The loser adjective will go on to battle the next challenger in the next Create-a-Post.
(This comment excluded from the five top comments.)
Hey Ben with a little work we could stuff this ballot box pretty thoroughyl.
But how does Sifu's conscience vote? (Also excluded.)
How I adore the song "Creep".
The drumming isn't very good, you know.
Those lyrics really speak to me, Sifu.
No speaking ill of TLC! Rest in peace, Left-Eye.
Last time I did karaoke was on Catalina Island. A member of our party sang "Creep", but changed the lyrics such that the operative descriptor was "queer", and the song was a heartfelt plea for equality and the right to marry. Hilariously, several people walked out.
I was all excited, thinking this was going to be a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure sort of post....
I don't see what's creepy about that.
19: I supposed you could choose a creepy adventure.
18: It was. But with only one branch point. But maybe that is a BRILLIANT idea for a future post! Some late night when we're all bored. Sounds like a Thursday.
Now go watch that video and validate me on how creepy it is.
20: if you'd like to follow the thread to A HAUNTED MANSION, turn to comment 71.
24: we'll have to wait for standpipe to post on that.
Heebie, I think I missed congratulating you on being a front page poster. Consider that remedied by this comment.
24: no, why would I be? Come on, bring the creepy!
26: Thanks!
No one thinks it's creepy? SOMEONE VALIDATE ME, PLEASE.
27: Because he's molesting her while she's unconcious?
Ben is caressing your photograph right now.
Eeew! I saw that posted somewhere yesterday but didn't watch it, assuming garden variety creepiness. But no! Definitely some level beyond garden variety.
Mouse Over- Heh, there goes Mom cock blocking me again.
heebie,
No one thinks it's creepy? SOMEONE VALIDATE ME, PLEASE.
Just saw the video. Very icky. Not just the molesting of an unconscious person but the portrayal that she is enjoying it.
To make this un-creepy they needed a setup making it clear that this was agreed to play-acting scenario between the man and woman.
I didn't listen to the audio - did that matter?
Also, a label about the work-safety of videos would be appreciated.
She seems to be playing along. Not really creepy. But, not a good commercial either.
Maybe one of the new posters will return the Friday game traditions, and we can play Tom Switfy. Here is the form:
"There, the penalties for theft are severe," Tom said offhandedly.
Also, a label about the work-safety of videos would be appreciated.
Oh right. Good call.
She didn't appear to be unconscious. She was playing along.
Creepy. Profoundly creepy. Post modern creepy.
Galatea? Never mind.
Heebie is an engaged front-page poster who is cute as an full-grown, non-childish button.
The ad is creepy, but if it were a bit more explicit it would be really, really creepy.
"Playing along" doesn't work for people who are unconscious. The depiction of her pleasure is there to validate sexual assault. It doesn't amount to real consent.
She seems to be playing along. Not really creepy.
You've got to be trolling here, Brock. She's asleep. And registers confusion when she wakes up to the sprinkler. Ick.
Or, what Rob said.
Definitely some level beyond garden variety.
You people have a low bar for exceeding garden variety creepy.
You people have a low bar for exceeding garden variety creepy.
It's a commercial! Find me a creepier commercial.
I thought the end was meant to inform the beginning. I mean, yes, it started creepy, but didn't end up that way. Maybe the initial hints of creepiness were bad enough. Again, I concede it was a terrible commercial that makes me much less inclined to buy the product featured (starting from near-zero inclination, admittedly, but still).
I thought it was creepy, until he started rolling around the tip of his cigar like a nub with his thumb and forefinger, at which point for me the video had gone all the way back around to laughable again. At which point everything got all wet. That's just silly.
Sympathetic magic? Creepy, but interesting, and I kind of liked it.
Haven't we had threads discussing whether jerking off to an image of someone is an offense against the actual person? So how about physically caressing the image?
I will watch it again to try to undestand what is going on.
So how about physically caressing the image?
And affecting the person with your touch??? Totally different ballpark. Look, you've made me use consecutive punctuation of disbelief.
Find me a creepier commercial.
Heeb, do you realize who you just sent on a treasure hunt?
I think that the ad is in the valley between "Uncreepy enough for decent people" and "Creepy enough to sell to serious creeps".
49: Let's discuss this over at Standpipe's blog.
I really can't figure out what the fuck is going on with this commercial. I'm watching it with the sound off, but still. She is asleep. And he's shown in creepy stalker-light. He's a stalker figure, and we're supposed to identify with him and think WOW COOL! The fuck?
Creepy. And a bad commercial. Those who disagree are, themselves, creeps. Surely we can achieve comity now and move on.
51: this is Standpipe's blog now, Heebie. So we have to discuss these things here, at length.
In the very end, she looks at the camera and starts manipulating it back. This could mean that she was awake all along, or it could mean that she was happy to be molested in her sleep (with the further subtext that all women really want it so this behavior is in general ok.)
Besides, even if we are supposed to think she is conscious all along, this does not exonerate the commercial. It just means that the creators were hedging their bets by sending different messages for different audiences.
The world is full of works of art that are originally designed to send a "pro" message and then have a "con" message or some other message that mitigates the "pro" message tacked on afterwards. "White Lines" was originally a pro-cocaine song. In Stalin era Russia, when jazz was banned as capitalist decadence. jazz bands gave "public lectures" designed to illustrate how corrupt jazz was, complete with lots of examples. All of this stuff is just a fig leaf.
Doesn't Shearer have a joke-explaining blog of his own?
Haven't we had threads discussing whether jerking off to an image of someone is an offense against the actual person?
Was that during the rain or something?
At 1:30 she returns the gaze in a friendly manner, and she does the shhh at the end. I don't think we need assume the two are strangers.
But they might be. The shhhh means Mom wouldn't approve?
Godammit, I have to explain everything to you people. The commercial was supposed to start out totally creepy so you think "WTF?!" and start PAYING CLOSE ATTENTION. And then, at the end, you see that she's knows him, he's not a stalker, and she was playing along. Whew--what a RELIEF! And then his MOM CALLS! HILARITY!! And then the product name flashes up and is burned forever into your subconscious because your were PAYING SUCH CLOSE ATTENTION.
