1984 Apple's Macintosh Commercial

In the third quarter of the 1984 Super Bowl, a strange and disorienting advertisement appeared on the TV screens of the millions of viewers tuned in to the yearly ritual. The ad opens on a gray network of futuristic tubes connecting blank, ominous buildings. Inside the tubes, we see cowed subjects marching towards a cavernous auditorium, where they bow before a Big Brother figure pontificating from a giant TV screen. But one lone woman remains unbroken. Chased by storm troopers, she runs up to the screen, hurls a hammer with a heroic grunt, and shatters the TV image. As the screen explodes, bathing the stunned audience in the light of freedom, a voice-over announces, "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce the Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like "1984."

This commercial, designed by the advertising agency Chiat/Day to introduce Apple's Macintosh computer and directed by Ridley Scott fresh off his science fiction classic Blade Runner, has never run again since that Super Bowl spot. But few commercials have ever been more influential. Advertising Age named it the 1980s' Commercial of the Decade. You can still see its echoes today in futuristic ads for technology and telecommunications multinationals such as AT&T, MCI, and Intel.

The 1984 commercial was a critical moment in the development of the American public's conception of the proper uses and cultural implications of personal computers. PCs were introduced in the 1970s as tools - utilitarian objects designed to facilitate specific tasks. In the 1980s, they became full-fledged commodities - shiny consumer products defined not just by their use value, but by the collection of meanings, hopes, and ideals attached to them through advertising, promotion, and cultural circulation. With the 1984 ad, Apple identified the Macintosh with an ideology of "empowerment" - a vision of the PC as a tool for combating conformity and asserting individuality. And while Apple's own fortunes have waned of late, its vision of the power and potential of the personal computer has triumphed, becoming the ideological underpinnings of techno-boosterism in the 1990s.

Before going any further, let's now look at the ad itself.

Directed by Ridley Scott
Produced by Chiat/Day
Written by Lee Clow Steve Hayden
Starring Anya Major David Graham
Distributed by Apple Computers
Release date(s) 22 January 1984 (only daytime televised broadcast)
Running time 60 seconds (final cut)