[ caught In between ] b.s.

• Sunday, January 30, 2005

  1. Marketing and Advertising, Propaganda
     Are You Generic?
     
     Our breathing room, our surfaces, and our airwaves are cluttered by undue advertising. Why sacrifice the one area suitable to protest, the only space we have left to claim - our body. We will not allow ourselves to be branded, categorized, and manufactured by a name. (This post could be career suicide for me. The ironic thing about this t-shirt and its makers, which prove an underlying truth that is illustrated in the (IMHO) groundbreaking book, A Nation of Rebels, is that by "selling" this t-shirt, these people actually expose themselves as false protesters. They are more pro-branding than any of my professional brand consulting coworkers could ever be. If they truly were against "branding" per se, shouldn't they just give the shirts away and tell everyone their message rather than paste it on apparel? Moreover, they want people to wear their "anti-brand" (which really is a brand) as much as Nike or the The Gap does. Everyone wants to be a revolutionary ...and they want to get paid too. Suckas. A revolution is just a different side of the same wheel, *ssholes! If you honestly want to change things, find a different wheel.
     
     Related:
     Man auctions ad space on forehead (BBC)
     (b/w put it on plastic))
  2. 

• Wednesday, January 26, 2005

  1. Now that the 2004 Academy Awards have been announced, I think it's time to put my top choices out there, well in advance of all the inevitable betting pools and, yeah, I'm saying it, Oscar "fantasy leagues."
     Top 10 Films of 2004:
     1. Sideways
     2. Million Dollar Baby
     3. The Aviator
     4. Hero
     5. Hotel Rwanda
     6. The Incredibles
     7. Ray
     8. Collateral
     9. Open Water
     10. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
     Best Documentaries of 2004:
     1. Fahrenheit 9/11
     2. Supersize Me
     3. The Corporation

     Overall, I don't really think 2004 was such a great year for film. It wasn't even a good year. But then, look at the bigger picture, and see what's going on in the world today. I think 2005 will be a great year, because it seems to me that when times really get bad, that's when the real artists come out and tell their tall tales. Our pathetic psyches, stretched to fatigue by the barrage of all the commercial and political spin-doctoring we must endure on the daily riddim, can only protest its totalitarian shackles by consuming mass-produced entertainments. But, of course, that's so much easier than getting off of our collective fat ass and doing or creating something. I expect to see more thoughtful Hollywood content and less fluff in the next twelve months. But then, what do I know? I'm just part of the movie-going public, who votes with my wallet. I'm just part of that demographic that gets aggregated and measured in the box office receipts, totally incapable of making an independent decision as to what mass-produced entertainment I should consume. Stay tuned. And of course, you will, because what t.f. else do you have to do tonight?
  2. 

Links

• blogroll
  (*)=recently updated
•  
• » previously on [cIb] (old stuff)
•  
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•  
• xhtml 1.1
• css
•  
• website published 1995-2005 by
  lawrence green
  and licensed under creative commons license. some rights reserved.