Colonial Williamsburg’s Super Bowl Ad Uses ‘Jarring’ 9/11 Footage To Sell Vacations

Among the slew of ads that ran during Super Bowl 50 on Sunday was one for Colonial Williamsburg, the living-history museum tourist attraction.

At this point a reversed clip of one of the towers collapsing appears on screen. “The ad ended with “Where did our spirit first take shape?” followed by the motto”, It started here.

Saturday Night Live star Taran Killam wrote: ‘Did Colonial Williamsberg just show 9/11 footage in reverse?

The advertisement caused quite a stir on social media for showing coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“We understand and respect that some of the images depicted in the ad are jarring”, said Joe Straw, spokesman for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. A narrator calls upon us to “reflect upon our sacrifices, our breakthroughs, and yes, our heartbreaks”.

In a news release Monday morning, Colonial Williamsburg said social media audiences overwhelmingly supported their ad.

They quickly tweeted: “Including WTC [World Trade Centre] is powerful & subject to debate”.

On a more practical level, the Super Bowl ad didn’t mention any reasons to visit Colonial Williamsburg – like its role as the capital of Virginia, or the site of Thomas Jefferson’s alma mater, the College of William & Mary.

The ad is a montage of American history-the flag-raising at Iwo Jimas; the Obamas after the inauguration; space shuttle launches; soldiers in war zones; immigrants at Ellis Island; civil rights marches; the Model T assembly line-but the footage is put in reverse. Colonial Williamsburg does not shy away from these hard moments in our history because they have made us who we are just as surely as our many triumphs.

In the footage, he says: “We’ve come a long way in a few hundred years when you consider the barriers we’ve broken, the leaps we made and the courage we’ve shown”.