Somebody needs to start a creep-explaining blog! Oh, wait.
And I think I've already described the decision to move heebie to the front page as inspired. But I'm so addled by having traveled all day yesterday -- to Cleveland -- that I can't be sure. So, if not: an inspired choice. And please do the choose-your-own-adventure post. I mean, now that I've complimented you and everything. Plus, I'm watching you on my mind-and-body controlling cell phone and can manipulate you whenever I want. (Seriously, even typing that sentence was creepy.)
Wait a minute, he is on the phone with mom, so the "shhh" is directed at us.
58:Ok, then "no jerking off to images of dead people?" What does that mean? I get lost in the archives.
Another example: Salon profiled a porn company that specializes in simulated rape videos. The most infamous of these tacked on an ending in which the gang of rapists were lynched, as if to say "See, justice is done! This was an anti-rape movie, even if you are jacking off to the rape part!"
64: What about the people who jack off to the lynching? Who will exonerate them for their law-and-order fetish? The world is, indeed, a hard place for Republicans.
a porn company that specializes in simulated rape videos
Sounds like a classy enterprise.
Wow, does everyone here have phones that let you physically through to touch people? Where can I buy one?
I don't know where the initial assumption of "strangers" comes from. Someone needs to explain that to me.
Sifu, that site in 61 is totally disturbing too.
And thanks, Ari!
An iPod Touch joke would be lame here, right?
I don't know where the initial assumption of "strangers" comes from.
Even when she wakes up and "likes" it, I still think they're strangers. I think it's just total wish fulfillment on his part.
Ok, if they were together in bed:not creepy, except for voyeurism (hmmmm)
If we were prepared by a short scene of the two saying goodbye with a kiss at an airport:not creepy?
60: right.
Find me a creepier commercial.
Okay.
Even when she wakes up and "likes" it, I still think they're strangers. I think it's just total wish fulfillment on his part.
Methinks the fault lies not in the commercial.
72: No, that's just total shock-value over-the-top-ness. I don't actually feel creepy watching it, just bemused.
Apostropher, there's a reason you're the hero.
Someone talk me down from kicking McManus in the nuts.
re 72: You see what you people did? Didn't John warn you?
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A George Carlin routine white people like.
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I do like that people can't figure out what's creepy about that commercial. What, her boyfriend rented the apartment across the street so he could spy on her while she sleeps, so what? I think it's kind of sweet!
What a bizarre commercial. It looked like two commercial ideas squished together: one very creepy, and one surrealist and playful (tilting the phone back and forth and making her roll on the bed.)
Agreed! A non-nightie clad version, without the remote fondling, could have been cute.
The commercial is playing very hard.
Because we are engaging in unacceptable voyeurism of a stranger, we assume the guy in the commercial is doing the same. The POV leads us to identify with the guy.
Apparently, heebie (and other women?) identified with the sleeping woman, but not quite. Since heebie didn't know the voyeuristic guy, she assumes the sleeping woman doesn't know him either?
Someone talk me down from kicking McManus in the nuts.
Y'all have those new imporoved laptops, too?
CREEPY!!!!!
And rob h-c is right on in this thread.
82 is less creepy but more gross.
Because we are engaging in unacceptable voyeurism of a stranger, we assume the guy in the commercial is doing the same.
What, you mean the shot through the window from the apartment across the street? Good catch, Siskel.
I think the creepiness comes from the sense of absolute control being given to this creepy stalker guy sitting in the dark, using his cell phone to molest and undress a total stranger.
82: Excellent contender! It has strong overtones of retch-ness, with a mellow hint of WTF Almighty??
But ultimately I do not think it knocks the reigning creepy king of the commercial hill. I give it: NO PASS.
87:Doubts are raised, but I am not refuted. Boyfriend & girlfriend. I still have heard no strong evidence they are strangers.
Other Voices ...I really can't say how this interesting movie relates to the video without a spoiler, which means I have just spoiled it. But it has a lot of other stuff going on to make it possibly worth watching anyway.
Okay, I watched the commercial in the post again, and I'm not sure it's really clear that she was supposed to be awake the whole time. In fact, I can't figure out the intended mesasge of the commerical at all. It's possible they're just trying to be cute while relying on images of an attractive women in a nightgown to sell their phone.
Bob's invincible faith in the goodness of humanity prevents him from believing his own eyes.
More evidence. And I am in ignorance of how videophones work.
Sleeping lady does not have a phone, so how is she communicating with creepy guy? She isn't, just like the "shhh" at the end, she is communicating with us.
Mom just appears. Do phones work like that? The ongoing call is just set aside for an incoming?
I can't really claim this Kinder egg ad is the creepiest ad ever, or even creepier than heebie's submission, but it sure as hell freaks me out.
Oh, and Bob's trolling you guys. Don't give him the satisfaction, people.
Life's Good! -- when you got a mobile phone that let's you molest attractive women from afar.
The ad has at least made me very aware of the brand of the phone.
94: This ad provides the kind of experience that makes you ask yourself: "Have I taken a large dose of some hallucinogen, and then forgotten all about it?"
Bob's trolling, but I thought Brock was sincere.
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My editor just told me that he like the paper great, but I need to make it less political and spend more time critiquing utilitarianism. As a leftist utilitarian, I'm not sure how to respond.
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"Have I taken a large dose of some hallucinogen, and then forgotten all about it?"
Your more experienced druggies keep a notebook with dosage amount and time.
Oh, and Bob's trolling you guys. Don't give him the satisfaction, people.
Fuck off, stras. My first comment said there was creepiness, and I have never retracted the creepiness. I am just close reading the text.
Toward the end the awake lady gazes back...where? Not out the window, the direction is wrong. Not at a phone, she has none. She gazes back at us.
I also notice that his "caresses" have indirect responses. He "caresses" her leg, cut to her smiling face, not to a leg move. I don't think you can "prove" she is feeling his "touch" at all.
