Now onto my message. I wanted to convey the difference in relationship etiquette and sexuality from the 1950′s versus today. So I created a single character split into two personalities. We have Woody, our character from the 50′s, and his alter-ego Wally – the plaid-shirt wearing, 5 o’clock shadow sporting, party animal who is indulging in the overt sexuality of today’s world.

You can see a handful of quick cuts alternating between Woody and Wally, this showing the battle between the two for control. We also see a lot of cuts between modern sexuality juxtaposed with traditions of the 50′s, and often we see disapproving looks from women and approving looks from men, feeding into the character battle of Woody and Wally.

I also had a section that demonstrated supposed “differences” in asking for a date today versus the 50′s, as well as how to say goodnight, and the benefits of going steady. This section was a great representation of the very obvious differences, and it all ends in the final juxtaposition of a question of “petting” leading into Alec Baldwin’s very graphic description of a night with his latest conquest. The text sends a message to the receiver signifying a certain set of upcoming circumstances, but also to set the wheels in motion as to how the differences in generations will be displayed.

The question is then left up to us to decide which character will be the eventual victor – Woody or Wally? And it all depends on your view of the point made in the video.

I had worked with video before, and so I was no stranger to editing film. But this was the first time I was attempting to use outside sources for the images (i.e. old instructional film, commercials, etc), and trying to shape them in a way that conveyed my purpose. I thoroughly enjoyed the process and actually found that utilizing the images was a unique way of “speaking” to my audience – I was able to imply things without putting them into words, and I was able to juxtapose images to create a unique message.

That was the biggest difference between this project and a traditional writing piece. I couldn’t use my own words to relay my message, and therefore I had to look at my message from different angles and re-analyze how I could send it to the receivers. In the end, I may have had to work a little harder, but the message found its way, and the medium came out much more unique.

Guinness redeems itself this week, my friends. This one is a commercial I can actually watch and enjoy the humor. I’ll give you a second to watch it. Go ahead. I promise, no chicks getting tag-teamed this time.

This commercial is great for one big reason; it plays a lot with semiotics.

The reverse evolution is one long example of semiotics – as fast as the video is moving, we are keeping up with it based on learned symbols and concepts about the evolutionary process. Cro magnons, dinosaurs, it’s all there – and so is the message: drinking beer, more specifically Guinness is part of our fundamental make-up as men. It’s been in our blood since the dawn of time. Now what’s going to get the heart pumping and the liver begging for beer more than a commercial that appeals to the most primitive part of every man?  We saw some colonial soldiers. Yeah, I’m a soldier, fighting for my country. We saw cro magnons. Shit, I’m a hunter-gatherer. We saw dinosaurs and fireballs and lava. Hell, I like big scary monsters and fire.

So grab a Guinness, Tough Guy! Right after you grab ahold of your manhood!

I just wanted to follow up all that I said in class with a little expansion on the topic.

A story – or a series of stories, rather – such as this is going to evoke emotion regardless of the format. But putting words on a page seems less than sufficient for the topics at hand. It is the photos, the drawings, the collages – the semiotics and semiotic theories that drive this series home like an arrow to the heart. They make it more than a recounting of tragic tales and create a world in which we have to step into and walk through to get from one side of the story to the other, and along the way, we get our hands dirty, our shoes get scuffed, we sweat, bleed, struggle to catch our breath. And with that comes not just tales from a distant land, but stories that live in the room with us as we read.

Anyway, the reason for my post here is to show you the latest reason I’ve been left speechless, and it’s all thanks to Guinness.

Yes, you saw it right. I sat here for the entire minute waiting for something – like for the “woman” to turn out to be some fat guy’s beer gut and legs, just from an odd angle so it made us think it was a woman. But no. It was as it is. A woman. Getting tag teamed. By three guys. Drinking a Guinness.

Here’s where the “sex sells” angle can veer off the tracks. I am self-admittedly a “guy.” Show me some boobs, a hot chick in a bikini, I’m going to remember whatever it is that you’re peddling. But this one actually offended me. I don’t think three guys smashing the same girl and passing around a beer is in any way, shape, or form entertaining, funny, or clever. It’s gross and it’s degrading to women.

