The final numbers haven’t been released yet, but if online chatter is any indication, something like nine Americans tuned in Sunday night to watch the Oscars: three hours and 45 minutes of actors accepting awards for films no one bothered seeing, and delivering political rants no one wanted to hear.
By the same delightfully imperfect yet deeply resonant metric, approximately 40 billion Americans have watched the new online ad for Disney’s cruise line. It’s an exaggeration, but not much of one: You couldn’t really tune in to a podcast this week without hearing some long and impassioned analysis of the ad and its larger cultural meaning.
In case you’re one of the very few carbon-based life forms who hasn’t yet had the pleasure, here’s a brief summary of this one minute, 29-second masterpiece: A young family struggles to fall asleep in their snug room on a Disney cruise ship. The father takes his baby boy and goes out for a stroll on the deck. The ship is empty. The moonlight washes everything in a pale, otherworldly glow. In the background, sweet music, a cross between Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” and “Be Our Guest” from Beauty and the Beast, makes the heart grow softer.