If you're sure it's a cigar, ok. Looked like a joystick to me. He spins/twists it, there is an exhalation, and the sprinkler comes on.
What's with the changing positions o his phone? What effect does it have?
What's with the changing positions o his phone? What effect does it have?
It sells phones?
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Rob, you can borrow my rat orgasm warehouse if you want.
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Heebie is completely right about every thing in this thread. Rob, too.
mcmanus is insane, but not in the way I would have expected. Obama touching Hillary's shoulder is assault, but this is okay??
Anybody who doesn't find that creepy is a golem. It fucking defines creepy. But it doesn't go beyond that.
Thanks, Kraab. It feels good to be as right as heebie.
So, maybe I just took mcmanus's trollbait, I don't know.
Oh c'mon. It's fun.
At 1:21-1:25 she first looks over her left shoulder, away from the window, and lowers a strap. Quick cut, to looking over her right shoulder, strap-lowering. Quick back to left and she turns to the left, away from the window.
Are we positive she is alone in the room?
Wasn't creepy when they made it, but it sure is now.
Obama touching Hillary's shoulder is assault, but this is okay?
Well, the guy isn't touching her, after all. Unlike this guy.
Rob, you were even righter! Because you eloquently explained what I just fumed about but couldn't articulate.
Has nobody said that the creepiness stems from the notion not just of stalking/voyeurism but also from technological manipulation of an unwitting victim? Talk to Jetpack's robot; that's some creepy-ass shit.
Brought to you by the same people who did this.
Okay, okay it's creepy & voyeuristic.
It is also fun about how editing and POV and angles can create illusions. He blew cigar smoke and made her sprinkler come on from fifty feet away? How can we even sanely say such a thing?
I still have heard no strong evidence they are strangers.
Because generally, in absence of other context, a man looking through a window at a woman asleep in bed is a peeping tom, a voyeur. Without a shot establishing or at least strongly suggesting the game from the beginning (or revealing her collusion in a surprise ending), there's no reason to read it that way.
As I tell my undergrads: well, your reading isn't impossible, but the text doesn't particularly support it.
113: As long as we're clear that it's creepy and voyeuristic, I'll grant you that the magical telekinesis angle is neat.
113: Um, have you not seen a movie in the last, say, 25 years? They've got "special" effects now.
The phone commercial is definitely creepy, and the fact that it tacks a bunch of silly on at the end only makes it creepier to me somehow. On the other hand, if this commercial were reconceived as a gay porn video, I think it would not only not be creepy, but probably hilarious.
By contrast, the Kinder Egg commercial reconceived as a gay porn video would the creepiest thing ever.
11: my robot doesn't talk. It only kills.
118 to 111 as well, but 11 had just better watch out.
but also from technological manipulation of an unwitting victim?
And I'm crazy? What, ari, he is touching her thru his phone? On what level do you believe that, I am not seeing it in the video.
The video is about us.
117: What I found bizarre is that there's easily a version of that commercial in a nearby possible world that is funny and not at all creepy. (It gets rid of the stalker and the cigar and the voyeurism and keeps the 'my phone is magic and manipulates the environment' bit.)
122: harder to work in the sexy nightie, though, which I think is the primary sales motivator around which they built the rest of the commercial.
The Kinder Testicle?
Aieee. I hadn't even thought of that. Even creepier yet. Truly, the Kinder Egg commerical rendered as gay porn would leave me celibate for life.
Unrelated: I am fascinated by comment 103. Please, don't anyone explain it to me, I want to keep wondering.
117:I touched my computer screen and made your comment appear. And my balls are gonna hurt for weeks.
What, ari, he is touching her thru his phone?
Yes.
(I know this is trollfeeding, but: duh, Bob. That's the point of the commercial.)
I still have heard no strong evidence they are strangers.
I have no strong evidence that she didn't consent, therefore it wasn't rape is a troubling extension of that logic.
Christ, mcmanus, are you really this fucking stupid or just deeply committed to appearing really fucking stupid?
He touches her hair and she does the same. He touches her breast and she reacts. As he tilts the phone from side to side, she rolls back and forth. As he tilts it down, the sheet falls off.
126: bob does not believe in the use of metaphor and implication in cinema! Jump cuts, portraying as they do the teleportation of the viewer from one place to another, are unrealistic and not to be believed! Hail the revolutionary single-take cinema of TOTAL HONESTY!
123: Perhaps, but even a version with an attractive woman that's awake would move the ad from shockingly creepy to beer commercial sleazy.
128: he's just trolling you, really. It's not a very good troll. Easy to feel bad for him; he's lost a little steam since Obama clinched.
Because generally, in absence of other context, a man looking through a window at a woman asleep in bed is a peeping tom, a voyeur. Without a shot establishing or at least strongly suggesting the game from the beginning (or revealing her collusion in a surprise ending), there's no reason to read it that way.
Okay, I've come around to the moderately creepy side, but be fair. Why does she start flirting and pulling down the straps of her nightgown when she sits up? Why is she saying "shh!" on his phone at the end? These are at least suggestive that he is not a stranger.
C'mon, aaron, we didn't hear her say "no" so she must have consented.
Okay, I'm getting the hell out of this thread. Just pray b doesn't find it.
These are at least suggestive that he is not a stranger.
She's actually his mom.
The video is astonishingly creepy, and anyone who thinks it isn't is creepy, too.
Hey that was a really creepy commercial that heebie posted! What does everyone else think?
Bob, don't give up your day job trolling political threads.
(This comment reads like I both read the thread and didn't. How can I even sanely write such a thing?)
Brock, that's the really troubling part. She may not have asked for it, but she totally enjoyed it. She was totally asking for it, see.
It ain't possible as implied, so it's...fantasy. There's a start.
Voyeurism:We are the ones watching the sleeping woman, he is looking at a videophone with an impossible picture. Unless she sleeps with a camera on.
Hmmm, there are women who are on videocam 24/7, who might wake up, look to their computer (away from the window), see they have an audience, and start acting sexy.
