Google’s Moving Ad About 1947 Partition of India & Pakistan Tops 10 Million Views

in Google, History, Television | December 9th, 2013

Recent­ly, Wired writer Steve Sil­ber­man (aka @stevesil­ber­man) shot us a note on Twit­ter, say­ing, “@openculture, do not miss this bril­liant ad. Most touch­ing movie (in 3 mins!) I’ve seen in years.” Released on Novem­ber 13th, the video has already clocked over 10 mil­lion views. But chances are you haven’t seen it. And that’s because it’s tar­get­ed to the web-enabled mid­dle class of India and Pak­istan. As The Dawn, Pak­istan’s old­est Eng­lish news­pa­per, describes it, the Google-cre­at­ed ad enti­tled “Reunion” “por­trays two child­hood friends, now elder­ly men, who haven’t seen each oth­er since they were sep­a­rat­ed by the 1947 par­ti­tion that cre­at­ed India and Pak­istan from the old British empire in South Asia. Par­ti­tion sparked a mass exo­dus as mil­lions of Mus­lims and Hin­dus fled across the new bor­ders amid reli­gious vio­lence.” Now Google search prod­ucts are help­ing to bring old friends and neigh­bors back togeth­er.

Cyn­ics may be quick to judge this a sac­cha­rine, manip­u­la­tive ad. But oth­ers are see­ing in it some­thing else — a sign that “per­son­al con­nec­tions between Indi­ans and Pak­ista­nis run deep.” Even if their gov­ern­ments gain some­thing from keep­ing the con­flict alive, every­day peo­ple in India and Pak­istan are increas­ing­ly ready to put his­to­ry aside.

Note: If you click CC at the bot­tom of the video, you can use cap­tions to trans­late the film into nine lan­guages, includ­ing French, Malay­alam and Urdu. It is pre­set to Eng­lish.

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The Clash Mauls a Teddy Bear and Plays Two Songs on The Tom Snyder Show (1981)

in Music, Television | December 9th, 2013

The Clash’s San­din­ista!, their fourth and penul­ti­mate stu­dio album (let’s not talk about Cut the Crap) inspired crit­i­cal rhap­sodies and rose to the top of lists every­where in 1981. When I encoun­tered it almost ten years lat­er as a young fan, I didn’t give it much of a chance, except for a song with the same name as my belea­guered hometown’s NBA team. In hind­sight, it was my loss, but it’s also true that near­ly every gen­er­a­tion of Clash fans, includ­ing the very first, has put their fin­ger on the band’s moment of either “sell­ing out” or sharply declin­ing. Maybe for me it was what a Rolling Stone review called San­din­ista!’s “main­stream moves” and “stu­dio sophis­ti­ca­tion.” Maybe it was the “whiff of grandeur” of the triple album. I think it also had to do with what Tom Sny­der, in his 1981 inter­view with the band above, says of them in his intro­duc­tion: they pre­ferred to be iden­ti­fied “not so much as a Rock and Roll group but as a ‘News-giv­ing group.’”

It was hard­ly news when I heard it, and I didn’t much care for top­i­cal songs any­way. But I’ve always admired Joe Strummer’s sin­cer­i­ty and sense of polit­i­cal urgency. I don’t know how seri­ous­ly Strum­mer takes Snyder’s “News-giv­ing” open, but he rolls with it, and the band turns on the charm offen­sive, alter­nate­ly cud­dling and abus­ing a ted­dy bear (against Snyder’s protes­ta­tions), pro­fess­ing their sin­cere loy­al­ty to their fans, and cov­er­ing the host with mer­chan­dise. It’s a fun eight and half min­utes. Then they do two songs, “The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en” (above), from San­din­ista!, and “This is Radio Clash” (below), which doesn’t appear on any of their stu­dio albums. Behind Mick Jones’ wall of amps, pio­neer­ing graf­fi­ti artist Futu­ra 2000 spray-paints some uniden­ti­fi­able words, and beneath the whole affair is what Dan­ger­ous Minds calls “an under­cur­rent of con­trolled may­hem.” This kind of TV just doesn’t hap­pen any­more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Audio Ammu­ni­tion: Google’s New Doc­u­men­tary Series on The Clash and Their Five Clas­sic Albums

Rare Live Footage Doc­u­ments The Clash From Their Raw Debut to the Career-Defin­ing Lon­don Call­ing

