Is That a Prarie Dog?

Of course not, silly. In the vein of our talk of documentary the other evening, here is an ad for meerkat manor. This, as we have discussed in class, is a documentary of the life of a group of meerkats. In this clever ad, the Whiskers, the family who's life we watch, is portrayed like the Soppranos--another family who the American public likes to watch. The ad plays on the simularities between the two families--mainly the territorial nature of both families and the danger that could come of it. Just like in the Sopranos, they fight for and patrol their turf, protect their women and children, and ultimatley want to be the head family. The ad uses the typeface of the Sopranos and uses the same "family" photo type imagery. I dont think meerkats eat pasta, though.

Hope it's the clumping kind....

Here is an ad campaign that takes a new spin on a person's everyday choices by putting a literal spin on it. This ad (and others like it) were run by our furry-loving friends PETA, and true to PETA form, was too contraversal and pulled. I don't exactly know why I feel this is relavant to what we have been talking about it class, but I think it's this: PETA is using the image of a model in a fur jacket, which we take at face value and says "Well, if you are going to wear the fur of an animal, then you should be an animal and possess animal characteristics, so it plays on imagery. Now, I think, unless she was wearing a cat-fur jacket it loses a little in translation, but the jist is there.

The evolution of a lady

Ah, the dreaded starbucks. No offense to those of you who insist on consuming overpriced beverages in today's equivalent of an psuedo-intellectual pick-up bar, but i prefer my coffee at home--maybe in my car--in my little thermos, ground and brewed to my specifications by my very loved cuisinart coffee maker. Anyway, the original logo for starbucks--back when it was actually a quaint little coffee house (why has everything from seattle become so bastardized)--is a little more risque than starbucks felt the mainstream public would like. (i'm not sure if it's the boobs or the fact that they don't stand up like a porn star's that offends). I love how she is holding her tails like "look what i can do!"



Now, im not saying that this hag screams "mmm, coffee!"...maybe "I really need coffee"...but it has an appeal. So, they go to this:


So we gave our siren a little face lift, tummy tuck, covered her boobs, with her now flowing hair, and used her spread "tail" as a little border (just like the arrow in the ub logo, i never realized there was a tail there until i compared it with the older logo). A little bit ago starbucks, i guess trying to get back to its "homegrown" roots, wanted to change the logo back to our coffee-swiggin hag. People were outraged, saying the image was everything from indecent to a ode to witchcraft. So of course the logo stayed, and the public could rest knowing that there would be no sagging breasts hanging over their coffee. Of course, i like the old logo but know that the days of cool logos are over for starbucks. I guess the question posed here is: so what? boobs for coffee-bad. boobs for men's soap-good. witchy woman for coffee-bad. Alyssa Milano as a witchy woman-good. Why are we bothered by a logo taken from a 15th century block drawing (she's a twin-tailed siren, in case you care) but not by the thousands of other images we see every day. How does the american culture pick their battles?

Now, this is a good one--the one that started this rant:

This one cracks me up. notice the nipples are back--for shame!

Bloggin, part deux

As much as i tell myself that i need to get used to this--that i should embrace it, even--it still is very strange to post things to the web. Here is the second installment of the inkognito scriptures. (From the words and images class i took last semester--for of those of you who haven't heard, it's a delightful time). I havent posted to it since May-- it's just kind of a forgotten song in the "big brain," as Dr. Yarrison like to refer to it. We'll see if this blog puts some fire under my tail..