(Guys, the guy admits he's a troll and does this to get a rise out of you. This is somewhere beyond letting the holy fool pee on your mountain laurel and inviting him into the living room.)
123: Yeah, that's why it struck me as two ideas squished together. One with a hot girl and a nightie, and one with 'wouldn't it be funny if when your phone vibrated the room shook?'
135: Holy shit. The reigning champion has been DETHRONED! We have a new creepiest video ever!
"Feline disrespect from behind!"
he's just trolling you, really.
It's so sad to watch boomers spending their golden years this way.
"video" s/b "commercial" in 141.
138: she didn't know she wanted it, but she did!
That's fun!
Now it's interesting to me that some of the advocates for not-so-creepy base their arguments on the perceived actions/intentions of the fictional participants of the commercial. I got to "creepy" solely on the visual imagery and percieved actions/intentions of the ad's creators. I can't decide whether I should care about whether the fake woman is indicating consent or not.
Follow the link in 135. It is ...errr... interesting.
I find it difficult to believe 135 is a real commercial, and not a parody of some sort.
There is a tautological quality to these statements:
Heebie is completely right
And:
Bob's trolling you guys
144: That's fun!
Finding out for sure is always the best part.
It's so sad to watch boomers spending their golden years this way.
At least it's not golf.
142:I could be mowing the lawn in 90 degrees instead. I dressed for it, and was ready until somebody posted a sexy creepy video.
145: percieved intentions of the ad's creators was how I first evaluated the ad. See 60.
141: I'm unconvinced that's a real commercial.
Heebie is completely right
It'll be interesting to see if this tautological statement can survive front-page-posterdom.
I'm unconvinced that's a real commercial.
Just because it has a laugh track and no product logo? I swear, you people.
154: See, that's why I want to really post a crappy post. Like getting the first scratch on a new car. Let's just get it over with.
135: the appropriate response would be a den Be/ste photo with a milk moustache photoshopped on, but I'm kind of busy. Please imagine this and laugh accordingly.
Anybody want to respond to my thesis in 140 that she is one of those webcam women?
It explains a lot that can't otherwise be explained, including the conspiratorial "shhh" (don't tell his mom what he's doing) at the end.
It is also a more realistic sales point for a phone, that you can get internet video/pron over it, rather than touching people thru the screen.
This vintage add is semi-creepy (especially given our knowledge of bears and the Northland) and otherwise just odd.
I dreamed I was an eskimo in my maidenform bra.
I got to "creepy" solely on the visual imagery
Yep.
I can't decide whether I should care about whether the fake woman is indicating consent or not.
Nope. Doesn't matter. The image is the point; the question of whether she's "indicating consent" is the figleaf designed to let people who think rape fantasies are appropriate material for advertising cell phones, rationalize their enjoyment of the ad.
the guy admits he's a troll and does this to get a rise out of you
I rather suspect that Bob's "I'm a troll" statements are the effect, rather than the cause, of other people calling him a troll. I don't think he's trolling, generally or here; I think he's sincere. And in this instance, creepy. As is Brock. And as are all the blow-by-blow descriptions of the ad, which is *obviously* creepy to anyone with half a brain.
Finally watched it, and UGH totally, revoltingly creepy. Nice little gross protruding tongue, too, creepy stalker dude.
Wait, I know. She is one of those women who is very aroused by being looked at, but she can't find someone to spy on her, so she is *paying* the guy to fulfill her exhibitionist molestation fantasies! She set everything up, even renting the across the street apartment.
Its consistent with the video!
Next time you fuckers better vote for adorable.
I got to "creepy" solely on the visual imagery and percieved actions/intentions of the ad's creators.
Now that I've watched that commercial, I'm going with "incredibly juvenile" instead of "creepy." Oh, it wants to creepy in the worst possible way, but it needs to reach puberty first.
I'm going with "incredibly juvenile" instead of "creepy."
Not mutually exclusive.
I completely agree with 165, which was close to my intiial reaction. But now I think that, being presumably made by persons who are in fact past puberty, it somehow comes full circle back to creepiness again.
161:I said it was creepy, early and emphatically.
I watch a lot of horror, much of it misogynistic and weird, or just engaging with misogyny like Audition. Creepy doesn't shut my brain off.
It doesn't turn me on, nor do rape fantasies. I am conscious and self-conscious of the "gaze", and think being aware of how it works can limit objectification.
I am almost always ironic.
This vintage add is semi-creepy (especially given our knowledge of bears and the Northland)
Come on, polar bears are fun.
167, 168: I'm glad to see that my showing up in this thread has made you two man the fuck up. Next time, let's try to do it on our own, shall we?
170 is a much better troll than anybody else managed. See? That's how it's done.
165: but it needs to reach puberty first.
Which brings to mind an advertising series that I always found to be somewhat creepy; the Coppertone Girl. (I don't know, maybe the problem was me.)
Sofa King creepy. I can't believe there was any question about that. And the Bukkake Milk ad was an obvious parody, you racists.
I'm going with "incredibly juvenile" instead of "creepy."
This is the source of my comment that "You people have a low bar for exceeding garden variety creepy."
I am almost always ironic.
I'm deeply tempted to change this to I am almost always moironic, but I don't actually think it's "almost always" true and I don't get off on trolling.
/righteous
Wasn't Heebie cheating by asking Apo to help?
Although I stand by my earlier statement that rob is right on this, I do think that a counterfactual (like what bob suggested in 71) that clearly flips the apparent scenario could have de-creeped things - iff the whole thing is shorter, with less creepiness before the reveal. So if, after ~15 sec. of him "manipulating" her through the phone, he walks into the room and she greets him warmly, then not creepy - the titillation is brief, and the reveal is clearcut.
This is why I don't think bob is (just) trolling - I think he's trying to think through this thing, which is super-creepy, but includes ambiguities (which I agree are of the fig leaf type, plus some that probably got thrown in by a committee of copywriters, like the Mom bit). The fact that bob is (apparently) a bit clueless about modern phones isn't helping his thinking.