Mick Jones Plays Three Clas­sics by The Clash at the Pub­lic Library

The Clash: West­way to the World (The 2002 Gram­my Win­ning Film)

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Join Clive James on His Classic Television Trips to Paris, LA, Tokyo, Rio, Cairo & Beyond

in Television, Travel | December 6th, 2013

After a morn­ing’s girl­watch­ing in Paris, Clive James goes for a leisure­ly yet har­row­ing dri­ve with Bon­jour Tristesse author Françoise Sagan at the wheel, walks out on the opera, pays respects to the graves of Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, and Mar­cel Proust, seeks the def­i­n­i­tion of a “fash­ion vic­tim,” denounces I.M. Pei’s pyra­mid atop the Lou­vre, and descends into the dance clubs beneath the streets. On the coast of Los Ange­les, he endures a celebri­ty-grade work­out, com­mis­sions a toupee from Bev­er­ly Hills styl­ist José Eber and his most trust­ed “hair unit” crafts­man, under­goes a plas­tic surgery con­sul­ta­tion, and meets the most cheer­ful (and no doubt most suc­cess­ful) car-park­er alive. At the height of Japan’s eco­nom­ic bub­ble, he does bat­tle with his own chop­sticks, los­es him­self in Shun­juku despite mean­ing to lose him­self in the Gin­za, beds down unsuc­cess­ful­ly in a love hotel, holds in his breath as he wedges him­self into a com­muter train, strug­gles to accept hos­pi­tal­i­ty from robots, puts him­self at the utter mer­cy of a game show, and gets drunk amidst junior geisha.

Why, you might ask, would a respect­ed man of let­ters like James – author, most recent­ly, of a new trans­la­tion of Dan­te’s Divine Com­e­dy — do all this prat­fall-inten­sive glo­be­trot­ting, much less on the BBC for all to see? I would sub­mit, as a long­time fol­low­er of the man’s work, that it has to do with his twin dri­ves to, with his wise­crack­ing­ly illu­mi­nat­ing turns of phrase, keep his audi­ences laugh­ing as well as think­ing, no mat­ter the medi­um in which he works. He fills the role of the enter­tain­er, cer­tain­ly, but simul­ta­ne­ous­ly fills the role of the intel­lec­tu­al. An untir­ing­ly curi­ous poly­glot, not that you’d know it by the exag­ger­at­ed inep­ti­tude with which he asks for direc­tions in Tokyo or inter­views French star­lets, James plays both low and high at all times, and you can see it in all these tele­vi­su­al jour­neys to Cairo, Rome, Mia­mi, Rio, Chica­go, Berlin, Shang­hai, New York, Bom­bay, Hong Kong, and even the Syd­ney of James’ native Aus­tralia. You can also see it in James’ trav­el pieces for the Observ­er that served as their tem­plates, all freely avail­able on his web site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pan Am’s 1960s and 70s Trav­el Films: Vis­it 11 Places, in 7 Lan­guages

Mashup Artist “Kuti­man” Trav­els to Tokyo and Cre­ates an Incred­i­ble Musi­cal Post­card

Five Cul­tur­al Tours of Los Ange­les

Al Jazeera Trav­el Show Explores World Cities Through Their Street Food

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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John Cleese Stars in a Morbidly Funny Anti-Smoking Campaign (1992–1994)

in Comedy, Television | December 5th, 2013

In 1992, the Health Edu­ca­tion Author­i­ty (HEA) began run­ning a series of ads on British tele­vi­sion star­ring the Mon­ty Python come­di­an and ex-smok­er, John Cleese. Smok­ing remained the #1 cause of pre­ma­ture death in the UK, and the HEA want­ed to see if a media cam­paign could make a dent in the epi­dem­ic. As part of a con­trolled exper­i­ment (all detailed here), ads star­ring Cleese were shown in cer­tain parts of the UK (but not oth­ers), and they used mor­bid humor and macabre sce­nar­ios “first to engage the view­ers’ curios­i­ty,” and then to “high­light the dan­gers of smok­ing, show[ing] the ridicu­lous­ness of the smok­ing habit.” Final­ly, view­ers were giv­en a phone num­ber to call where they could get more infor­ma­tion on how to quit.