I’m using this commercial to show an example of how it does not work. The simplicity of the ad makes the message clear, and we see three separate male arms, one of which is tattooed (showing that Guinness is the drink of tattooed and non-tattooed guys alike). And we all know what’s going on in the scene just by the long hair, nude back/butt, and the gyrations. But Guinness made a big boo-boo on this one.

We know that sex sells, but this is an image that pushes that theory much too far. The appeal of an attractive woman in a bathing suit or a sexually suggestive photo will reach 99% of heterosexual males on an erotic level and will leave a lasting impression regarding the product. But show a woman having sex with three men and being used like a coffee table at the same time and you’re going to do some serious alienation.

And they’re not even sharing the beer with the woman! God knows she’s probably thirsty. Sorry, had to get one joke in there.

And I know that technically, they didn’t “show” anything. It’s all implied.

Just like here, the nudity of the model’s breasts is “implied.” We don’t know if under the necklaces, she is covered or not. We assume. But there is a difference in severity. A nude woman posing for a photo is in no way the same as a nude woman who is getting gangbanged and having the small of her back used like a cup holder.

Guinness has also reduced sex here to something no different than a frat party or a kegger. “Grab a beer and tag team a girl! It’s Saturday, time to loosen up!”

Sorry Guinness, but you lost my vote. Not that I drink to begin with. But still.

This is a prime example of upsetting the balance; carefully executed sex injected in an ad is gold – tasteless trashy sex injected into an ad is poison.

And Guinness, next time, could you at least use a coaster? She’s going to have a ring on her back that’s going to be impossible to get off once it dries.

The philosophies behind comics are rather interesting, and the discussion we had about text being considered “abstract” was one that never really crossed my mind before. For example, which of these is more abstract:

LAUGH

or

Most people would say that the image is more abstract. But in actuality, the word itself is just as (if not more so) abstract than the image. To a non-English speaker, that word means nothing. To an English speaking person, we understand the word, but if five people read the word, we’ll end up with five very different interpretations of the implication and even the mentally constructed image regarding the word.

Furthermore, it made me think about the interplay between words and images. Comics is one of the most interesting types of text/image combination, in my opinion. Often times, simply using one or the other will not suffice. Take this  comic for example:

With only the images, we can draw our own conclusions, but it’s more or less up to our imaginations. With just the text, we don’t fully grasp the scene or what is happening. But with both, we get a more clear picture.

You know, a friend of mine once told me “Man, I’ve never seen an unattractive Brazilian chick.” He was proved wrong one night as I stood at the bar in Adelphia’s in Deptford. A young woman approached me and started a conversation about God knows what, and mentioned that she was from Brazil. I’m not a shallow guy. But let’s just say my friend’s quote came to mind and I immediately wanted to call him and say “Erroneous.” Ok, maybe I am a little shallow.

But I digress, as I so often do. This ad is definitely restoring my faith in Brazilian exports. This ad is sheer cleverness. It’s awesome. We’re bombarded with boobies – as we so often are with alcohol ads – but its in a much more lighthearted fashion. It’s a very nice set of breasts. Tanned. Perky. Minimal coverage. Obviously the first thing that we all notice, so the “sex” aspect creeps in right off the bat. Then we throw in some body paint. Hot.

But it’s playful in nature. The faces drawn on the model’s body are cartoonish and cheerful. And the bikini top is woven in as part of the scene – acting as the cartoon’s smiles. It’s great fun. And notice the hands holding the bottles are gender-specific, making these cartoons actual characters in the scene.

And take a look at the colors: nice bright, vibrant blues, greens, pinks. The bottles themselves are a nice bright green that really pop out from the page.

And the tagline – “A bit more exciting.” A bit more exciting than what? Well, that’s up to us to find out when we take a swig of Bit Copa and taste Brazil, I suppose.

Bring it on, Bit Copa. Gracias a este modelo por existir, y viva la vida de Brazil, hermano!

