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Coke’s Super Bowl ad: Pretty much everything wrong with America

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:01:00 +0000

Well, I’m dying to know which ending of the Coke Chase/Mirage Super Bowl ad you’re going to vote for! Really though, it’s impressive the way it simultaneously works the racial and gender angles while also exploiting the latest broadcast strategy of audience engagement.

Of course, the central device is how the ad plays off the desert … and the “great race” (both the movie and American exceptionalism).

With the West in an endless struggle in the Middle East not just for resources but mindshare, we see the Coke bottle — the symbol of globalization and American commercialism — sitting there in the hot sand, the object of desire for, first of all, this hapless Gulf prince/camel jockey.

Petraeus scandal: Idolatry pure and simple

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 23:32:00 +0000

The result [of Broadwell's book] is a work of fan fiction so fawning that not even Max Boot – a Petraeus buddy and Pentagon sock puppet – could bring himself to rave about it, grouching in The Wall Street Journal about All In’s “lack of independent perspective” and the authors’ tendency to skirt conflict. (Boot, the hackiest of the neocon hacks, is now an advisor to Mitt Romney.)

from The Legend of David Petraeus by Michael Hastings. Rolling Stone – 1/31/12

Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings, clearly no fan of either David Petraeus or Paula Broadwell, wrote the passage above in a critique of her biography of the General back in January. The affair having started in late 2011, is it possible in the line about the biographer as “skirting conflict” that Hastings sensed more going on?

The Washington Post’s embarrassing Ryan defense

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 22:32:00 +0000

In the Washington Post “Reliable Source” blog yesterday morning, the authors make the point (Political photo ops: From Reagan to Paul Ryan, the game every candidate plays) that Paul Ryan’s photo op at a soup kitchen last weekend was nothing more then par for the course. In their minds, the Ryan campaign manipulating its way into a charity’s kitchen after the meal was over and washing already clean dishes was hardly different from images of Clinton jogging, or Bush clearing brush on his Texas ranch, or Obama shooting hoops, or Reagan sitting on a horse.

Mika Brzezinski’s erotic dance

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 20:54:00 +0000

Vanity Fair’s short profile of MSNBC’s Morning Joe hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough ostensibly depicts them as a dynamic duo reminiscent of the great screwball comedies of the 1940s (the article references The Thin Man’s Nick and Nora). But the sassy journalist heroines popularized by Rosalind Russell and Katharine Hepburn would have balked at a photo shoot like this one—which is both reflective of current attitudes toward professional and political women and jarringly anachronistic. The notion that women exist primarily for men’s amusement (both on and off the job) seems oh so Mad Men, yet the trend toward depicting public women (especially those whose jobs place them in the realm of politics) primarily as sex objects is alive and well in the 21^st century. The pornification of political culture (a process in which some women participate willingly and others have foisted upon them after their image is conscripted) has depicted political candidates (e.g., Sarah Palin and Janice Hahn) and women voters (in viral videos like this one and this one from the 2008 campaign) as strippers.

Barack’s lottery winners

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 21:20:00 +0000

On top of running a fundraising lottery for dinners with the President (I’m sure you’ve been getting Michelle and Barack’s emails), the White House has been prominently using the ensuing sit downs for photo-ops. The latest event took place a few days ago at the Mintwood Place restaurant in D.C.’s Adams Morgan neighborhood. Whereas, on the surface, it’s heartening to see the Obamas hanging with wildfire smoke jumpers and assistant high school principals, as if one of those chairs might be filled (for $25 or so) by you or me, I’m wondering about the larger symbolism.

Isn’t what we’re seeing here, in fact, mostly the product of brilliant marketing, with the president (or Romney) engineering the perception of populism and participation? More seriously, by having people pay for the opportunity, isn’t the campaign also emulating and forcing the public to (literally) buy into the plutocratic game where citizens (those with the real wealth) are expected to pony up to get (the real) attention of elected leaders? Looking at the photo again, how much is the scene a democratic act, a lighthearted strategy for engagement, a concept to say that the little guy helped build the bank, one more reinforcement of the lottery society, and/or a vehicle to model for the American electorate the concept of “pay to play”?

