Blog Forum Week 7

My Life in Movies:

The first movie I remember watching in the theater was Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.”

I think my brother and his friend Elizabeth took me to see it; I was 5 years old at the time. It was 1991 in Seattle, Wash. and grunge was blowing up. My older brother was soon to be obsessed with Alice in Chains and Nirvana, but for me and my 5-year-old mind, that first-remembered movie theater experience opened up a world of fantasy and terror that would consume my imagination for some time to come. Perhaps that first big screen movie influenced me in more ways than I thought; I became a bookworm, pouring over fantasy stories, much like the main character, Belle. Now that I am older I see dark undertones throughout this film. Themes of domestic abuse were implanted in my young mind that could perhaps later convince me that I just needed to “love the beast” out of my future domestic partners, that it was up to me to save them.

That magical moment the spell is broken and Belle's love rids the beast from the man forever.

I must have been much younger seeing my first movie at home. My family didn’t have a television when I was a baby, but I remember the day my mother brought one home. It was just me and her then; my parents had divorced, father moved out, and my half-brother had gone to live with his father in Eastern Washington. We were the last two living in the townhouse my father and mother had built as part of a buy-in low-income housing project on First Hill. She brought that big, boxy television in the front door and I hopped into the bed, curled up like a burrito in a down comforter, and we watched “The Land Before Time.” I’ve loved dinosaurs and that film ever since. It was the first movie to make me cry; when Littlefoot’s mother died, I just could not begin to imagine the pain of losing a mother, curled up next to mine, safe and snuggly as I was. It was a horrific thought. A few more minutes into the movie and I lost one of my first teeth, and oh boy was I proud!

Littlefoot and his momma, before she dies.

Since childhood I have loved storytelling in all its forms-- books, short stories, poems, films, plays, music, and art-- and I have pursued each of these forms in my own life through personal creativity. Aside from music, film has been the second-most influential of these storytelling forms on my life. Though I love books, both film and music penetrate deep in the mind; perhaps because of a combined use of visual images, sound and story. With purpose, I watched films and television shows from around the globe. Film provides a way to dive into another culture for a few hours without leaving your room; it also provides endless inspiration and entertainment, and is a conduit for communicating the pervasive themes and issues of societies everywhere.

As I grew up, Friday night movie and pizza nights with my mother quickly turned to nights at the drive-in with my friends, and later, after the inundation of Netflix, turned into pizza and movie nights with my partner, or just me and my dogs.

A few movies that have stuck in my head as favorites, or as particularly influential are:

“Monty Python and The Holy Grail,” directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, and written by/starring John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam.

This scene was of a particular hilarity to my friends and I.

I saw this for the first time at about the age of 13 with my best friends. One of our fathers had introduced us to the Monty Python-- it very well could have been mine-- and we, of course, fell in love with the irreverent humor and clever, creative, improvisational style. Quite soon we’d voraciously consumed all Monty Python related media- as many episodes of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” as we could watch, “Life of Brian,” and “The Meaning of Life.” We even downloaded all the musical tunes and burned each other CD copies, learning the words to “The Lumberjack Song” and “Every Sperm Is Sacred” by heart. I think finding an edge for this type of humour at such a young age helped hone my ability to laugh even in the most serious of situations. This humor reminds one that nothing is permanent, everyone is discontent, and nothing actually really matters, at all-- so have some fun with it!

“City of God” acted as an educational eye-opener for me at about the age of 17.



A Brazilian film directed by Fernando Meirelles and co-directed by Kátia Lund, it explores a reality I barely knew existed as a small-town American teenager, a reality unfolding thousands of miles south in a suburb of Rio De Janeiro. I knew it was fictional, yet through fiction stories people expose truths and realities of life, and this story was very true for that place and time. I’d been to Brazil the previous year, visiting a former exchange student we hosted from Recife, in northern Brazil. Her life was vastly different than the characters in “City of God;” what I’d seen in Brazil had been the lifestyles of the upper class. “City of God” introduced me to the lives of citizens of the ghettos which we’d driven by, but never entered.

“Dead Man,” directed by Jim Jarmusch, was released in 1995. However, I didn’t actually watch it until I was about 20 or 21, and it became a favorite of mine.

Johnny Depp's character William Blake is mistaken by Gary Farmer's character, Nobody, to be a reincarnation of English poet William Blake. 

