Daisy (television advertisement)
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Daisy, sometimes known as Daisy Girl or Peace Little Girl, is an infamous campaign television advertisement. Though aired only once, during a September 7, 1964 telecast of David and Bathsheba on The NBC Monday Movie, it was a factor in Lyndon B. Johnson's defeat of Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election and an important turning point in political and advertising history. Its creator was Tony Schwartz of Doyle Dane Bernbach. It remains one of the most controversial political advertisements ever made.
The advertisement begins with a little girl standing in a meadow with chirping birds, picking the petals of a daisy while counting each petal slowly. (Because she does not know her numbers perfectly, she repeats some and says others in the wrong order, all of which adds to her childish appeal.) When she reaches "9", an ominous-sounding male voice is then heard counting down a missile launch, and as the girl's eyes turn toward something she sees in the sky, the camera zooms in until her pupil fills the screen, blacking it out. When the countdown reaches zero, the blackness is replaced by the flash and mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion.
As the firestorm rages, a voiceover from Johnson states, "These are the stakes! To make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die." Another voiceover then says, "Vote for President Johnson on November 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay home."
As soon as the ad aired, Johnson's campaign was widely criticized for using the prospect of nuclear war, as well as the implication that Goldwater would start one, to frighten voters. The ad was immediately pulled, but the point was made, appearing on the nightly news and on conversation programs in its entirety.
Johnson's line "We must either love each other, or we must die" echoes W. H. Auden's poem "September 1, 1939" in which line 88 reads "We must love one another or die". The words "children" and "the dark" also occur in Auden's poem.
"These are the stakes" was also used at the end of advertisements for the Republicans in the United States general elections, 2006, advertisements claiming that the Democrats would be soft on terrorism and expose the country to danger and featured Al Queda Members and a threat of a nuclear bomb.
[edit] Popular culture
- The advertisement was spoofed in The Simpsons episode "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming." During the episode, Sideshow Bob attempts to detonate a nuclear bomb; the montage of scenes leading up to Bob's ultimately failed attempt to blow up Springfield ends with a scene of Maggie Simpson picking at a daisy, much like the little girl did in the advertisement.
- In 2000, it was used in a music video for Fatboy Slim's "Sunset (Bird Of Prey)".
- In 2003, the left-wing group MoveOn.org attempted to revive the 'Daisy' ad campaign. The updated version was intended to denounce the imminent invasion of Iraq.
- In 2003, the miniseries "Battlestar Galactica" paid homage to the advertisement. The show included a sequence in which a fleet of starships is attacked by missiles. In the final moments before the missiles strike, a little girl is shown picking the petals from a flower.
- In 2006, the pilot episode of the TV series "Jericho" had a scene in which a girl playing hide and seek with her brother innocently counted down "5...4...3...2...1" just as a nuclear explosion created a mushroom cloud on the horizon.
