Des Temps

Category: Our World

  • Wal-Mart and War

    Wal-Mart and War

    these videos make me humble
    these videos make me humble
    Reading about this trend of soldier homecoming videos made me think of the Wal-Mart advert in which a boy uses his Santa wish to get snow for his dad in The War.

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    There are many different responses that one can have to this ad, from loving to hating Wal-Mart, nothing new there. And the ad follows standard beats of contrast and magic, almost like beer spots in the early 90s. Nothing new.

    But here is why it caught my eye. This is the first American ad to use the theater of Iraq/Afghanistan as an on-screen location. This is a shift away from treating The War as a risky ‘other’, like The Scottish Play or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. In doing so, Wal-Mart visually acknowledges this now normal, painfully mundane part of American Life that exists for tens of thousands of families. The abstract is made all the more real.

    If we are using adverts as a barometer of cultural shifts, and taking a page from Grant McCracken, I think that this Wal-Mart spot and Best-Buy’s Eid ad are two of the most significant moments in 2009.

    Neither of these ads break new ground in trends, tech or storytelling. But in different ways, they both signify new nods from Fortune 500 CMOs to heretofore unnamed consumer spaces.

  • Structure in The Office

    has it gone from awk to ick?
    has it gone from awk to ick?
    My favorite new TV show is NBC’s Community, because it uses wit and double speak to a positive end, not simply hollow snark. And this fresh perspective on storytelling is made even more clear when contrasted with The Office, which this season has transformed Michael Scott’s managerial style from one of a bumbling fool to a true idiot savant. I wonder if there is a deeper and darker arc here.

    The character Jim Halpert has often been the audience’s avatar or voice of reason. Michael’s transformation has come with Jim’s ascendency to co-manager, and Jim has also transformed from our locus of hope into our own nightmare.

    Jim’s pragmatic efforts always fall short of Michael’s whimsy. We now know that Jim will never beat Michael, for the show’s structure hinges on Michael always pulling through the fire. Jim’s ‘knowing glances’ to camera affect no change. Nor do his actions as manager. Slowly, we now see Jim becoming pained, irrelevant and obnoxious.

    Are the writers crafting a larger commentary, that Jim realizing his futility is an existential crisis for us all?

    Meghan Keane has written this whipsmart article about Jim Halpert. And our friend Nick takes it more macro, noting that

    Lately I’ve found Jim excruciatingly annoying and the show almost unwatchable. Maybe Jim’s story arc is following the show itself: it used to be the antagonistic, irreverent upstart, but now it is the flagship of a declining company (NBC) that is accepting it’s role as the lame middle manager, and lording over the truly innovative shows like Community or Parks & Recreation.

    Similar to HBO’s The Wire, structure is always larger than individuals. The office space of Dunder Mifflin will crush all who aim to escape. On the flipside, Community‘s college of Greendale is where hope now begins anew.

    it's cool to be kind
    it’s cool to be kind

  • Storytelling

    Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man...
    Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man…
    Our friend Christine Huang recently spoke about storytelling and its purpose and evolution within culture. It was brilliant, so I share.

  • Tweetcloud

    Tweetcloud

    je tweet, donc je suis
    je tweet, donc je suis

    In the last 3 hours, Chad Scira‘s project #tweetcloud has generated +10,000 uses and in the process added the same amount of followers to his twitter feed. What I love about TweetCloud is that it helps to reinforce the truth that the internet, esp Twitter, is screechingly human. It is fueled in many ways by our quest for self-examination and in turn, sharing those findings with others.

    And at the same time, if we look at the words that most people tweet, our use is also rooted in phatic communication, making noise for the social sake of proving we still exist.

  • Crookers

    when things get for real, my warm heart turns cold.
    when things get for real, my warm heart turns cold.

    PK and MHB are shooting a music video for Crookers, bopping all about Brooklyn before Thanksgiving. We’re going to be running fast, feeling like we’re in Sabotage. And you know we like maps, so here’s where we’ll be, all in a day’s work.
    DBLtru

  • Futures of Entertainment 4

    she is a particle + a wave at the same time
    a particle + a wave
    @raafirivero and @michaelhb are going north to the Future today and are excited like kids in candy stores. Up at M.I.T. we’ve met some of our fave thinkers and tinkerers and have since worked with many. More thoughts soon, and likely a flurry of tweets on the #FOE4 tip.

  • The Collapse

    i tweet electric sheep
    i tweet electric sheep
    The above tweet from @kunur just knocked my socks off. Not sure what to think of it yet. Walt Whitman said that with the mind/body connection, if you lose one, you lose both. So in the time of digital natives, if they lose their networked identities, how do they function? Beyond the pangs of withdrawal, how do they construct themselves?

    I feel like this virtual/real world collapse is the cyborg identity that William Gibson et al. predicted. It’s not about inserting a microchip into our brains, it’s about the tentacles of tech reaching our hearts.