I seriously don’t know what to do now

The election’s over.  I haven’t seen an ad that I haven’t forgotten about two minutes after I’ve seen it.  Opening the nearest magazine (Time, November 17, 2004), I found an ad for a Cartier watch.  Being flat broke and and such, I’m not really familiar with Cartier, but apparently they sell a watch called Ballon Bleu de Cartier.  The ad consists of a picture of the watch bordered a burgundy case opening to reveal it, and says the following: “18k yellow gold 42 mm case and bracelet.  Self-winding mechanical movement, Cartier calibre 049 (21 jewels, 28′800 vibrations per hour), date aperture.  Blue sapphire cabochon set on a fluted crown.  Silvered opaline guillloche dial.  Rounded scratchproof sapphire crystal.”

The first thing I noticed was the fact that they were apparently willing to write a whole buncha text about this watch, most of which I don’t understand.  I don’t think most people understand it either, to be honest.  I’m not rich, but I know rich people, and no how has asked about the vibrations per hour of a watch.  All of this text isn’t, I suspect, so much selling the watch itself so much as asking the reader to take it on faith that all of these statistics indicate some incredible level of quality.

This is what the whole ad seems to be selling.  My understanding is that watch sales are going down lately; everyone has a cell phone, which come with clocks on them.  The main use of a watch these days is as jewelry – the kind that is acceptable for men to buy.  So they aren’t bothering to explain why this watch will keep great time, or how it’s affordable.  They’re selling exclusively to the rich looking to complete an outfit with the right wristwatch.  The one thing about this is that while I would imagine Time’s demographic to generally be more upscale, I think it caters to the middle class as well.  This watch clearly isn’t for them, but I think the ad does sell a particular idea to them – that watches are a part of a luxurious lifestyle.  On the off chance that we become rich, we will ahve that idea in our minds and want to buy the watch that goes along with our opulent lifestyle.

I’m seriously out of media I am struck by

Okay, that’s probably not true, but I’ve been looking for ads this whole time.  Except I’m not watching too much commercial television these days, so I’m stuck with political ads I see on blogs.  Specifically Proposition 8, because I read Andrew Sullivan all the damn time.  So.  This ad is one I came across on that blog, as I implied earlier.

The first thing that struck me about this advertisement was that it doesn’t at any point mention the intention Proposition 8 (if you didn’t read last week, it adds a clause to the state constitution that only marriage between opposite sexes will be recognized).  The issue of gay marriage is a touchy one (see the comments section of my last entry for a giant wall of nonsensical text), so I guess they felt it was best not to mention gay marriage at all and try and get people to focus on the fact that such major political players as Barack Obama, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Diane Feinstein oppose the amendment.  Note a problem here: they couldn’t get two of the three people involved to do an advertising spot for them, so they just got Diane Feinstein and took existing quotes superimposed over images of Obama and Schwarzenegger.  It makes it look like they got celebrity politicians to go to bat for them, when in fact Obama and Schwarzenegger didn’t bother to do ads.

The point of the ad, I think, is to make a person consider that Proposition 8 is opposed by famous and respected politicians, first and foremost, and secondly takes away rights the ad doesn’t want to specify.  People may respond to restricting gay marriage, but the ad seems to be banking on the idea that people won’t want their constitution to restrict freedoms.  But the main point is similar to any celebrity endorsements.  Ads tell us that celebrities drink Sprite and use Old Spice, and we might think that we should too.  This ad tells us Obama and Schwarzenegger don’t like the amendment, and leaves it to us to figure that they must have a good reason for doing so.

Back to California Prop 8

This is fairly long, and I have little faith anyone will watch it:

Ugh.  Maybe you shouldn’t watch it, and maybe I shouldn’t post it.  I say I shouldn’t post it because I really hate proposition 8 and I’ll be really angry if it passes, which I suspect it will.  Still, I was really struck by this ad and the way it attempts to frame the issue of gay marriage.

