Tag: Waxing

Yesterday the Times ran an interesting piece about French advertising, noting the cultural (if not legal) norms there prevent such things as the hard sell.

To us money implies corruption, and moreover, because we consider ourselves the inventors of freedom, never mind if that’s not true, we still consider advertising as a kind of manipulation,” Mr. Séguéla said. “This explains why television commercials started so late here — essentially because leftist opposition saw ads as corrupting the soul.”

As a result, the ads there tend to be more oblique, elliptical. All of this begs the question of whether the effectiveness of television advertising can be controlled for cultural norms. But for the aesthetes among us, the question is simple: what do they look like? Though the Times failed to link to relevant spots in a current museum exhibit there, the sleuths at the Alley Insider did. Here’s one:

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Many moons ago, preparing for a year in Europe, I can remember being warned (or was it teased?) that the commercials there would be much more artistic. I was, in the next few days floored by a Levis ad that, over the years, I would remember mainly in fragments. I have attempted to describe its dreamlike qualities many times, but failed to touch in conversation what the commercial had evoked in my impressionable teen psyche. Mainly, that the coolest place to store a condom was highly concomitant with a pair of Levis (now my only brand of jeans). The commercial, I would learn years later, was directed by frenchman Michel Gondry. Allez les Bleus!

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The still above is from another Gondry-directed spot featured here.

Willingly or no, every artist who throws his hat in with another set of creatives becomes a part of a marketplace of ideas. The quality of that marketplace — the quality of ideas bandied about within it — will determine how much that artist can gain from his cohort. Here we find the basis of the classic fork: which has more value, the auteur or the collaboration? Film being, at its heart, a collaborative medium, there seems to be at every turn a marketplace among collaborators to be considered or skipped. Does one stop at the fruit vendor for a fresh grapefruit on the way home, or peruse the picked-over stack at the supermarket? Does one go fruitless, or make do with a can of Del Monte? Depending on the context, any one of these routes can lead to the proper nourishment of creativity.
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At Desedo HQ form follows function. Rather than cluttering up the space with traditional visual cues of ‘office’ – paper piles/coffee pot/telephones – we aim to keep it sleek, to make every word count. With that in mind, we purchase office furniture only as needed, and often through Mr. Craig Slist. He’s always good for a new adventure. Yesterday we got a credenza from Max Ernst’s granddaughter.

Now that the grandpapa of DaDa is in the office, and is next to a lamp bought from this smart chap, it creates a wholly unique narrative. We think of these items as a pair and relate them both to their previous owners. While staring at the credenza my mind drifted to the filmmaker Maya Deren, who wrote about how a dancer can create a new relationship between two unrelated objects by merely moving his foot. Craig Slist – the best dancer evar? 

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Writing, which has been romanticized as a solitary pursuit, is often undertaken by teams in the case of filmed entertainment. There is a tug of war inherent to any collaborative process. In order for the process to work, however, neither side can be dragged through the mud pit in the middle.

The collaborative process can work in many ways. Earlier this year I spent time interviewing a number of rock bands. Some wrote all music collaboratively. Others depended on one member to write the songs while other members focused on their individual instruments and play. Still, inherent in all of those conversations was the recognition that some mysterious element was also necessarily at stake for all parties in order to keep the process engaged. One musician described band practice as, “where we all go into a room together to hate each other for three hours so we can come out again and be friends.” At its best, creative work is both difficult and rewarding.

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