Apr 08, 2005  |  By: MICHAEL ALVEA  | COMMENTS     

LAST MONTH, AIRTRAN Airways, a low-cost airline serving 43 cities, painted giant pictures of Elton John’s face on many of its planes.

The graphic of the gay celebrity, as big as the head of the Statue of Liberty, points out the kind of love/hate, accept/reject contradiction that makes you wonder if people are knocking back a little too much of the cooking sherry when they cook up their feelings about us.

You won’t find any openly gay faces flying Air Force jets, but now you can see giant ones plastered on high-flying commercial planes. How’s that for the height of irony?

First, the breakthrough in advertising: There’s nothing new about using celebrities to sell products. It’s just that they’ve always been active participants: doing, saying or recommending something.

Like race car driver Jeff Gordon in the “Got Milk” ads. “My Advice?” he says. “Drink three glasses of milk a day.”

But something changed with Air Tran’s new ad campaign. Elton John didn’t allow them to use his name, his body, his music or his voice. The only thing they could rent was his face.

It was only a matter of time before America’s cult of personality and celebrity worship drove advertising to a profound realization: You don’t need to say anything to get your point across. You just need a little face time.

Air Tran’s cheeky ad campaign reveals how deeply obsessed we are with fame. We don’t need to hear a celebrity say, sing or succeed at anything. All we want is another chance to look at them.

And stalk them, too. AirTran was so overwhelmed with people calling to find out where they could see the planes that they temporarily established an “Elton Tracking System” on their Web site. We’ve gone from stalking celebrities on the ground to stalking their images in the air.

THANKS TO AIRTRAN, even the skies aren’t safe from advertising. What are their planes but billboards at 30,000 feet? And I might add, billboards of an out gay man flying through the airspace of states that voted to ban gay marriage.

It’s a testament to the power of celebrity worship that the airline was willing to pay for advertising that reaches more birds than people.

Of all the ironies in this story, my favorite is the idea of plastering the face of star known for his over-the-top extravagance on a dirt-cheap airline he wouldn’t step foot on. Like all low-cost carriers, AirTran is basically a bus with wings. I know, because I fly it often (and recommend it frequently).

Another irony is that Elton isn’t endorsing AirTran. He’s actually a spokesperson for XM Satellite Radio, which is now available on AirTran planes. He granted XM, not AirTran, the rights to his image.

THERE’S A NEW altar in the temple of celebrity worship. It’s any surface large enough to paint a face on.

AirTran is a pioneer in the colonization of space. Space in cars, in trains, in buses. Surely other companies will follow. What’s next?

For straight men, putting Pamela Anderson’s face on convertibles so they can say they took her top off?

For gay men, Rupert Everett jeans so we can say we got into his pants?

Stay tuned. We’ll be right back after a word from our sponsor.