The fact that I have an iPhone actually threw me off a bit at first - I read the voyeur's stroking the screen in terms of MultiTouch, Not CreepTouch.
170:Wtf, b, it is a complicated extremely meta video/commercial. I found it interesting, it is supposed to be.
I have read DeSade. I have Balthus jpg's (but not Hamilton). I ain't apologizing.
175: Yeah, but it's the amount of power the guy actually wields in the ad that makes it more than garden variety creepy.
And also that the add takes itself seriously. It's not going for shock-value.
I have read DeSade.
I am shocked, Bob, shocked. I demand an apology.
Once again, masterful trolling by bob. Now he brings Balthus into it—that should be good for a few hundred comments among the fine-arts set.
Also, I wanted to express my enthusiasm for heebie's promotion, which is absolute. My enthusiasm, that is.
Not mutually exclusive.
The fantasy portrayed in the commercial is so embarrassingly juvenile that it barely seems to have the, um, balls to be creepy. That grown ad execs turned that fantasy into a commercial is both creepy and embarrassing, yes.
but it's the amount of power the guy actually wields in the ad
I have been through this. I not only think it's impossible in life (tho 178.2 corrects me?), I don't it is really supported by the images. You are making connections that aren't on screen. Do you understand how editing creates illusions?
Yes, the illusion is intended. But also it is intended to be understood that it an illusion all the way through. He is not touching or manipulating the woman.
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[redacted.]
I've decided to hold my ground on two points: (1) act utilitarianism is a straw man, and to say that any utilitarian must embrace it on pain of hypocrisy is to misunderstand the whole purpose of the doctrine (2) Rorschach's misogyny is important for understanding his character. You can't edit out references to his misogyny as "too political"
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172: Nice preëmption.
Nice diaeresis.
Yes, the illusion is intended. But also it is intended to be understood that it an illusion all the way through. He is not touching or manipulating the woman.
"I am aware of all cinematic traditions regarding the manipulation or heightening of reality."
If it wasn't for bob this thread would be an echo chamber. That, at least, gives his contributions value.
Maybe I am just trolling.
But it started early, with Tripp at 34.
And excuse the fuck out of me for having a problem with "He shook his phone and made her sheet come off."
Jesus, I am becoming a positivist or analytical philosopher or sumpin.
"I am aware of all cinematic traditions regarding the manipulation or heightening of reality. I AM AWARE OF ALL CINEMATIC TRADITIONS REGARDING THE MANIPULATION OR HEIGHTENING OF REALITY."
You forgot to hit the caps lock key, Sifu.
190: bob, resonance-absorbing pebbles of unfogged.
Trolling is okay by me!
Troll away, trolls! May your trolling trolling make troll in the trollest of trollgasms.
He is not touching or manipulating the woman.
This is getting trollish, bob. The ad starts ambiguous, but when the guy manipulates the little nub of his cigar and she orgasms (creepy!!!), then he blows smoke onto the phone and her sprinkler goes off, all ambiguity is gone.
Her post-sprinkler strip tease is ambiguous in the sense that I don't know what they were trying to suggest (beyond "she loves it!"), but it's still creepy, and there's no evidence there that she was playing along the whole time.
Anyway, 190 is right.
Where's read been? Is she striking out of sympathy with whatshisface, that guy who doesn't post here anymore?
189: Doubleplus unbad Sifumaster Tweetypack!
Also #9 on the Kobe thread, which indicated actual link clicking on a swimming post.
I am aware of all sycophant traditions.
187: Are you saying that now that you know he is an economist, the fact that his comments don't make any sense, is less surprising?
179: Okay, then ignore the first sentence in 170.
The ad is "interesting" only if you've never watched advertising before. Otherwise it's pretty mundane, except for the exaggerated creep factor.
For what it is worth (and I do not believe this mitigates the creepiness at all) it is very clear that 1) The stalker takes a still image at the beginning of the commercial and that 2) all of his further manipulations are done to an "awakened" imaged woman (yes, the moments when the commercial goes full screen tease the "real manipulation" fantasy, but note, for example, the man's finger appears in just such an image).
Her seductive play at the end is a mark of the completeness of his reinvention of the woman as a pure expression of his wish. The woman who says "shh" is some ungodly hybrid creation of his desire and the phone's technology itself.
187: Rorschach's misogyny is extremely important to his character. Contrast with him and Veidt.
then he blows smoke onto the phone and her sprinkler goes off, all ambiguity is gone.
Jesus, I am gonna have to go Youtube and dig up some old Buster Keaton clips. This ain't the "lady or the vase" These are two images connected by time that You use to create a narrative. It may be the intended narrative, I claim it is an illusory narrative simultaneously undercut by a counter-narrative.
And by the fucking fact that everybody's but my preferred narrative is physically impossible.
I'm using my magic cellphone to make all of you type your comments. You just *think* you're enjoying yourselves.
200: Rorschach's misogyny is extremely important to his character.
As is Kobe's.
Can someone who works here delete the first paragraph of my 187?
Cala: I'm writing on Mill vs. Kant and Veidt vs. Rorschach. I'm really impressed with how deep the contrasts between the latter two go.
199:Better, maybe exact. We are in his fantasy.
Now can we stop with the "manipulating the woman thru his phone?"
If it is merely a fantasy, and not actual manipulation, well, I guess it remains a rape fantasy and still max creepy. But a little less creepy?
(Unless she is on webcam, which is irrelevant to most of the commercial.)
The woman who says "shh" is some ungodly hybrid creation of his desire and the phone's technology itself.
Boy, once you put it that way, it's not creepy at all!
These are two images connected by time that You use to create a narrative
Yes, we know how film works, Bob. We also know how advertising works.
Next up Bob's going to present us with a rereading of all the superhero movies that introduce scooby-doo like backstory to make everything physically possible.
See, a genetically engineered spider can't really give you super-powers, so really the whole thing must be occurring in peter parkers fantasy life.