Before Gabby Douglas was a household name

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 23:14:00 +0000

Click image for full size

What's been interesting to track the last year or so are news photos that push the aesthetics or art photographs that somehow wend their way onto more editorial turf. This photo by Martin Schoeller at TIME Lightbox, published on the heels of Olympic gold, seems to fit those terms. It shows Gabby Douglas in the home of the host family she's been living with in Iowa the past two years. Kitsch art meets Olympic mania? I can't really speak to the artistic intent. I have some thoughts about the commercial and cultural politics, though.

Gabby Douglas’ race narrative

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 12:00:00 +0000

I had a chance to chat yesterday with Michael Butterworth, Associate Professor in the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green who specializes in the rhetoric of sports. (He also writes for the sports, politics and culture blog, The Agon.) Aware the subject is about a mile wide, we aimed to get a rope around some of the dominant visual and political themes of the Olympic coverage so far.

First, we talked about the dramatic upending of expectations in women’s gymnastics. (As background, Michael described how the all-around winner of the summer gymnastics competition, just like the women’s winner of Olympic figure skating, automatically becomes the newest U.S. sweetheart.) After discussing how NBC was reeling after Jordyn Wieber, the world champion and “odds-on” favorite failed to qualify for the women’s all-around — after her team gold, NBC, still obsessing on Jordan, turned it into a “redemption story” — Michael was very curious to see how Gabby Douglas would fit the role, and handle the marketing windfall.

Romney gives London the twitches

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 17:11:00 +0000

I know plenty of people are going to say that comfort comes with time and that smoothness isn’t necessarily a job requirement. That said, though, Romney’s not going anywhere if the public doesn’t feel comfortable with him, isn’t able to relate to him, and he can’t relate effectively to the public or his peers. And that’s just in the U.S.

How bad a day was it in London? After starting off the trip with his advisor implying racist connections with the UK because we are all white, he revealed that the head of MI6 secretly briefed him on Syria. That was especially disastrous having made such an issue about Obama leaking security information. He said in an interview with NBC that London didn’t appear prepared for the Olympics. What we see in these photos are the reactions of people to the large and varied feet that Mr. Romney stuck in his mouth, making him totally radioactive by the time he got to 10 Downing and David Cameron’s office. (And it didn’t stop there. After meeting Cameron, he forgot the name of the opposition leader during a photo op. Then he upset everyone in Parliament. Then Boris Johnson mocked him for dissing London’s readiness at a rally with 60K people in attendance. Really, it’s not easy to offend a whole nation, but Romney seemed to manage it. And that was before the media unearthed dismissive quotes about the UK in Romney’s books.)

Cover of Time features women athletes as … athletes

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 20:34:00 +0000

This week, Time magazine rolled out the covers for the U.S. and international editions of its summer Olympic preview. Four out of five of the portraits featured women. That is, perhaps, not a surprise since the Olympic audience skews female. Nonetheless, with only one male athlete in the group, Olympian hurdler Lolo Jones’s powerful stride seems an apt metaphor for the leaps made by women athletes in the 40 years since the passage of Title IX in the U.S. (The pair of covers above represent Time’s Europe/Middle East/Africa and Asia editions.)

Time Olympics covers feature women athletes as … athletes

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 16:55:00 +0000

This week, Time magazine rolled out the covers for the U.S. and international editions of its summer Olympic preview. Four out of five of the portraits featured women. That is, perhaps, not a surprise since the Olympic audience skews female. Nonetheless, with only one male athlete in the group, Olympian hurdler Lolo Jones’s powerful stride seems an apt metaphor for the leaps made by women athletes in the 40 years since the passage of Title IX in the U.S. (The pair of covers below represent Time’s Europe/Middle East/Africa and Asia editions.)

What does the James Holmes video tell us?

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 17:35:00 +0000

The photos of James Holmes, disoriented, confused, possibly delusional, at his initial hearing this morning are bizarre and shocking as they relate to his state of mind. What I’m curious about, at this point, is how these pictures relate to the video released yesterday by ABC News of the then-high school senior presenting his work at a science camp in San Diego.

Because the public in general isn’t sure what to make of this kind of data released and pumped by the media, I wanted to note some of the significant and not-necessarily-significant elements I saw in the video.