But what about women? I mean, I guess Kate Beckinsale was good in Underworld, although I wanted to bed her more often that I wanted to be her in that movie – she’s even hot as a vampire. Halle Berry gave it a shot in Catwoman, but let’s be honest, that flick stunk worse than a box of used up kitty litter. It seems that, for the most part, women in an action lead role are genearlly not as readily accepted as a male. But part of it comes from what we have been taught by society: Women are the damsel in distress, beautiful but incapable of handling themselves in a tough situation.

Now we touched on Ripley from Aliens, and as I was surfing around YouTube (something I find myself doing accidentally for hours on end sometimes), I came across this clip, and found it kind of ironic that it was from the very heroine we brought up in class:

Weaver makes an awesome point at the end of this video when she says that she was just “playing a person.”  Boom, that’s all there is to it. In order to accept women in this strong lead role, we must not think of it as a “woman playing the lead” but rather as just a character. That is the key to our acceptance.

It came when I saw a series titled “How To Be a Teen in 1950″. I watched a few of the videos including “Going Steady?” “How to be Well Groomed”, and my personal favorite “I Want to be a Secretary”. I was in hysterics watching these videos, and thought to myself, “Jesus, this is nothing like our lives as teens and young adults today. Not even close.” And so I decided to illustrate the difference between teen life in the 50′s, and teen life today. Obviously, demonstrating the different mentalities is going to be the challenge, but I can do this through images.

I want to use clips from these instructional videos juxtaposed with photos of current teens/couples from today. For example, little Timmy from 1950 talking about taking Sally to the carnival would be followed by a quick cut to a photo such as this:

And when we see the videos about “Being Thoughtful” or treating a woman a certain way, we quick cut to something like this:

And along with these images, a really important aspect is going to be the music going along with the video/photo montage. I had a great idea to use a song called Bad Girlfriend by a band called Theory of a Deadman. I don’t know what the situation is with music and what we are/aren’t allowed to use, but there’s a reason I went for this song. Take a quick listen and you’ll see what I mean:

The lyrics are obviously shit (at least to a musician like myself, this is the epitome of lame “Sex, Drugs, and Rock n Roll”-cliche lyricism at its worst), but it makes a great point about a “girlfriend” in the 21st century.

I still need to skim through all the videos and really plan out step-by-step what I’m going to do, but I feel as though the framework for something interesting is definitely there.

Give me a second. I have to clean up my drool and try to get my jaw back into place. Wow, thank you Pietra Ferrari. Thank your parents for me, too. For creating you.

But I digress. Let’s get down to brass tax. It’s time for yet another edition of my weekly post How-Much-Sex-Does-It-Take-To-Sell-You-Booze? This week, we’ll be tackling this lovely ad for Bavaria Beer. Now, I hadn’t heard of Bavaria before, but you can bet your bottom dollar I won’t be forgetting it anytime soon.

You can’t help but be drawn in from the first second, and it doesn’t even take a raging hot sexpot like Pietra to do it; it’s all about atmosphere. The beach setting is a great selling point for beer, because we have come to associate a cold beer as being refreshing on a hot day – and where is it hot? A beach. So we set the mood of a hot day right off the bat. And look at all the blues; it seems to be a common theme in alcohol ads. I feel as though blue is a staple color for its soothing quality, and it is easy to incorporate it into a beach setting.

The two guys in the frame look like two regular dudes, and we see regular dude #1 reach into a bucket of ice (getting that refreshing feeling yet?) and pull up a bottle of Bavaria. As this happens, hot diggidy, Pietra makes her way out of the water. Then we have a minute of play; the man moves the bottle and Pietra follows suit. I don’t even have to go into my speech about the beautiful model and the sex appeal, I think we get it by now. And we love it. Or at least I love it.

But what we are seeing is that Bavaria has some kind of power over women – they love it, they’ll be under some kind of trance if you bust out a bottle of it. Someone get me some Bavaria. A whole friggin’ case. I’ll keep some in my back pocket in case of emergencies. “What’s your name, girl?” “Go away, assh – hey is that Bavaria in your pocket?”

Then we have regular dude #1 peeling off the label. And my heart jumped to my throat. But she doesn’t fall for it. So what did we learn? That Bavaria won’t turn a girl into a slut; it’ll just give you an edge you otherwise didn’t have.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some “research” to do on a one Ms. Pietra Ferrari. Vroom vroom, baby.