201: Parents of small children, please note: You may now allow your kids to watch the most disturbing and violent child pron, "true crime" stories about the torture and murder of children, and anything else, as long as one of the characters has been beamed down to earth.
To add one minor point-- the very most literal "features" that the commercial advertises are 3: 1) You can take pictures with your LG secret. 2) You can watch porn on your LG secret. 3) Your LG secret has a touchscreen.
Wouldn't it be cool, the thing goes on to imagine, if all of those features were related in some way?
JRoth, I was not trying to make it seem any less creepy-- simply to precise its creepiness.
205: What? Of COURSE it's not actual manipulation. Also, those people are really actors, did you know??!?
Autistic Bob isn't as fun as plain old regular Armchair Revolutionary Bob.
It's creepy any way you look at it.
I suspect Brock's right about one thing (only. 122) , in that there is a sense of marketroid thinking "scantily clad women == teh win" going on here.
They probably would have been better off with a campaign based around "please don't buy an iPhone. please". But that's a different story.
bob doesn't disapprove of the video? No surprise imo.
kids? Kids? KIDS!
Yes rough play is always fun until somebody gets hurt, so knock it off!
And please be a little careful what you ask for next time OK punkins?
Now Son, apologize to your sister and run along. That's a good boy.
Reading this thread gives me a newfound understanding of Bob's longstanding appreciation for Dogville. "I don't understand. None of these buildings have doors or walls, but the people don't seem to notice. Clearly they've been afflicted with some sort of contagious, mass-hallucination-inducing neurological disorder!"
To redirect the thread a bit: how badly does this commercial shoot itself in the foot with its ending, which quite glaringly advertises a major flaw of webphones - namely, that people can call you while you browse the web for porn?
When you're in a meeting, the polite behavior is to turn the ringer off.
218: the easy solution, of course, is to make the pictures associated with all of your contacts porn as well.
The vibrate setting is still pretty loud, Kraab.
221: Well, I meant silent, but the vibrate setting could have side benefits, of course.
Bob's longstanding appreciation for Dogville
Uh oh. I, too, have a longstanding appreciation for Dogville.
223: you might not take it literally like Bob does, though.
Come on, I'm sure Bob is totally up on his Brecht.
Geez, he probably is.
I bet he's up on his Silver Apples, too.
We can't all be urbane globetrotters who nevertheless frequent grubby clubs at night.
Huh-- local insurance and vehicle ads excepted, the striking thing about commercials is that they are often thoughtful, carefully unified little bits of filmmaking. The striking thing about this (aside from yuck, why would anyone want to associate with this, but the beloved cavemen or the ubiquitous doofus-dad make me feel similarly) is high technical quality (lighting, composition) with incoherent editing. Whoever said that this is several commercials rolled into one got it right. I think the initial shot was tilting the phone side-to-side, and that for some reason a marketroid participated from the early stages of the shoot.
Could you all surf youtube and find the best Japanese beer commercial? I love the audible gulping and the suggestions that beer is a drink for the refined sensibility.
223,224:Metaphors and allegories are as real as ice cream.
Brecht and Dogme are kinda opposite? Alienation vs engagement?
Silver Apples? = Yeats? 60s electronic band?
I felt bad about Carlin, because there are whole swaths of popular culture I have never paid attention to. Like Carson & Saturday Night Live. I didn't know Carlin.
229 to 227: toldja!
Silver Apples? = Yeats? 60s electronic band?
I meant the latter, specifically. '60s electronic band that still tours, as a matter of fact.
230's exuberance lately belied by my realization that bob probably does know google.
Brecht and Dogme are kinda opposite? Alienation vs engagement?
Brechtian alienation is employed precisely to bring about engagement.
Dammit. I was about to make a fake-redaction joke but I remembered that LB got mad at me last time I did that and I don't want to get in trouble, so instead I'll just have to say something really, really inapproprirate, like [ redacted ]
Brechtian alienation is employed precisely to bring about engagement.
And Dogme 95 uses (one conception of) engagement to bring about alienation! It's perfect. (Though actually it's non-Dogme movies of Lars von Trier that really make me want to punch him in the nose.)
Wow, you would not believe the temptation to go behind the scenes and replace Sifu's "redacted" with something like "I try to bite my own fart bubbles in the bathtub."
Total agreement with the parenthetical in 235.
Afaics, Allowing Japanese entries in any sort of wierd/creepy/over-the-top media contest just means nobody else has a chance.
Okay, I've come around to the moderately creepy side, but be fair. Why does she start flirting and pulling down the straps of her nightgown when she sits up? Why is she saying "shh!" on his phone at the end? These are at least suggestive that he is not a stranger the writers of the ad understand that juvenile little creeps would find life much easier if strange women could be sexually aroused safely from a distance with a smartphone.
Definitely creepy. There's a little bit of goofy playfulness to it that pulls me back from complete agreement with OFE's 105 and B's 136, and Cala is very right in 122.
236: Wow, you would not believe the temptation to go behind the scenes
Shocking from the person online entity that wrote: THE DUMB THREAD WAS ENGORGED ON THE INTOXICATION OF POWER! RAWR!
I recall when I first got a hand axe. Just went out to the back woods and chopped and chopped and chopped.
239: It helps if you take something from a Japanese comedy show and present it as if it was a perfectly serious piece of their culture.
242: It does help to cinch the win, but only the most abject cultural relativist can pretend that the Japanese aren't objectively fucked up.
They address their houses by order of construction, people.
I felt bad about Carlin, because there are whole swaths of popular culture I have never paid attention to. Like Carson & Saturday Night Live. I didn't know Carlin.
Where are you from man - the moon?
If this is not a troll then it is so, so sad.
Amazing.
They address their houses by order of construction, people
This I did not know.
I've heard that is how houses are addressed in India.
Large parts of Prague still have order-of-construction-within-district numbers posted. The preceding system was symbols-- at the house of the three storks or whatever.
Japan had serious arms control (a village's knife would be tied in a public place, many feudal rules governed private ownership of a blade), and state-imposed vegetarianism for centuries. Naturally, the Japanese now love Texas, where Rural Route house numbers and fancy ranch gates make rice beer seem sensible.
