Archive for the 'Advertising' Category
Appearances of Das Unheimliche in popular advertising and marketing.
Photoshop Disasters and the Fantasy of Picture Perfection
Saturday, November 15th, 2008
Photoshop Disasters is a funny weblog that collects flawed design elements in advertisements and elsewhere (like the above image from a Sears Catalog).
The accidental amputations, bizarre hands, and other forms of freakish anatomical blunders strike a viewer as uncanny when you spot them in what would otherwise be a “picture perfect” advertisement. We always already [...]
Pop Song as Product Placement: Doublemint “Forever”
Sunday, August 31st, 2008If you watch the latest Doublemint gum TV commercial — featuring Chris Brown dancing in the dark with the product’s new “slim” package — you might be wondering: gee, that song and dance is nice but what happened to the infamously kitschy jingle and the wholesome set of twins?
The ad itself is a twin: it [...]
Enjoy Uncertainty: Randomization and the Uncanny iPod
Saturday, August 2nd, 2008Although the iPod shuffle is now an mp3 player that is the size of a postage stamp, the advertising campaign for the device — back in 2006 when it was the size of a stick of gum — asked consumers to “Enjoy Uncertainty.”
I can think of no better mascot for the popular uncanny. Typically, uncertainty is [...]
Bread that Talks
Thursday, July 24th, 2008Obviously, no one believes bread can talk. But Schwebel’s ‘taliano — “The Bread with the Foreign Accent” — would like us to believe its Italian bread has an identity so Italian that it can speak to us.
I used this example in my recent lecture at the Alpha Science Fiction & Fantasy Workshop for [...]