So what were the results? Dur­ing the cam­paign (which ran from 1992 to 1994), the “quit­line” received around 20,000 calls over­all. Data crunch­ers lat­er found that the con­trol groups exposed to the ads quit smok­ing at a high­er rate than groups that had­n’t seen the com­mer­cials. Plus the relapse rates of the con­trol group were low­er than the norm. All of this led the gov­ern­ment to con­clude that “anti-smok­ing TV adver­tis­ing should be under­tak­en rou­tine­ly as an essen­tial com­po­nent of any pop­u­la­tion smok­ing reduc­tion strat­e­gy.” In this post, we’ve high­light­ed three of the bet­ter pre­served ads in the cam­paign.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

Bertrand Rus­sell: “I Owe My Life to Smok­ing”

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

John Cleese’s Eulo­gy for Gra­ham Chap­man: ‘Good Rid­dance, the Free-Load­ing Bas­tard, I Hope He Fries’

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A Young Björk Deconstructs (Physically & Theoretically) a Television in a Delightful Retro Video

in Media, Music, Television | November 21st, 2013

Björk’s first inter­na­tion­al hit, “Human Behav­iour” (1993) received scant radio play in North Amer­i­ca. Rather, the Ice­landic singer’s fame only grew as a result of MTV’s heavy rota­tion of the sur­re­al­ist music video that accom­pa­nied the song, direct­ed by Acad­e­my Award win­ner Michel Gondry. Despite the debt of celebri­ty she owed to tele­vi­sion, Björk was not always a fan.

In the undat­ed video above, Björk expounds on her Christ­mas­time TV-watch­ing habits.  Imme­di­ate­ly, the video takes an odd—or, I sup­pose, char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly Björk-esque—turn when the young singer decides to take her TV apart:

But now I’m curi­ous. I’ve switched the TV off and now I want to see how it oper­ates. How it can make, put me into all those weird sit­u­a­tions. So… It’s about time.

The var­i­ous com­po­nents prove fas­ci­nat­ing, and Björk pro­ceeds to describe the television’s hard­ware in her whim­si­cal, oth­er­world­ly man­ner:

This is what it looks like. Look at this. This looks like a city. Like a lit­tle mod­el of a city. The hous­es, which are here, and streets. This is maybe an ele­va­tor to go up there. And here are all the wires. These wires, they real­ly take care of all the elec­trons when they come through there. They take care that they are pow­er­ful enough to get all the way through to here. I read that in a Dan­ish book. This morn­ing.

The most puz­zling part of the video comes when Björk men­tions that her cav­a­lier approach to tele­vi­sion is rel­a­tive­ly new. Until recent­ly, she had been guard­ed about her view­ing habits:

I remem­ber being very scared because an Ice­landic poet told me that not like in cin­e­mas, where the thing that throws the pic­ture from it just sends light on the screen, but this is dif­fer­ent. This is mil­lions and mil­lions of lit­tle screens that send light, some sort of elec­tric light, I’m not real­ly sure… Your head is very busy all the time to cal­cu­late and put it all togeth­er into one pic­ture. And then because you’re so busy doing that, you don’t watch very care­ful­ly what the pro­gram you are watch­ing is real­ly about. So you become hyp­no­tized.

Thanks to the wis­dom con­tained with­in an unnamed Dan­ish book, how­ev­er, Björk has grown more at ease with the poten­tial of television’s being used for mind con­trol and hyp­no­sis. At the end of the clip, she offers a final pearl of wis­dom:

You should­n’t let poets lie to you.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

Ice­land in the Mid­night Sun

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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Two Viral Videos Push Against Stereotypical Messages Girls Get From the Media (Mildly NSFW)

in Comedy, Creativity, Current Affairs, Television | November 21st, 2013

The first of two videos cir­cu­lat­ing on the inter­net, “Girls Who Read” by UK poet and “Rogue Teacher” Mark Grist (above) hits back at the lad cul­ture that objec­ti­fies women accord­ing to cer­tain “bits” named above in some mild­ly NSFW lan­guage. In his video per­for­mance piece above, Grist, asked which bits he prefers by a lad in a pub, and faced with a loom­ing cadre of both male and female peers putting on the pres­sure, answers halt­ing­ly, “I like a girl… who … reads.” Then, his con­fi­dence up, he elab­o­rates:

I like a girl who reads,
Who needs the writ­ten word
And who uses the added vocab­u­lary
She gleans from nov­els and poet­ry
To hold live­ly con­ver­sa­tion
In a range of social sit­u­a­tions