Texas is also objectively fucked up. It just doesn't do as good a job of translating that into media like television.
Now might be an appropriate time to casually mention that I will soon be moving to Japan, and if the objectively-fucked-up business and house-numbering thing (I get lost easily) didn't already make me nervous, drawing parallels between Japan and Texas certainly would.
cerebrocrat: the Japanese really, really love Prince Edward Island, if that helps.
I address houses with cautious formality.
I'm sorry that I missed Heebie's Creepy Treasure Hunt, because I loves me some Vern Fonk.
the objectively-fucked-up business and house-numbering thing
Hellish. Allow lots of extra time for getting lost. That said, people are used to giving explicit directions, so all you have to do is look lost and you'll be sent back on your way.
Room numbering can be messed up too. I work in a building where even and odd numbered offices are on opposite sides (of the building, not the hallways).
sent back on your way
Assuming you speak Japanese. Also, the manageable syllabic alphabet for sounding out place names is supplemented by a completely unmanageable duplicate system of ideograms, which is used for labelling subway stations. The syllables are added as supplementary miniscule subscripts, though. Finding anywhere to get a necessary seal for your document will be a hilarious adventure, but finding the Venus Fort for all feminine shopping needs will be easy.
Room numbering can be messed up too. I work in a building where even and odd numbered offices are on opposite sides (of the building, not the hallways).
This was the case in my freshman dorm! That was sure befuddling on my first day.
Texas is also objectively fucked up.
I don't think anyone would disagree with that.
As for how it translates into TV, well.
I've heard that is how houses are addressed in India.
This is just disinformation put out by the Ministry of Making Japan Look Less Weird to Westerners.
AB used to dole out Wacky Japan Facts to me one a day; I couldn't handle more than that. Occasionally she'd let slip with something she didn't even realize was Wacky, because she'd grown used to it when she was there.
||
I totally just got push-polled by McCain! "Which candidate stood up to the President on global warming, and has a plan to address the problem while maintaining strong economic growth?"
|>
As for how it translates into TV, well.
Sure, there are moments. But it's a drop in the bucket, really.
Actually, aside from the many aspects of it that I actively loathed when I lived there (and some more since then), I rather like Texas.
Where are you from man - the moon? If this is not a troll then it is so, so sad. Amazing.
I don't really know Carlin either, other than the name and the title about the things you can't say on television/radio/whatever it is. I'm not going to worry about it, though, and instead am going to feel sorry for Tripp for not knowing all the cool cultural stuff I know.
It's not inconsistent to like a place that is objectively fucked up, JP.
264: he said he'll soon be moving to Japan. I don't know why.
Was I asking you, Brock? No. I was not.
all the cool cultural stuff I know.
German stuff doesn't count, Blume.
266: You weren't asking me, no, but I thought I'd go ahead and answer half your question in case cerebrocrat was no longer around. Just being helpful.
Just being helpful.
Seriously. What an ingrate.
I'm writing on Mill vs. Kant and Veidt vs. Rorschach. I'm really impressed with how deep the contrasts between the latter two go.
Will you let us know when/if it's available. I'd be interested in reading that.
No one was asking you, either, Apo.
GermanScat stuff doesn't count, Blume.
262:I am not sure if Tripp meant missing Carlin, or missing Carson & SNL that was sad, so sad.
I'm comedy-impaired, Tripp. Whether I was born that way, or something happened, or it's an informed judgement. I don't much like roaring with the crowd at ethnic jokes until I barf up the ten beers. Somehow I see the vast majority of humour as ingroup signalling and socialized cruelty. Socrates was probably laughing at the Aristophanes caricature until his legs went numb.
Maybe it ain't the cruelty I mind, I am a mean drunk and even a mean stoner, but humour as a fucking social vice. As a mean and reasonably smart drunk, I learned early on that to survive I had to pick a target, and one that the rest would find acceptable to pile on.
But after a while I just wondered why I was performing for these jerks.
I make my roommate laugh every night, it's part of the job description. Even tho she knows this, I am good enough. She rarely tries with me.
I guess maybe there is absurdity and irony.
Took me a while before I figured out that Martin's arrow-thru-the-head was just an intellectual banana-peel pratfall.
262, 274
Some support from another thread.
If y'all think 274 is really crazy, you can scroll down through this very thread, and look at who is trying to score social points with cruelty.
Is not scoring social points with cruelty the very heart and soul of Unfogged?
rob, are you toying around at all with the fun Nietzschean themes or are they 'beyond the scope of your paper'?
254, 256: There are several buildings like that on the University of Minnesota campus. The worst is the Science Classroom building -- a real eyesore -- where you are often faced with a choice of either walking through some other classroom, or going outside and up and down a bunch of stairs to get to a room that should, intuitively, be right next to the one you're standing in front of. It's very vexing.
Is that Mort Subotnick Silver Apples? It's not really an underground band, it's a classical /electronic musician who crossed over to pop.
The striking horrible thing about commercials is that they are often thoughtful, carefully unified little bits of filmmaking.
People in film started telling me this about 1967 or so. All of the avant-garde stuff of that time has been taken up into ads (or MTV-type fluff).
To me there's no cheerful interpretation of this. Buh-bye, avant-garde.
Oddly, I didn't like Carlin during his funny phase because he wasn't bitter enough.
Is that Mort Subotnick Silver Apples?
Nope.
Different, John. This was a New York psychedelic artist named Simeon Coxe using a homemade analog synthesizer thing. (I saw the Silver Apples on one of their reunion tours when I think they were supporting Sonic Boom. Later they got into a terrible car accident that ruined Simeon's ability to play live; I don't know if Simeon is still releasing studio work.)
281: All of the avant-garde stuff of that time has been taken up into ads (or MTV-type fluff).
What about The Flicker (Tony Conrad, 1965)? Where has that been recuperated?
"All" was a figure of speech or a palidrome or something. I saw a moderate amount of stuff 1964-67 and it's all cliche by now as far as I can remember.