It stars Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer in a movie that challenges the stereotypical view of “the wild west.” Filmed entirely in black and white, it features an improvisational soundtrack from Neil Young, who recorded much of the soundtrack as he watched the footage. This movie received mixed reviews, some very negative, some positive, but it resonated with me as the inevitable end of life; the riding of the avalanche of fate to one’s death.

Johnny Depp's character, William Blake, floats out to sea on the voyage of his death.

It sounds morbid, but it’s actually presented as freeing, on some level. Giving into what the world has created for him and accepting the identity fate has thrust upon Depp’s character, William Blake, unwittingly a number-one wanted man, eventually takes the mantle as the “dead man” along with a newfound bravery in his condemned-ness. He rides his fame all the way to the pacific ocean with Gary Farmer’s character, Nobody, an American Indian stuck between two cultures, who is determined to set Blake’s doomed spirit on the right path out of the world.

William Blake (Depp) and Nobody (Farmer) make their way to the west coast. 

Also, everyone dies in this film. It is a brilliant exploration of spiritual and existential themes while destroying cultural tropes of the "western film" and Native Americans stereotypes. Jarmusch uses untranslated Native languages and gives Nobody’s character full girth. The film may be a metaphor for the doomed, deceptive, and evil qualities of western civilization, the consequences of which are presented as a not so civilized, a cannibalistic culture of consummation and killing. Watching this as a twenty-something-year-old struggling with my own reality, mortality, and coming to terms with living in a consumerist, western culture, this film struck a chord that keeps on ringing.

Bollywood:

Despite growing up with an education steeped in Eastern philosophy, Hinduism and Indian culture, I’d never taken the time to watch a Bollywood film. I’d had them described to me multiple times by my previous boss, who owned a traditional-fare vegetarian Indian restaurant in Seattle. It was very authentic; almost all of our customers were Indian, and thus, I learned quite a bit about the culture. In fact, it is the number-one place in the world I’d like to explore next.

Picking from Netflix’s Bollywood list, the movies were everything I’d hoped for and more. Rumors of intense, over-the-top song and dance numbers materialized before my eyes. However, I picked the movie “Airlift” to watch in full. This is one of India’s more serious recent cinematic pieces. Directed by Raja Menon and starring Akshay Kumar, the film is the story adaptation of true events following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. It is Bollywood’s version of a serious, patriotic war movie, a depiction of what it describes as the largest evacuation in the history of the world.

Ritika Handoo of Indian media outlet Zee News wrote:

“The story of Indians struggling in the war zone, which by the way was their 'home away from home' is not just thrilling but heavily inspiring.

Akshay is the hero of this film, hands down but not because he falls into the categorical space of what is defined as a hero'. He is the hero because he played a man, who in real life, stretch his boundaries for saving humanity. Akshay's dedication and sincerity in portraying such roles with brilliance makes 'Airlift' have a safe landing even at the box office windows.

A must watch for every Indian. Remember this will make you believe in what Indians can do when 'united'.”

Akshay plays a fictional character, Ranjit Katyal, a conglomeration of several men in real life who worked to free 170,000 Indians from war-torn Kuwait. It characterizes the transformation of a harsh man into someone who acts selflessly for thousands of others, risking himself and his family for the benefit of the majority. In "Airlift," Iraqi soldiers are presented as cruel bullies, rapists and murderers, inherently corrupt. In the face of indifference, the Indians in the film instead unite, even saving a Kuwaiti woman and her child, despite her deception and nationality. Akshay’s character is a family man who doesn’t always agree with his wife, and in the film we see a depiction of marriage that is very Indian. Love is subtle and unspoken between characters, yet glorified onscreen in not-so-subtle scenes of “subtle” looks between characters. Romantic love is idolized in song and dance scenes, or drawn out montages of longing looks between characters as they embark on dangerous journeys. The woman is ever-loyal to her husband, though speaking her mind and keeping him in line, ultimately she supports him in his destiny to become a great leader and hero, his first defender and advisor.




From a western perspective, many parts of the film seem somewhat cheesy to me, or over-the-top. However, it shows important aspects of Indian values, and as an American who watched events in Kuwait unfold from thousands of miles away as a child, it depicts a historical narrative I was completely unaware of. As a consumer of American war films such as “Saving Private Ryan,” “The Patriot,” and the series “Band of Brothers,” I see many parallels between the Indian re-imagining of a historic war and the way Americans re-imagine, redistribute and sell these war stories for profit, propaganda, and inspiration of national patriotism. The Iraqi soldiers are shown in a role of stereotypical of evil that the opposing forces in American films are often thrust into; the struggle becomes a good vs. evil dynamic inside the main character and between the Indians and Iraqis they are trying to escape. 

