane. Act III of the film introduces the audience to Bats (Jamie Foxx). Bats is a regular for Doc’s crew drafts, he takes his role as a bank robber very seriously. He kills off other characters who are incompetent criminals, because they are a liability or just because he doesn’t like them. Bats is aggressive, violent, impulsive and unpredictable. He will either threaten to murder his fellow crew members or make them dispose of the bodies, like Baby does shortly after meeting him. Before their final job Bats, Baby, Buddy and Darling go out to get new firepower from Doc’s gun dealer contact. Everything seems to be going well until Bats gets the suspicion that the gun dealer and his gang are
Baby Driver is full of seamless product placements that are so intertwined with the themes of the movie, it almost goes unnoticed. That is the best kind of product placement. Apple wants people to buy iPods because Baby used them, and he’s cool. Mercedes wants people to buy their cars because Doc drove one, and he is cool and rich. As far as the racist undertones go, they could have been a mistake, or maybe the writers of the movie were trying to make a political statement. But either way, it got people talking about it, which is the only way to bring about change. All in all, Baby Driver has a lot of influence over human behavior.
undercover cops, and starts shooting. They kill everyone in the building and get away. On their way back they stop for gas and Buddy asks Bats to go in and get some gum for him. Bats comes running out with all the gum in the store, that he stole at gunpoint. It’s clear that he is nothing but trouble for the other characters. Baby later in the film loses control after Bats kills a security guard in front of him, and runs the getaway car into a stack of metal pipes sticking out of a construction vehicle, killing Bats. Putting him down like a dog. On the other end of the spectrum is the character Joseph (CJ Jones). Joseph is an elder deaf man bound to a wheelchair that adopted Baby after his parents died, now Baby more watches over him as he gets older. Joseph is nice, good man, but he is used mostly as a plot device to give Baby someone to lose when Doc/Bats/Buddy, come after him. Joseph appears fairly capable, but he is still dependent on either Baby or later the staff of a assisted living home. As the only two African American men in the film, the audience can discern that African Americans are either super predators like Bats, or a drain of precious time and resources like Joseph. A burden to society or a menace to it.
