The Strange Commercial

[imomus]

My new piece for Design Observer is about some strange and beautiful old commercials you can watch on the web. It focuses on films by Charles Wilp and Serge Lutens for Afri-Cola and Shiseido.

Oh, and check out today's Art Harbour sound. It's a tiny morsel of buzz taken from one of the Shiseido commercials and run through some pitch and tempo effects so that it becomes an entire symphony. It's one I'm quite proud of.

Comments

Underhanded!

[(Anonymous)]

Everytime I turn my back and don't read your site, you land a rhetorical sucker punch on me.

My problem with that sign is that the store sells "ethnic foods" like pad thai and curry, and the way the store signals to Japanese people "ethnicity" is with a African bushman. I understand why the Japanese call their tanning salons "Blackie's" etc, but I was a bit offended with the idea of exploiting images of Blacks to sell an idea of "primitiveness." As if the ad were saying, "Look at how totally exotic our foods our - we have a Black guy as our mascot!"

I know that you find great pride in your potshots on Political Correctness, but your assumption that Japanese logic is working exactly as your own is flawed. They may come to the same VICE-era "IN YOUR MOTHERFUCKING FACE" masturbatory post-PC self-righteous actions, but they're still working on a 1950s level of "we don't trust the coloreds" social perspective. But hey, keep attacking the liberals as the "real racists" - you love the easy target. Keep on fightin' the power.

Marxy