Destination Slogans, Field of Dreams, and Darth Vader
I had been posting old travel ads to Twitter lately and an ad for Jamaica tourism revived an earworm I had not thought about in a long time, “Come Back to Jamaica.”
Not the song by Yellowman, but instead the song that was used in a late seventies commercial for Jamaica.
Catchy, right? I always thought so, but I never made the connection between another catchy song, the holiday anti-war classic, Happy Xmas (War Is Over) by John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and The Plastic Ono Band. The commercial seems to owe a lot to the melody from that 1971 song.
Jamaica depends a lot on tourism, so for several decades, they ran various commercials. They even had an updated version of this commercial.
“Come Back to Jamaica” was a Destination Slogan, and most countries that want tourist dollars, have them.
What at Destination Slogans?
I found this listing of Destination Slogans online and they are fascinating. These sentences are a glimpse of how a nation wants to be perceived by the rest of the world.
Some are very straightforward, like Samoa, which uses “Beautiful Samoa.” Others are a bit more evocative. My favorite is “Colombia is Magical Realism.” Which is a phrase meant to evoke the Colombian icon of Magical Realism, Gabriel García Márquez.
Magical Realism is a complex style, but it is supposed to show a “realistic view of the modern world while also adding magical elements.” It’s heady as a concept and a slogan, but also a pretty great idea when trying to get people to think about travel.
Magical Realism is often used in entertainment. A film that comes to mind when I hear the term is the 1989 baseball classic, Field of Dream.
Fields of Dreams
Field of Dreams is based on W.P. Kinsella’s novel Shoeless Joe. It is about a man’s unresolved issues with his father and a love of baseball. The magic in this otherwise grounded story happens when the main character Ray builds a baseball field in the middle of his cornfield. After doing so this field becomes a source of world-altering magic and personal resolution.
The farm and its baseball diamond have since become a tourist attraction. People have been visiting the site for decades, but something big is happening there this summer.
It appears the magic of Hollywood has had a lasting effect on this little slice of Iowa, because, on August 21 of this year, two major league baseball teams, the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox will take the field and play a game there.
If you look at the site, you will see a quote from the movie that appears to be the Destination Slogan for the film’s location, “Is this heaven? No, it’s Iowa!”
That is a great slogan and a solid quote from the film, but it is not the most well-known. That honor goes to the line, “If you build it, he will come.” Which is often famously misquoted as “If you build it, they will come.”
Movie Misquotes
Paraphrasing of quotes or misquoting is a common occurrence. Misquotes happen for a variety of reasons and are popular fodder for blog posts. What surprised me is how small this list of popular ones is on Wikipedia.
With only 17 entries, it is just a drop in the well. Still, it has one of the ones I liked pointing out to people during my childhood.
Whenever anyone would quote Darth Vader as saying, “Luke, I am your father,” I would rush to correct them with the proper, “No, I am your father.”
It was amazing that I had any friends.
This Vader talk reminds me of one of the earliest Star Wars spoilers.
Darth Vader is Luke’s Father
In 1978, David Prowse dropped a bombshell in an interview. Revealing an Empire Strikes Back spoiler two years before the movie was released. Yet, no one seemed to notice.
In 2010, on the Retroist, author Vinvectrex pulled out a vintage clipping from his local newspaper that discussed the spoiler.
Its rediscovery caused quite a hubbub among Star Wars fans and the media at the time.
What’s most amazing is that this spoiler had been sitting in print for decades and no one seemed to remember it.