I enjoyed watching a film from this culture, especially a film that is obviously taken seriously by its country and was received with high praise by many Indian reviewers. Although fight scenes, explosions and drama may seem Hollywood-esque, it remains intact as a fully-Indian film, even managing to incorporate song and dance into the scenes in a way that doesn't feel quite so extremely out of place as other Bollywood film song and dance numbers seem to American viewers. All in all, it was an excellent viewing experience, though I found myself giggling at the drama and over-the-top acting of the macho main character. 

Blog Project 1

Topic #4: Binge-Watching "Crazyhead" 

“I’m not a hell-bitch, I work in a bowling alley!”

Demons. Vampires. Supernatural powers. Two unlikely, crass and wisecracking English girls fighting the forces of evil.

This is “Crazyhead,” a Netflix original created and written by Howard Overman. Overman is also responsible for the show “Misfits,” which runs in a similar vein; young English misfits discover they each have a unique superpower that comes with a new depth of responsibility. The young women in “Crazyhead,” Amy (Cara Theobold) and Raquel (Susan Wokoma), have the ability to see the true faces of the demons that walk among us in human form. The show is a serial horror-drama-comedy, spouting cheeky characters that celebrate and simultaneously destroy cultural tropes and stereotypes. Metaphorically delving into issues as serious as addiction, mental health, the loss of death, and estrangement from family, the show’s driving humor bounces between these themes with a light touch.

“The show came from that classic phrase, ‘battling your demons,’” said Overman, quoted in The Guardian’s review. “Throughout history, the idea of people being possessed talks to something very deep within our psyche. So here we have two girls who are battling the demons of living their lives and dealing with love and friendship … but also battling real demons.”

When I curled up in my bed to watch the first four episodes on the evening of Sunday, Feb. 4, I found myself pulled into the characters, understanding and relating to them in a way which I'd missed since the introduction of "Broad City's" Abbi and Illana.

"Broad City's" characters are a modern duo of hilarity, meant to relate with women living a little "different" from the rest of patriarchal America.

Abbi and Illana's characters in "Broad City" use humor to challenge stereotypes about women just as Amy and Raquel's characters do in "Crazyhead." 

Oh yes, and did I mention that like Abbi and Illana, Amy and Raquel are a comedic duo who break down racial cultural barriers? "Crazyhead" shows off a diverse cast, all interacting and falling in friendship/love with each other as if race just ain't no thang, because, well, it shouldn't be!

The first scene of "Crazyhead" opens to a young, pretty woman tied up and stuffed in the trunk of a car, being transported. She is obviously terrified, wearing just an oversized shirt and fuzzy pink bunny slippers. The car stops, trunk opens, and two clown-masked figures loom over her. She screams. They drag her out of the car, lashing her to the pavement. This is where the banter begins.

“Amy? I know that’s you, that’s my jacket,” says the tied-up girl.

Amy’s voice is muffled through her ridiculous creepy clown mask. Amy pulls of the mask, revealing her young face and blonde hair. The hilarity ensues.

“You wanted me to wear a belt with my pajamas and then you tried to strangle me with it,” says Amy to tied-up-girl.

Raquel pulls off her mask too, and the scene spins into the depths of awkward… like, really awkward. The two are performing an exorcism on the tied-up girl, who is Amy’s best friend and roommate, Suzanne (Riann Steele). Raquel scrolls her smartphone and tells Amy that she has to pee on her. Yes, this exorcism involves a golden shower.

A simplistic plot premise, good vs. evil, the two young women have the power to see the true faces of demons possessing humans and walking among us. These demons find this power of true sight terribly threatening and, of course, attempt to kill the women. Amy and Raquel must come to terms with their powers, accept their differences and learn how to fight back together against an encroaching evil, all the while exploring issues like friendship, boys, and sex in footie pajamas.

After the golden shower scene, the episode flashes back to three days previous, before Amy has met Raquel. For most of her life Amy believes she is “crazy” and hallucinating these insane demon faces; she takes medication to suppress the hallucinations.  Fairly well-adjusted to society and working in a bowling alley, she reduces her dose of anti-psychotics with the encouragement of her therapist.

