There’s A Fine Line between Offensive And Clever

10 Dec

First, a very dead Fred Astaire flogs Dirt Devil vaccums. (Couldn’t find the video. We’ll have to settle for this disturbing still.)

ap_astaire_080130_ssh2

Then John Wayne comes back from the grave to appear in this crepuscular Coors Light ad:

Not surprisingly, fans and critics protest the digital pimping of iconic stars. It almost becomes a rule: Don’t f*cking pull sh*t like this.

Then this Nokia ad comes along:

I have thoughts on why this works, but first I’ll throw it out to the community. What’s your take?


Tags: , ,

6 Responses to “There’s A Fine Line between Offensive And Clever”

  1. pseudosu December 11, 2008 at 10:07 am #

    I’d say it probably works because they left the footage clean– he’s not holding a camera, nothing’s cgi’d in– and you get the sense that this performance was intended for posterity.
    When the camera comes in at the end, yeah, you’re being sold to, but it seems ok because it was like they were paying homage.

  2. Sara Aase December 11, 2008 at 10:26 am #

    It’s authentic, not contrived. They’re marrying the coolness of the real video footage with their product in a compelling way. The video has cachet. The phone has cachet. And reminding viewers that they can watch this cool thing on their cool product gives it that little bit of edge.

  3. bets December 11, 2008 at 10:38 am #

    ditto what they said.

  4. denniscass December 12, 2008 at 11:24 am #

    @pseudosu: “you get the sense that this performance was intended for posterity”

    I was going to say all kinds of fancy sh*t but that pretty much nails it for me. The original footage was made in the spirit of showing off. Bruce would be pleased.

  5. JES December 13, 2008 at 9:25 am #

    I dunno… I forwarded it to a nephew, who loves this sort of stuff. He replied — something he almost never does — with the three words “Is this real?” After researching it I’m not sure.

    There’s a whole school of thought which says it’s not even Bruce Lee (the camera keeps a safe distance), but the consensus seems to be: Bruce Lee or not, the guy’s moves were digitally inserted into the Nokia commercial. (It was/is supposedly a limited-edition Bruce Lee model of the phone.)

    Here‘s a commercial for a different product along the same lines: Bruce Lee lights matches with his nunchucks.

    Regardless, it’s still true that “this performance was intended for posterity.” And as one comment I saw somewhere implied, surely Lee’s estate is being compensated by Nokia.

    But I think the original questions still stand. It’s messy. Pop culture seems the perfect demonstration of moral entropy — it all spirals gradually into ever-greater ambiguity.

  6. JES December 13, 2008 at 9:26 am #

    P.S. Ha ha, sorry, some of us have a harder time than others applying the fancy-sh*t brakes. :)

Leave a Reply