To get the relatively non-partisan stuff out of the way here: this ad (short film?) is attempting to reach young people.  Young people online, specifically.  The way it tries to do this is to show fairly attractive, younger people who look positive and upbeat stating their support for an amendment to the state constitution that will make gay marriage illegal again.  Bloggers, surfers, et cetera.  The ad tells us that the people who oppose gay marriage aren’t simply stodgy conservative old white men who hate gays; it’s a younger, hipper generation.  It’s not a fight to take away a right from a minority group; it’s a fight for religious freedom.  They are creating a context for a young person who doesn’t have anything against gay people to go to the poll, vote for Prop 8, and come out feeling good about themselves.

Dropping any pretense of objectivity, what struck me about the ad is how advertisers can make something so petty and mean-spirited look so positive.  This is, after all, an amendment to a state constitution done in the name of actually taking away a right from people.  That’s the purpose of it.  It’s not protecting the rights of anyone, let alone religious freedom.  The effect of all this for me was to look at this ad and picture future generations watching it and sighing, the way you might now if you saw, say, an old advertisement for a law to make interracial marriage illegal.

Anyway.  If you’re in California, go out and vote no on eight, okay?

Two Posters, One Movie

Since I’ve spent the past week trying and more or less failing to create a decent print advertisement in Photoshop, I suppose I have more sympathy for what print advertisers go through.  Nevertheless, I’m fairly consistently irritated by movie posters.  These days, posters often consist entirely of the principle characters’ heads, and maybe some dramatic lighting.  With that in mind, I wanted to focus on two posters I think more or less fail in one way or another.  Up top, we have a banned-by-the-MPAA poster for Kevin Smith’s upcoming Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and below that, we have the poster that was accepted.

The reason I don’t like the top poster has nothing to do with the obvious suggestion of sex which apparently lead to the MPAA not accepting it.  It’s the problems I listed above that irritate me: it’s generic, it features the heads of its two principle actors and literally nothing else.  It has a pretty good color scheme, but that’s not really enough to be visually interesting.  Where I think this poster succeeds, though, is in selling the movie.  A person looks at this poster and sees two actors that they will (if they are in the target demographic for the movie) recognize from The 40 Year Old Virgin.  And, generic though it is, the poster resembles the poster for that movie and Knocked Up.  Since all the movies are raunchy, R-rated comedies, it seems safe to assume that they have the same target demographics, and associations between them would favor Zack and Miri.  So, I don’t like it, but I think it’s effective.  Or it would be, if it could be shown outside of Canada.

The second poster has exactly the opposite problem: I like it, but I’m not sure it’s effective.  What I like is that it’s unusual looking.  But I’m not sure that Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks are big enough stars that people know who they are without seeing their faces.  I’m also not sure people bother to read the text, or, upon seeing commercials for the movie, will connect the poster they saw to the movie.  Further, it doesn’t really catch the eye.  It all seems a very diffcult balance to strike: either you create a movie poster that is boring, but does its job, or a poster that is interesting and a bit different, but doesn’t.

Product Placement in Movies

Moving away from politics, one constant source of amusement for me is product placement in movies.  I’m kind of a movie freak, and product placement has really become a big thing in movies.  See Iron Man, where everyone drives an Audi, uses a Dell, places phone calls with Motorola, I think, and wants Burger King after they’ve been kidnapped by terrorists.  Since that isn’t on DVD yet, here is an example I remember smirking at way back in the halcyon days of whenever the hell I saw it:

I’m actually a little mixed on product placement altogether.  Most movies that don’t have product placement wind up with some tortured, obvious stand-in for a real product.  I vaguely recall an X-Files episode where someone was holding a pack of cigarettes with the Marlboro design and font, but was labeled “Marly.”  It really makes no difference to me what the label is, and it’s no less distracting to see fake logos than it is to see real ones.  That being said, the above example is fairly distracting and obvious.