“So I’m not crazy, but I might shit myself?” she asks her psychiatrist.

“Hopefully not, but, it happens,” he responds in a matter-of-fact manner.

Amy's best friend, tied-up-girl Suzanne, has been a supportive and self-sacrificing best friend and they live a normal life together, sharing an apartment. After work they go to a club where Suzanne hooks up with a vain hipster. Amy just cringes at this, sarcastic and reserved, clearly feeling like an outsider looking in at normalcy. When she sees a demon face in the crowd of the club she becomes upset and goes outside to smoke. The demon is there, of course, having chased Raquel outside, who happened to be in the same club. This altercation introduces the two women with the same powers of sight, and Amy eventually comes to understand she isn’t crazy or alone. However, her roommate becomes possessed and tries to kill her. Amy runs to Raquel for help, and they decide to kidnap Suzanne and give her an exorcism, (we’ve returned to the pee scene) which kills the girl in the process. They bury her body in the woods, but in the last scene, after Amy goes home to mourn, she is brushing her teeth and a very dirty and sick looking Suzanne is suddenly standing behind her.

“You killed me you silly bitch,” she says. The episode ends there.

As the season continues, Raquel keeps using her smartphone to essentially google information on the demons and evil they are being pursued by. Suzanne is not actually alive, but is a “revenant” or, pretty much a vampire with an insatiable hunger for blood. While she withers away in front of their eyes, Amy, Raquel and Amy’s nerdy co-worker friend with a big fat crush on Amy feed the girl guinea pigs. It’s not enough; she’s already eaten creepy-hipster-guy and has a taste for the real thing. Meanwhile, demons are still after them, Raquel is revealed to be the daughter of a demon, and watches her father as he is stabbed in the heart with a shard of ice by a soccer-mom demon hitwoman, sending him back to the underworld. This unleashes new powers in Raquel, who acts as an apparent link or gateway to the real world from the demon realm. I shall cease from spoiling the show any further.

A review by Carly Lane on Nerdist.com describes “Crazyhead” as: “...it’s what you get when you blend the Buffy aesthetic of young women kicking demon butt with the delightfully irreverent humor of Misfits.”

Lane is not alone in this train of thought. All across Twitter, new fans are dubbing “Crazyhead” as their new “Buffy,” which was a character-driven serial horror spoof that ran from 1997 to 2003, created by Joss Whedon. While not exactly like “Buffy,” “Crazyhead” does touch on some of the same subject matter, reveling in its own exploitation and exploration of stereotypes beyond their boundaries. The female friends in “Crazyhead” break the boundaries of their character types as “Buffy” broke her own stereotype as the ditsy blonde cheerleader, who also happened to be super-strong, smart, witty and kicking vampire butt; and as the nerdy, do-good best friend character of Willow breaks stereotype as she found her calling as an all-powerful lesbian witch.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar

Willow, Buffy's best friend, turns dark. Her character is played by Allison Hannigan.

Though “Crazyhead,” like "Buffy," operates within unrealistic, fantastical story material and uses stereotypes to prop up the supporting characters, the developing friendship between main characters Amy and Raquel is as real and awkward, as strong and strange as true female friendship gets. As Raquel and Amy circle each other, trying to figure out whether or not to trust each other and be friends, Raquel just pinches Amy’s nipple out of nowhere. It’s this kind of realistic, awkward humor that pulls the two out of their twenty-something stereotype and into a developing friendship.

In this video clip, Cara Theobold discusses Amy and Raquel's friendship:

However, in “Crazyhead,” male characters are often the dupes of the Hollywood trope. The demonic characters, especially the powerful leader, who moonlights, or daylights, as Raquel’s therapist, hit the trope of the evil, sadistic, and unreasonable mob-boss right on the nose. The demons operate almost like an underground crime syndicate, organizing to unleash the gates of hell. Unlike the singular-driven demon boss who only wants to end Amy and unleash hell on earth, the demon hitwoman who kills Raquel’s father presents a delightfully distinguished character from stereotypical evil.  As with the other female characters in Crazyhead, she is more fleshed out, hunting the human Seers while living life as a dedicated single mother. Confrontational scenes between her and Amy highlight her dual-desire struggle to successfully do evil while protecting her human child.