Yeah, I dunno, there's probably still a place for avant garde film, but it's there are less and less bourgeoisie who can successfully be epatered nowadays.
Probably the best hope is for modes of production and distribution to do the upsetting, rather than form or content.
"it's true that there are" perhaps?
Yeah, I dunno, there's probably still a place for avant garde film, but it's there are less and less bourgeoisie who can successfully be epatered nowadays.
Poor Crispin Hellion Glover.
284: Simeon is still playing live; saw him last night.
Really, Sifu? That's great news! The last I heard he was recovering from a spinal cord injury.
Yeah he's better. Apparently he had to change his live show around some, but he was fuckin' great.
I Googled around. Subotnick and Coxe started at about the same time (Subotnick first), took a name from the same Yeats poem, and both did electronica of a sort, but it was just a coincidence -- no tribute (except to Yeats), no influence. Coxe seems somewhat tired of the question.
Some internet bios name Subotnick as an influence on Coxe, erroneously as it seems.
Subotnick was a pure studio electronic musician who used no instruments at all, though sometimes he did transformations on recorded natural sounds.
294: I think originally Coxe used only homebrew electronics, but it was always a live show.
Of course I probably read the same google stuff you did.
297: Yeah, they had a mockup of the scoreboard from 1960 Game 7* in the PNC Bank window at the stadium today. I should have thought to get tickets when they were available. Despite not growing up in Pittsburgh, I did manage to see one game at Forbes Field**, but was a little too young to remember too much (all of Pittsburgh with the smoke, hills, tunnels and bridges seemed like another freaking world to me at the time).
* I recall the '60 win as my mother (not a baseball fan) greeted me at the door after school and said in kind of a shocked voice "They won". I had no idea what the hell she was talking about.
**I'm getting to be like the Oldest Living Confederate Widow.
Sorry for this clueless question, but did Three Rivers have the same ignominious career as its downstream duplicates, Riverfront and Busch? Has it been demolished?
299: Yes in 2001. The new Heinz Field is right next to where it was, PNC is a few blocks to the east. It was actually a great football stadium (better than Heinz in my opinion), but an atrocious baseball park. Depending on your seat, very large portions of right or left field would disappear—explained some inappropriate cheering on routine flyballs. Watched the implosion from my office at the time, somewhere one of my kids has a chunk of it we scavenged.
298: 1960 was long before I was born, but I do have a memory to share - I even revived my moribund blog for it.
Watched the implosion from my office at the time
A friend of AB's had her office in the Fifth Avenue Place tower and invited us - great vantage point. I'll never forget the sonorous, echoing sound as the great straps that counterweighed the roof were blown.
300: Ooh, my brother and I scavenged bricks from the old Comiskey Park in Chicago. I wonder where the hell those are?
did Three Rivers have the same ignominious career as its downstream duplicates, Riverfront and Busch?
It's so weird to me that all the UFO fields (these plus Veterans in Philly) are all gone now, with a relative, Shea, doomed this winter. They were, indeed, awful ballparks, but still....
302: A friend of AB's had her office in the Fifth Avenue Place tower
I was in a pretty hideous building in the pretty hideous Allegheny Center. Being able to see the implosion from it was one of its few redeeming characteristics (along with seeing the Mt. Washington tornado from it, and then again I actually did a have a nice closeup view for a while of the great old Carnegie library there).
I never saw a football game at Riverfront, but saw baseball several times in the early seventies. I lived in Columbus then, and the multi-use stadiums were all around us. I never saw Three Rivers, but saw Busch and Riverfront. The Ohio State Horseshoe was where I've watched most football games live, and Clippers Stadium on Mound Street in Columbus for baseball, formerly Jets stadium when the Jets were Pittsburgh's AAA team.
While both were quite old, their design concepts and seating are closer to current practice than the new stadiums of the sixties and seventies. My principal memory of the Reds in Riverfront is of focusing binoculars.
264: moving to Japan. In the spirit of the post, choose your own why:
a) To build an army of giant, city-destroying robots powered by cultured brain tissue
b) For the love of a handsome young samurai
c) I've left science for ikebana because the pay is better
306: My biggest memory of the Horseshoe (was there a few times) was making myself go to the very top (I was pretty acrophobic as a kid) and feeling like you could just pitch headfirst right out onto the field.
270: The current version (1.1) is here.
The final version will be in *Watchmen and Philosophy* coming out from Blackwell (and timed to match the release of the movie!). It will probably be on my blog as well. No one has complained about such things in the past.
279: I only touch on the Nietzschean/existential aspects of the comic briefly, when I note that that Rorschach had an existential crises and Veidt did not, and that this has shaped their ethics in obvious ways.
I think the editor left that part in, because it is critical of utilitarianism. He thinks that Veidt is an adequate representative of utilitarianism, but Rorschach is not an adequate representative of deontology. This strikes me as special pleading.
I think they were supporting Sonic Boom.
Shimura Curves' guitarist used to--still does, maybe--write under the name "Masonic Boom" and because of that, whenever I see "Sonic Boom" I think of the Curves instead.
One of my favorite passages from her abandoned blog:
"Dronerock - *good* dronerock - is totally sexual. Yeah, I know what Stockhausen and LaMonte Young said about the transcendence of repetition and the disappearance of melody and all that, and yeah, it's great theory, but put Eno's Oblique Strategies away and listen to me. That relentless, four-on-the-floor 'Für Immer' motorik beat? It's Musik für Fucking. Klaus Dinger totally gives me the horn. And all those Machine metaphors? Come on, you don't have to be a Freudian analyst or a feminist theorist to realise that all those Kraftwerk robots and autos and pocket calculators are classic phallic symbols. A 20-minute krautrock epic? When it's right, it is the aural equivalent of being fucked within an inch of your life by a tantric sex robot from planet Düsseldorf."
It is interesting how some women would associate "being fucked within an inch of your life by a tantric sex robot from planet Düsseldorf" with good sex and others with bad.
Having just finally watched the ad, totally creepy. Like, whoah.