The point of the above scene is to establish that the Denzel Washington character (in the movie Fallen, if you were wondering) is a salt of the earth cop who plays everything straight.  He won’t take bribes, he won’t be intimidated, and he drinks Budweiser despite all of evil James Gandolfini’s imported options.  The fact that Budweiser tastes like goddamn water does not bother him.  The idea of the advertisement plays into that point in the scene: they want to establish that Budweiser drinkers, like Denzel, are plain, salt of the earth working guys.  It all works out.

I suppose the ad is covered for somewhat by having Gandolfini list other Budweiser brands that Washington does not want either, but mostly that just translates to reminding the audience that there is also (or there was, at the time) Bud Ice and Bud Dry if you don’t like plain Budweiser.

I guess this is a political blog

In case it’s not clear, this blog is for a class where I write a paragraph or two analyzing a bit of propaganda.  I saw this commercial while watching Heroes.

In California, limiting marriage to couples consisting of a man and a woman was controversially ruled to be against the state constitution.  That being the case, an amendment to the constitution is going to be on the ballot this November that would force the state to only recognize marriage between a man and a woman.  This ad, obviously, is trying to convince people not to vote for the amendment.

The first thing I noticed is that the people making the case for gay marriage were older heterosexuals defending their daughter’s marriage.  What this says to me is that the ad is trying not to convince the homosexual couples who will be directly affected by the law’s passage, taking them for granted.  Instead, the target audience is middle-aged to elderly heterosexuals, not emphasizing one gender.  A generation like that might be less convinced by a gay couple describing their relationship; an advertisement like that has the potential to actually put off those who aren’t comfortable with homosexuality.  Keeping the conflict with the parents forces people not to look at the situation through the eyes of a gay couple, but through the eyes of their family, which they may be more comfortable with.

More politics, because I am lazy

Since I started this blog with a political post, I guess I’ll continue it with another ad by the McCain campaign.  I’ve never actually managed to this one on TV, except during news shows and blog posts where they discuss the accuracy (or lack thereof) and morality of it.  The general thrust of the ad is, on the face of it, the standard attack that Barack Obama is inexperienced – he “hasn’t made a significant mark on education,” it tells us.  This is really just a preamble, though, to the revelation of the ad – that Barack Obama supports teaching sex ed to kindergarteners.

I don’t suppose it needs to be said that the allegations aren’t true.  What Obama supports is teaching children about how they should deal with touching they feel is inappropriate, something I doubt McCain is against either.  But is it effective?  I’m still not sure.  It seems to me that the target market of this ad is people who don’t pay attention to news shows which debunk the ad.  If they do pay attention, it just makes McCain look bad, launching an attack that isn’t true.  But there hasn’t really been a fallout from this that I have seen – quite the opposite, in fact – so maybe people just don’t pay attention

Politics stuff

In case you couldn’t tell, John McCain made this address during the Democratic National Convention.   In recent weeks, both Barack Obama and John McCain are increasingly combative, which seems to run counter to the images they’ve cultivated.  Obama has positioned himself as a new kind of politician, not yet corrupted by the system, while McCain has cultivated his status as a “maverick,” a politician who plays by his own rules.  The negative ads, however effective they are shown to be, work against both images; negative ads are seen as politics as usual by the public.

All of this makes this campaign ad very clever.  First of all, it looks very little like any other campaign ad I’ve ever seen.  Most campaign ads show their candidates brightly and feature a montage of people.  If the candidates are shown speaking, they are speaking to people who smile and nod.  This negates both of those ideas.  There are only a few cuts, McCain is shown in subdued, intimate lighting, and he speaks directly to the camera.  The fact that it looks and feels different is a strength; it lets people know, visually, that this isn’t an ordinary campaign ad.

In substance, the ad seems to be designed to make the viewer the think that it isn’t an ad at all – that John McCain is simply congratulating Barack Obama on his nomination.   It’s a silly thought, of course; were McCain simply congratulating his opponent, he could have made a phone call to the Obama campaign instead of spending the money to make the ad and air it.  To do this now deflects some criticism of the negative campaigning.  When asked about it, a McCain supporter can deny that the campaign even did go negative, asking when the last time a candidate gave his opponent a televised congratulations during the opponent’s convention was.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!