Although “Crazyhead” is comparable to “Buffy” in its use of character humor and developing, challenging female characters, it is not, by any means an exact replica, continuation or rip-off of “Buffy.” “Crazyhead” is a natural evolution, pulling from a vast creative supernatural background of shows and movies that came before it, picking and choosing, creating its own nuances and blending them into a new flavor of demon-slaying. For example, another popular show featuring two demon-hunting brothers, “Supernatural,” uses character banter and relationship development to balance the horror theme.

Dean Winchester, played by Jensen Ackles, gives his brother Sam a hard time in "Supernatural."

“Supernatural” focuses on two overly-handsome young men battling evil in a much more melodramatic take. These characters also partake in their own comedic banter and use suspense to drive a continuing story line, just as “Crazyhead” does. In “Supernatural,” demons rush from people’s bodies in clouds of black smoke shooting out their mouths like projectile vomit; “Crazyhead” adopts this same visual when exorcising demons.

However, its depiction of demons as faces of bare flesh and bones burning up from the inside out is vastly different than “Supernatural’s,” and far more reminiscent of “Constantine’s” burning world, a comic-turned-film released in 2005 concerning a man who can communicate with half-angels and half-demons. While the audience is given something visually fresh in "Crazyhead's" burning faces it is not too new, remaining palatable, arisen from the visual ideas that came before it, left lingering in popular media. The familiar black smoke acts as an anchor that lets the audience know exactly where they are and how to interpret a new version of the story, like an X marks the spot within the map of horror media culture.

The burning faces in "Crazyhead" are a unique twist on demonic possession

There are other distinctions that make “Crazyhead” stand out in its genre; the characters in “Crazyhead” are much less model-esque and far more real-life, normal-looking young women with much dirtier mouths than the Winchester boys of “Supernatural.”



"Crazyhead," "Supernatural," and "Buffy" all effectively use cliffhanger techniques to encourage binge-watching, or keep you waiting for the next episode release. As episodes pile up, so does the suspense and the impossibility of successful defeat of evil.

Amy and Raquel, two wildly uncouth, brazen, and bold women are anything but PC and explore the blurred lines of friendship, not shying from jokes about lesbian tendencies. However, far from offensive or homophobic, this kind of straight-girl humor embraces the spectrum of sexuality in the same matter-of-fact manner with which it addresses straight sex. It doesn't shy from anything, really; nothing in this show feels off-limits.

Throughout the episodes, the directors use images of pop-culture to accentuate the scenes. An enormous poster of Prince hangs above Raquel's bed, watching over her. The scene, shot from a low angle, covering Raquel in deep colors of purple, emphasizes her power and her vulnerability, clinging to figures and ideas larger than herself.

The show address issues such as mental illness and addiction. Raquel and Amy finding each other becomes an affirmation of sanity in each character's life, calling into question society's veritable "othering" of sufferers of mental illness. In the first episodes, Amy is standoffish, on the edges of all social interactions, though others make efforts to reach her. Suzanne's need for human blood can only be a metaphor for heroin or methamphetamine addiction. Her need is all-consuming, and though she is already "dead," we watch her wither away and die for good as her friends try in vain to find a way to save her. Covered in dirt and blood, chained to a mattress in the throes of the hunger, Suzanne decides she cannot continue to fight the addiction. She throws herself out a window to end her "afterlife." The parallels are clear; she looks just like images of drug addicts living in squats presented in the mass media, an incurable hunger slowly turns her into a different and violent person. Here, however, instead of seeing her at fault for her addiction like many addicts are presented in the media, we see her as a victim and a friend. She chooses to kill herself out of love for her friends, rather than becoming overwhelmed and attempting to eat them. This represents a more real-life glimpse of addiction and the tragic lengths some people go to escape addiction's damaging clutches on their loved ones. Despite the tragedy, the gruesome humor moves the story right along, as the sidekick dork friend steps in a pile of splattered demon and revanant, a stray ear stuck to his shoe.

The show includes a strong soundtrack of popular music that adds dynamism to each scene, keeping scenes upbeat and moving forward fast. Check out the season 1 soundtrack here; it's well worth the listen.

"Crazyhead" will inevitably draw a modern, liberal-minded audience, and hit home the best with new-wave feminist millennials. Although the horror-comedy genre and demonic possession have been well-used in the past, the genre remains the perfect format to explore real-life issues with a surrealist edge, taking the focus off the serious drama and leaving our eyes feasting on special effects and gore. "Crazyhead" successfully breaks away from overused and damaging media stereotypes in the name of raising new, realistic female heroes to the screen for an audience that demands feminine equality and power.

