tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-544940998646597297.post1397918982071918520..comments2023-12-19T04:53:04.513-08:00Comments on Deeply Blasphemous: Harry Potter and Advertising, Plus the Fate of the Free World, StillAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13363174213866492800noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-544940998646597297.post-83607858626199564552007-07-29T01:39:00.000-07:002007-07-29T01:39:00.000-07:00I tried watching Mad Men, but frankly you ruined i...I tried watching Mad Men, but frankly you ruined it for me, just like you ruined Harry Potter...you are such a pessimist. <BR/><BR/>There has to be some good things about popular culture.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-544940998646597297.post-58291066817704259732007-07-25T17:33:00.000-07:002007-07-25T17:33:00.000-07:00L>T,OHMYGOD. The very idea of the show Mad Men te...L>T,<BR/><BR/>OHMYGOD. The very idea of the show Mad Men terrifies me, hehe. How could something like that not be propaganda? I already see some of the fnords, just glancing at it -- by putting it in the past, they are reassuring us that behavior like this no longer occurs. Still, it terrifies me that it exists, hehe.<BR/><BR/>It also makes me wonder how much of the show is critique and how much is nostalgia. Do the viewers of the show watch because they're intrigued at how things have changed so much, or are they yearning the hey-day of white male domination?<BR/><BR/>I mean, one of my favorite movies is Stanley Kubrick's anti-war Full Metal Jacket. The first half of the movie is about the dehumanization of Marine boot camp, and includes a sadistic drill sergeant whose abuses are proximate to a retarded Marine's murder of that drill sergeant and then suicide. To me, it's obviously about the dehumanizing brutality of the military that transforms people into willing killers. BUT . . . Marines LOVE the movie. They think the drill instructor is this great guy and they don't consider it to be anti-war. I'm wondering if the same thing goes on with this show -- or is it conscious? How much of the audience is reveling in the naked sexism and racism of the characters, viewing that time with nostalgia as the swan song of uncontested white male authority in America? I suspect at least some of the audience watches the show that way, and I suspect that the producers know this.<BR/><BR/>BUT, hehe, yes, we are trained by advertising in a variety of ways. One of the key ways we're trained is to believe that our lives are improved by buying things, that a new CD player will make our lives fuller and richer . . . as opposed to taking a walk in the woods, or tending a garden or whatever. Consumption as a component of happiness is one of the first things that is sold, sorta obviously, I think.<BR/><BR/>Also, the advertising techniques of today are MUCH better than in the 60s, hehe.<BR/><BR/>But, yes, perhaps the key element of these rants are that <I>no one</I> is immune to this stuff. <I>No one</I>.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13363174213866492800noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-544940998646597297.post-8098486766684021092007-07-25T17:19:00.000-07:002007-07-25T17:19:00.000-07:00Unpremeditated,Yeah, I get that a lot. I almost a...Unpremeditated,<BR/><BR/>Yeah, I get that a lot. I almost almost constantly told that all my objections to the series would just vanish if I finished it -- that the last two books would lay all my objections to rest. But when I get into the specifics of my objections and the sorts of things I would consider reasonable, they're forced to agree that, no, Rowling does NOT end things up to my satisfaction. But without having read enough of the books to come up with *specifics* I wouldn't be able to say that. There'd be pressure for me to like them and I'd really feel it. Indeed, I <I>do</I> feel the hype. I've almost read the last two books in part to reject them, but that'd be both a waste of my time and juvenile, so I haven't -- but it's hard to get over the notion that you SHOULD have read them.<BR/><BR/>Oh, well. Perhaps they will be classics, but which I mean books everyone talks about but no one reads.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13363174213866492800noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-544940998646597297.post-9885528424707783452007-07-25T07:21:00.000-07:002007-07-25T07:21:00.000-07:00From these posts of yours, I realize I hadn't real...From these posts of yours, I realize I hadn't really given the psychology of advertising much thought. <BR/><BR/>I was watching some of the media "hype" for the new series <A HREF="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804503/" REL="nofollow">Mad Men</A> Which is about the advertising business, BTW. & this came up...<B>Advertising doesn't make people want things, it figures out what they want then helps them get it.</B> It's embarrassing to think I didn't even have that simple concept in my head. Now i know why I paid 50.00 for those shoes yesterday. Crap!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-544940998646597297.post-17140686687842469332007-07-25T04:43:00.000-07:002007-07-25T04:43:00.000-07:00All very true. Even worse is the way that once adv...All very true. Even worse is the way that once advertising has got the ball rolling sufficiently, so many of us become engaged in keeping it moving, promoting the myth that we've already fallen for. For instance, it's funny the way Potter peer pressure is now so great that many of those who haven't read a Harry Potter book feel they have to apologise for their "failure". The Harry Potter books are certainly page-turners but thanks, as you say, to the level of hype and the loud voices of the hypees, one is now expected to acknowledge them as being the greatest thing to happen to children's literature since Alice Through the Looking Glass.GPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03278044925902870638noreply@blogger.com