Saw it on the tube/Bought it on the phone/Now you’re home alone/It’s a piece of crap.” Dr. Strangelove quoted this lyric from the song “Piece of Crap” by Neil Young to help explain the concept of “buyer’s remorse.” It comes from Young’s 1994 album, Sleeps With Angels. Buyer’s remorse is the feeling of seeing something [...]
Archive for July, 2009
Neil Young and Consumption
Posted in Neil Young, Reactions To Strangelectures on July 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Cigarette Smoking in Movies: A Normative Experience
Posted in Propaganda, Reactions To Strangelectures on July 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A few classes ago, Dr. Strangelove talked about the tobacco industry. He mentioned the efforts of Edward Bernays, the father of modern propaganda. He gave the example of Bernays’ strategy of giving marching women in New York cigarettes as a symbol of freedom. Really, he was trying to remove the stigma of women smoking in [...]
Sexploitation
Posted in Documentary Research on July 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Here is a subvertisement of some erotic ads: It is more of a documentary than a culture jam, but the idea of subverting the dominant meaning is certainly there. If one only saw the pictures in this video it could be seen as promoting sexploitation. However, because of the story told in the subtitles, images [...]
Human Nature is Plastic
Posted in Philosophy, Reactions To Strangelectures on July 25, 2009 | 1 Comment »
This statement, brought up by Dr. Strangelove in class on a few occasions, was made by a famous American anthropologist named Ruth Benedict. Benedict’s statement suggests that our nature is shaped not by some notion of humanity that every human being has felt since our beginning, but by cultural forces present during our lifetimes. According [...]
A Collection of Subvertisements
Posted in Documentary Research on July 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Here is a video with about 50 subvertisements. Some are done on computers, others are done in public spaces. A particularly impressive one is the barcode crosswalk at 2:26. It’s a great collection with an appropriately ominous soundtrack. The video will be useful in providing examples of what subvertising is. Another thing that is special [...]
Bill Watterson and the Enlightenment Project
Posted in Philosophy, Reactions To Strangelectures on July 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A few classes ago, Dr. Strangelove pointed out a flaw in the “Enlightenment project:” it has emphasized gaining knowledge, without much else. Dr. Strangelove said that simply knowing is not enough to change things. He gave the example of his study of advertising, which he said he had been studying closely for over a decade. [...]
Beckham Beheaded
Posted in Documentary Research on July 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
This video is an episode of the daily 2-3 minute video blog news show Rocketboom. This episode discusses subvertising. It’s interesting for two reasons. One is that it gives great examples of subvertising around the world. They are not subvertisements made with the help of YouTube, but they’ve still ended up on YouTube. This demonstrates [...]
Onslaught
Posted in Documentary Research on July 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
In one of the first classes of CMN 2173 this summer, Dr. Strangelove told us that Dove and Axe are owned by the same company, Unilever. What is funny about this is that Dove has been promoting “real beauty” and self-esteem in women by not using anorexic supermodels in all of their advertisements. However, Axe [...]
YouTube Comments
Posted in Internet Interaction, Reactions To Strangelectures on July 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
In our class on July 20, Dr. Strangelove said that the user-created nature of YouTube and the Internet as a whole provide culture jammers and subvertisers with unequalled potential. The reach of messages across the medium of the Internet is potentially global. Gone are the days when only multinational corporations could reach the whole world [...]
Communist Chic
Posted in Philosophy, Reactions To Strangelectures on July 20, 2009 | 1 Comment »
A few classes ago, Dr. Strangelove wore a hammer and sickle t-shirt and an army coat. He made sure to tell us that he wasn’t a communist, but was wearing it for fun, in a mocking communists sort of way. But there are people who wear hammer and sickle gear as a fashion statement. The [...]