Media and Society Week 3

Topic 1:

Trolling my social media feeds in search of ads:

First, can I just say: Facebook, stop with the engagement ring advertisements already!!! Just because I’ve been in a seemingly hetero-normative relationship for several years does NOT mean I am your target audience or that I believe in the antiquitous institution of marriage or that I am actually a hetero-normative person at all, so just please stop! I am not buying. I am NOT your target audience. How many freakin' jewelers need to be all over my Facebook page? Can’t you at least try and sell me something interesting or something that I can afford?!

Ok, I keep scrolling FB...

Next, I notice something that strikes me a little odd; Naomi Campbell in cutoffs and a white tee, surrounded by a group of denim-clad, young, hip-looking millennials.




This pops up on my Facebook feed, and as I pause over the ad, the tiny people on my screen start moving into a short video, 16 seconds long. I turn on the sound, see Naomi strut onto the screen and hear Naomi’s voice say, “Generation Gap, take one.” Another, gravelly kinda smokey-sexy accented woman’s voice says, “It was very cool, very easy, but had this like, edge. It was all about personality.” The ad has turned black and white, and there’s this upbeat cowbell-like drumming, and images of these diverse millennials moving with the beat, cutting from person to person. The video ends on a screen proclaiming: Generation Gap. #TheArchiveReissue. It’s a 90s throwback, and everyone is in 90s style plain clothes, jeans, denim, and shirts. The whole campaign was released on 2/2, a Thursday, Gap’s ultimate “TBT” or “throw-back Thursday.” 


I click on the link to their Facebook homepage, and decide it doesn’t look like much. All their ads, or posts, on Facebook look like out-of-place Instagram shots; that’s pretty much what they are. They have over 8 million likes on their page and various posts. It’s clear that they are marketing to a variety of groups on their FB page and not just targeting one demographic. There’s photos of kids, tweens, and young adults. It’s like the <35 age-group page. They’ve just released this 90s throwback campaign, calling it a “limited release,” so I hop over to their Twitter page to check that out too. 

On Twitter, their Instagram photo ads look less out of place; it fits with the style of the short Twitter post. On Facebook, they did have some nice gifs and photos of kids that looked more professional, magazine-ad style. Their targeted demographic audience seemed more widespread on FB, but their cover photos are the same; the people bedecked in 90s denim, Naomi Campbell front-and-center. On Twitter, it’s pretty clear they are aiming straight for millennials and that crossover generation that doesn’t quite count as millennials, ages 30-38. This latest campaign is targeting anyone who remembers the 90s fondly and feels a connection to the denim-street-style they’re touting. Gap posts every 1 to 3 days, and these posts are usually featuring a photo of a single person in an attractive environment, posed in a way that they use a play on words for the ad tagline. 

For example, there’s a photo of the back of an in-shape white girl as she wears a sports bra and workout spandex, arms in the air, stretched outwards to embrace the mountaintops and lake in front of her. The tagline: Giving “peak performance” new meaning. They consistently use two hashtags, #DoYouMove, for their Gap fit line of exercise clothes, and #GapLove for everything else. Some of the ads look like selfies; they all feature attractive people with a variety of ethnicity, who, though attractive, are posed and placed in normal-seeming places, very relate-table, maybe your neighbor or classmate or you… Though relate-able, using that plain-folks pitch to sell basic clothes, the ads lack creativity and exude cliches.

#CanYouGetMoreCliche

These selfie-type ads are often credited to the photographers that took them with a link to the photographer’s Twitter account. This lends it a little personality; the consumer can go see who is producing these photographs directly, and because photography is an art form, these ads are trying to dip into that aspect. (Not very successfully, may I add.) Even though Gap is paying photographers and tweeting regularly, they only have 678,000 followers; not that many for a company who's been around since 1969. Their second biggest global fashion market competitor, H&M, has well over 8 million followers on Twitter. H&M is literally slaughtering the Gap when it comes to advertising on social media. The Gap’s ads are often pretty cliche; yoga at sunset, a white girl embracing the mountains… none very compelling. Their most recent campaign throwback to the 90s just feels like a desperate attempt to reminisce and get some customers back who may have been Gap brand buyers in the 90s when gap WAS cooler street style, but who now maybe have moved on to cheaper brands (Gap is spendy for the common working folk, yet that’s who they are advertising to in this campaign!) with more variety. Naomi Campbell is classic, and perfect for the clothes they are trying to sell since she starred in their 90s ads, but… somebody needs to go help their marketing department, because something is off. Don’t go backwards- get creative! Naomi definitely grabbed my attention, as did their 90s styles; I hadn’t seen it in a while, and frankly, the nostalgia edge worked. While this throwback thing might be a desperate attempt, it probably will get them quite a bit of sales from those of us who realllllly miss the days of sweaty-stiff denim, clouds of smoke, cigarettes in their pockets, wondering if their voice sounds like Kurt’s yet… But the rest of their ads are invisible crap that will be swallowed in the rest of the sea of “buy me.”

