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Art Project
Saturday, August 9, 2014
A Cross
I was reminded of this video while writing a comment. There's an excerpt from Dead Poet's Society, an amazing movie involving the beauty of literature and freedom, inside this Apple advertisement for the iPad Air. Of course there's irony in me trying to prove a point about technology with an advertisement for technology, but I believe the decision of making a film like Dead Poet's Society the center of this Ad shows the cross between our world and Welton Academy's wonderfully. We can seize the day in more ways than one.
:)
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This is surely a beautiful ad, and you're right -- the juxtaposition of Robin Williams' speech about why we read and write poetry with these images fills my heart and imagination.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet...there's a naysayer in the corner. I am thinking about that passage in Postman -- I can't find it right now, and I'm on my way out the door --- but it's about the seductiveness of this kind of imagery; how it says more about the viewer's hopes and fears than it does about the product. The section I'm thinking of has a paragraph about the shift from product research to market research -- maybe somebody else can find it. I guess an ad that merely detailed the features and benefits of the ipad air would be tedious, but no one can rationally make a purchasing decision on the basis of this ad -- the decision is purely emotional. We spend much of our money this way. You know, Apple has always done advertising well. All of the claims in this ad are inferential. I think this might be a perfect ad to analyze.
I think I found the passage you were referring to on page 86, second paragraph. The whole advertisement matches Postman's description perfectly. Each segment is short, so that "the eye never rests." The ad is "exquisitely crafted...pleasing to the eye and accompanied by exciting music." It "is largely aimed at emotional gratification" and "requires minimal skills to comprehend." This iPad commercial pulls at our heart strings instead of pulling at our rationality and reason.
DeleteWe lost this voice today.
Delete