The ide­al girl close to Grist’s heart “ties back her hair as she’s read­ing Jane Eyre” and “feeds her addic­tion for fic­tion with unusu­al poems and plays.” In his infec­tious slam cadences, Grist’s impas­sioned paean to female read­ers offers a charm­ing alter­na­tive to the lad­mag gaze, though one might argue that he still does a lit­tle bit of pro­ject­ing his fan­tasies onto an unsus­pect­ing lone female at the bar (who turns out to be not so alone). Maybe “Girl Who Reads” is a trope, like “Man­ic Pix­ie Dream Girl,” an ide­al­iza­tion that says more about Grist’s desires than about any par­tic­u­lar, actu­al girl, but it’s still a refresh­ing chal­lenge to the leer­ing of his pub­mates, one that com­mu­ni­cates to girls that there are men out there, even in the pubs, who val­ue women for their minds.

The video above, for a new line of toys called GoldiBlox, designed by Stan­ford-edu­cat­ed engi­neer Deb­bie Ster­ling, upends anoth­er ado­les­cent male cul­tur­al touchstone—this time a by-now clas­sic Amer­i­can one—the Beast­ie Boys glee­ful­ly misog­y­nis­tic anthem “Girls.” While the orig­i­nal still like­ly scores many a frat par­ty, it now must com­pete with the rewrite per­formed by “Raven.” The re-appro­pri­at­ed “Girls” plays over video of a trio of young girls, bored to death with stereo­typ­i­cal pink tea sets and the like, who build a com­pli­cat­ed Rube Gold­berg machine from Goldiblox, which resem­ble plas­tic tin­ker toys. I fore­see snip­pets of the updat­ed lyrics (below) mak­ing their way onto play­grounds around the coun­try. Hear the orig­i­nal Beast­ie Boys song, with lyrics, below.

Girls.
You think you know what we want, girls.
Pink and pret­ty it’s girls.
Just like the 50’s it’s girls.

You like to buy us pink toys
and every­thing else is for boys
and you can always get us dolls
and we’ll grow up like them… false.

It’s time to change.
We deserve to see a range.
‘Cause all our toys look just the same
and we would like to use our brains.

We are all more than princess maids.

Girls to build the space­ship,
Girls to code the new app,
Girls to grow up know­ing
they can engi­neer that.



Girls.

That’s all we real­ly need is Girls.
To bring us up to speed it’s Girls.
Our oppor­tu­ni­ty is Girls.
Don’t under­es­ti­mate Girls.

As with all kids adver­tis­ing, this is aimed as much at parents—who remem­ber the Beast­ie Boys’ song—as their kids, who could­n’t pos­si­bly. And unlike Grist’s video, which only sells, per­haps, him­self, the Goldiblox video aims to get kids hooked on plas­tic toys as much as any of the ads for prod­ucts it dis­places. Nonethe­less, I’ll play it for my daugh­ter in a few years, because lines like “we are all more than princess maids” con­sti­tute the per­fect retort to the seem­ing­ly end­less cul­tur­al slot­ting of girls into ridicu­lous­ly sub­servient and fan­ta­sy roles.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Sci­ence: It’s a Girl Thing!” OMG, Seri­ous­ly?! The Botched Video by the EU

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Read­ing List for Eight-Year-Old Girl

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Gives Teenage Girls Endear­ing Advice About Boys (And Much More)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Bob Dylan’s Controversial 2004 Victoria’s Secret Ad: His First & Last Appearance in a Commercial

in Music, Television | November 19th, 2013

Bob Dylan’s been piss­ing off his fans since he went elec­tric at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val in 1965, leav­ing scores of bit­ter folkies with feel­ings of betray­al. But he’s also tak­en many a prin­ci­pled stand, walk­ing off The Ed Sul­li­van Show ear­ly in his career in 1963, for exam­ple, when he learned that CBS want­ed to cen­sor his “Talkin’ John Birch Para­noid Blues” for being poten­tial­ly libelous to the far-right group. Then there are those episodes that have sim­ply baf­fled his admir­ers, like his release of the almost uni­ver­sal­ly panned Self Por­trait and his con­ver­sion to evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty. What­ev­er pos­sessed him to appear in the 2004 Victoria’s Secret ad above, how­ev­er, is anyone’s guess. While it may not have the same geopo­lit­i­cal juice as his con­tro­ver­sial appear­ance in Chi­na in 2011, aside from the gen­er­al weird­ness of once coun­ter­cul­tur­al fig­ures sell­ing prod­ucts, it’s a move that espe­cial­ly trou­bled fans of Dylan, to say the least.