Oh, yeah, one more thing. Naomi Campbell’s butt is their last tweet.

Topic 2

Here is my favorite ad I stumbled upon while perusing the internet a few months ago.
The four-minute long video is an ad for a perfume, KENZO World.

After watching this ad, I WANTED TO KNOW WHAT THAT PERFUME SMELLS LIKE. This is a very strange, very creative, effective ad.

See for yourself:

I honestly saw this ad and thought, “What? Did they take this out of my brain? Best ad ever.” Directed by Spike Jonze, and starring actress Margaret Qualley, the ad tells a mini-story and aims to make an emotional connection with its target audience, and then blow it all up into a laser-flinging, superhero-like climax.

The target audience is young, intelligent women. The actress is beautiful but not overstated. She looks very white-American, upper-class, but down-to-earth. Draped in a unique green dress, she stands out, yet looks like the girl next door. The actress shows emotion creeping through her as she escapes a fancy awards ceremony or dinner to have a moment to herself and sheds a tear. Then the chaos starts as she unleashes and the song “Mutant Brain” crescendos, leading Qualley through a guttural dance that ranges emotion from elation to a lioness’ prowess and anger to a moment or two of ballet before a swan-dive off a stage.

The ad is beautifully shot, using mirrors and setting effectively, becoming more and more surreal as it progresses. Qualley unleashes the emotion raging beneath the surface of the modern woman, her creativity, her anger, and her power. And that’s exactly who this ad is aimed at: a modern woman, tired of being quiet, ready to unleash, full of everything, more than the demure facade. The ad uses association principle to link the perfume with the raw feeling and power of a beautiful, modern woman. The audience is supposed to be enraptured and surprised by Qualley’s emotional mini-story; the ad is supposed to show a behind-the-scenes glimpse of a story women will see as their own. It’s essentially branding this perfume with the image of the girl in the green dress and her mutant brain.

Although I say "modern women" will like this ad, I mean more specifically, modern women who feel they don't quite fit in the modern world. This would be women who are perhaps educated, mid to upper class, though I'm sure it would appeal to some working-class women as well. (It did to me.)

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Worst ad I've seen recently:

Annoying song. Product placement of Dunkin Donuts everywhere. Completely ineffective. Let me explain...

While the ad has a positive message, it doesn't stand out. The activities presented in the ad are of a variety of people: a little boy getting a prosthetic arm, a surfer, an old woman celebrating a birthday, a band rocking out, someone jumping off a cliff; and several other activities/people presented. This is supposed to reach a wide-range of consumers, pulling us all together with the beauty of our varied lifestyles. A catchy, pop-sugar song plays, and the ad theme cues: "Keep on being you." While the catchy song may get stuck in your head, the activities have little to do with doughnuts. You might keep humming the song lyrics, "It's a beautiful life" over and over, and your ears might perk when you hear the ad, but that doesn't mean it'll make you think of Dunkin, despite all the ad placement. Or you'll just wish you had earmuffs or something to smash your TV with. This ad is like a shotgun blast of grape jello; it shoots out everywhere, at everyone and everything, makes a mess of it and misses its actual shot at connection, goo-ing ad-watchers with its sugary pop sound.

Dunkin Donuts is supposed to represent the fuel that is driving these people and connecting them all in their different lives, however, nobody actually bites into a doughnut at any point in time. As a viewer, I don't connect these life activities to the doughnut-fuel. Also, doughnuts make me inherently hungry. Any time I see one, I want one, for days after. This commercial did not make me want doughnuts, but it did kinda make me want to try skydiving. Great job selling happy, outdoor activities, Dunkin Donuts. Bad job selling your crappy coffee.