Bright spots | 5 years ago | October 19, 2001 | Mike Miliard reviewed British Advertising Films of 2000.
“Despite their astronomical price tags and the global marketing empire they’ve spawned, American TV commercials seldom match the edge and ingenuity of their British counterparts. Over here you’d rarely see an ad like the spot for ‘Club 18–30’ (a dating service, presumably) that, without comment, superimposes its logo over footage of people protesting the ’00 election by chanting, ‘We want Bush! We want Bush!’ Or the advert for Heinz Salad Cream, where a homeless man is seen walking into a liquor store, emerging with a bottle in a bag, and toddling over to a dumpster to season his dinner. ‘Any food tastes supreme with Heinz Salad Cream.’
“Watching these, you get the sense of a barely concealed prurient glee, a willingness to push the envelope just that much farther than we do. One of the funniest spots is an ad for Nestle’s Quality Street Candies in which candy wrappers are twisted into shiny little sculptures that re-enact scenes from films like The Elephant Man (a deformed John Merrick) and Basic Instinct (Sharon Stone crossing her legs). It’s a neat encapsulation of the differences between our two countries. We may have mastered the feature film, but they’ve got us beat when it comes to commercial short form.”
Worry warts | 10 years ago | October 18, 1996 | Caroline Knapp considered the female obsession with physical imperfections.
“My friend Jane won’t wear skirts because they expose her ‘bowling-champion calves.’ A colleague of hers says she can’t wear shirts with collars because they make her ‘head and face look huge.’ Me, I have to pay special attention to the way I fix my hair in the morning: if it lacks the requisite amount of volume and falls too flat, I will be forced to leave the house with ‘seal head.’
“What is it with women and physical imperfections? Why must we exaggerate them so, blow them up into such epic proportions? Enormous rear ends, legs like tree trunks, noses described in such gargantuan terms you’d think we were talking about members of a different species. Necks, knees, shoulders, stomachs, thighs, eyes: no body part is too small or too insignificant to escape the feminine critique, and when we find a perceived imperfection, we hone in on it with our specially tailored girl microscope and magnify it straight off the charts.
“ ‘I hate the way my nose looks in photographs. It looks like a penis.’ The sister of a friend of mine said those exact words.
“Excuse me? A penis? When women look at themselves is there no sense of proportion?
“No, there isn’t.”
Collect ’em all | 15 years ago | October 18, 1991 | John P. Mello jr. introduced readers to political trading cards.
“Eclipse (primarily a comic-book publisher, whose titles include Scout, the Rocketeer, Miracleman, and Zorro) is offering a trading-card series with names like ‘Iran-Contra Scandal,’ ‘Assassination of John F. Kennedy,’ ‘Rotten to the Core: The Best and Worst of New York City’s Politics,’ ‘Drug Wars: The Straight Dope on America’s Dirtiest Deals,’ and ‘Friendly Dictators: Featuring 36 of America’s Most Embarrassing Allies.’ . . .