There were, of course, cries of “sell out.” Then there’s the trou­bling sta­tus of Victoria’s Secret, a com­pa­ny that has accu­mu­lat­ed no small share of con­tro­ver­sy since the ad aired, and which at the time was not espe­cial­ly known as a social­ly respon­si­ble enti­ty.

Though Dylan had already licensed the song “Love Sick” from 1997’s Time Out of Mind to the com­pa­ny (and in 2000 licensed “For­ev­er Young” to Apple), this is the first and only time he’s appeared on screen in a com­mer­cial, with the excep­tion of a 2010 Google ad that recy­cled clips from the ’65 “Sub­ter­ranean Home­sick Blues” film.

While ad agen­cies may have replaced A&R for hun­gry young indie bands, the phe­nom­e­non of wealthy, aging rock stars shilling for major cor­po­ra­tions seems to defy rea­son. Most peo­ple assume it’s always a cash grab. Dylan him­self joked in 1965 that the only thing he’d sell out for would be “ladies under­gar­ments.” In a per­haps unfor­tu­nate­ly titled arti­cle for Slate, Seth Steven­son sug­gest­ed that Dylan and those of his gen­er­a­tion took the cor­po­rate bait in attempts to remain rel­e­vant and “remind the world that they still exist.” In the case of the Victoria’s Secret ad (see a “behind the scenes” video here), this is a lit­tle hard to swal­low. Not even the bale­ful­ly timed release of his Love and Theft in Sep­tem­ber of 2001 could over­shad­ow the enor­mous suc­cess of that album, which, All­mu­sic writes, “stands proud­ly among his very best.” 2006’s plat­inum-sell­ing Mod­ern Times was not far behind. Unlike his online response to the Chi­na con­tro­ver­sy, Dylan him­self revealed noth­ing of his inten­tions, leav­ing fans with the unset­tling image of one of the 20th century’s most icon­o­clas­tic artists (and one nev­er espe­cial­ly known for his sex appeal) hawk­ing lin­gerie on nation­al tele­vi­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Appears in the “Director’s Cut” of a New Louis Vuit­ton Ad, Nods to Labyrinth

Ker­ouac Wore Khakis: Ghost of the Beat Writer Stars in 1993 Gap Adver­tis­ing Cam­paign

Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks, Here’s … John Lydon in a But­ter Com­mer­cial?

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

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David Bowie Appears in the “Director’s Cut” of a New Louis Vuitton Ad, Nods to Labyrinth

in Art, Design, Film, Television | November 17th, 2013

Look­ing like a haute cou­ture treat­ment of “As the World Falls Down” from Labyrinth, by way of Peter Jackson’s Beau­ti­ful Crea­tures, the “Director’s Cut” of this Louis Vuit­ton ad above, titled “L’Invitation au Voy­age,” is pret­ty stun­ning. Bowie lip syncs “I’d Rather be High,” a stand out from his lat­est, The Next Day, and looks near­ly as mag­net­ic as his Gob­lin King did almost thir­ty years ago. He’s def­i­nite­ly still got it on screen, mak­ing me pine for anoth­er Bowie-led fea­ture-length fan­ta­sy (but not a Labyrinth remake).

The mak­ing-of reel above might also be of inter­est, although at under two min­utes, the tech­no mon­tage doesn’t offer much insight into the elab­o­rate design of the short. Of more inter­est for fans of fash­ion, design, and film may be this blog post (in Chi­nese), which fea­tures some gor­geous pro­duc­tion stills and sto­ry­boards, like the one below. The short’s direc­tor, Romain Gavras, pre­vi­ous­ly made the video for Kanye West and Jay Z’s “No Church in the Wild,” so he’s def­i­nite­ly got an eye for spec­ta­cle.

VuittonStoryB

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch David Bowie’s New Video for ‘The Stars (Are Out Tonight)’ With Til­da Swin­ton

David Bowie’s Fash­ion­able Mug Shot From His 1976 Mar­i­jua­na Bust

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

David Bowie Releas­es Vin­tage Videos of His Great­est Hits from the 1970s and 1980s

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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