April 2008 Archives
An iconic Superman montage. The original uploader explains why he loves Superman; my own thoughts turned toward the degree to which each of these S symbols is arguably distinct.
Baskin-Robbins parries the Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day with 31 Cent Scoop Night--and makes the connection to charity the centerpiece of shilling, even if the opportunity to donate is admittedly chancey.
I don't know if this will work in my neighborhood--the Baskin-Robbins is just a few doors down from the NYPD.
Bonus fact: Chocolate triglycerides can lock into six forms, not all of which is conducive to commercially viable chocolate. Which basically goes to show that I will read just about anything to get out of finishing my exam.
This weeks DC Universe #0 is another example of a strategy at which comics-related media excel: getting folks to pay for ads. The book is basically a set of teasers* for six related series, yet with a number and a price, albeit a minimal one, the book takes on a value distinct from what it might have had were it merely given away. At a time when folks will drop $10 just to see a 90 second movie preview, we shouldn't be surprised that it works.
*It's not much of a spoiler, I think, to note that the last page makes a rather clever pointed reference to this fact.
Is it my imagination, or has Twitter become the Facebook-for-fogeys?
This very issue came up in my undergrad startup class last week, when we talked about Facebook & Twitter business models. Most of the students used Facebook, none used Twitter. Sometimes I wonder if the reason Twitter has taken off in certain circles has less to do with the tool itself than the sense that it's finally something on the internet older folks glommed onto first.
Jezebel raises an important issue pertaining to the Miley Cyrus controversy: conflicting sexual norms across the world. In the U.S., a sexualized image of a 15 or 17 year old can give rise to cries of child porn; in China, where the age of consent is 14, a Disney billboard with a sexed-up twelve year old passes without notice until seen by Western eyes.
The photo above illustrates how PR in another country can stand in striking contrast to PR at home. It's a European ad for HP Laserjets that incorporates the overt sexual objectification of young girls common in manga, particularly in the genre known as lolicon.
And here's another example from this series, which made the rounds in design blogs back when they hit Ads of the World.
In the U.S., corporate scandals have led HP to try to boost its tarnished corporate image by celebrating its commitment to civic virtue. The negative attention from an ad like this could be counterproductive, to say the least.
In Europe the reaction so far seems to be mixed, although one blog, Daily Yoghurt, has asked readers to post their own colorized versions.
The controversy resulting from the Disney billboard provides a warning as to the latent potential for negative PR resulting from ads that traditionally went unseen outside their offshore markets. After all, there's ratings and site visits in bringing hidden deviance to light. It's just one more reason why corporations are exerting more centralized control over local PR.
UPDATE: The Laserjet ads have now been removed from Ads of the World. A shame, really, because along with 'em went the info regarding the agency that designed them. According to this Google cache of a blog post mirroring the original AotW pages, here are the details regarding the apparent subcontractor whom, I suspect, HP won't be using any time soon:
Advertising Agency: Publicis, Bucharest, Romania
Creative Director: Razvan Capanescu
Art Director / Copywriter: Catalin Rulea
Published: April 2007
43(B)log points to a useful article on museum image rights & licensing.
A fascinating legal skirmish erupts as Marvel tries to shut down an unauthorized early screening of Iron Man. Marvel is, as one might expect, policing the use of its marks & copyrighted material by a commercial enterprise--in this case, TechCrunch, which was using the show as a way to build goodwill with its readers.
One major concern is no doubt security. If you've ever been to an early screening, you know the drill: hand over you cel phone; submit to a cavity search; waterboard interrogation, etc. The TechCrunch screening would probably have little-to-none of that, creating a serious possibility of pirated copies, cel phone excerpts or spoiler-filled reviews hitting the web before opening day.
Whoever decided to authorize an early screening without looping in Marvel, the company that made the movie, was not thinking. The 2005 distribution agreement between Marvel and Paramount provides, in article 10, that "Marvel shall be meaningfully consulted on the release pattern and distribution pattern" of the film; Article 7 also requires Marvel to be consulted for all commercial co-promotions and tie-ins. That the screening was apparently arranged through Paramount's group sales department will probably have behind-the-scenes ramifications; this incident does give the impression that Paramount is something of a loose cannon, with few if any internal controls at the local level.
The theater's current stance--defying Marvel--also creates some interesting possibilities going forward. Your desire to see Iron Man first aside, would you trust your properties to companies that consider themselves free to disregard a studio's express directives?
UPDATE: The screening is back on. The lack of coordination with Marvel was clearly an issue, as was the cross-promotion with TechCrunch, which beyond the mere fact of its existence gave rise to a conflict with a Paramount subcontractor. Read all the comments and you'll see that behind the apology and concise final explanation things had indeed gotten rather intense, with a wide range of legal issues being raised--as Arrington (of TC) notes, if his lawyers hadn't gotten involved the screening would have been canceled. The resolution allays what was turning into a PR nightmare, but we can expect for the future that all such events like this will be pre-cleared and cross-checked.
For organizations faced with similar issues, Marvel's crisis management strategy illustrates four valuable tactics in dealing with a PR meltdown resulting from a legal dust-up:
Acceptance: Sometimes in trying to prevent a suboptimal result you can create an equally, if not worse suboptimal situation. You can treat the unexpected consequence as irrelevant, or you can accept it as a fact and patch around it. That's what Marvel PR did: it let the screening go on, allaying actual PR damage at serious risk of getting worse.
Deflection: Note the explanation laying the ultimate blame on a local subcontractor's organizational issues. The actual situation was the Marvel team asserting substantive legal claims, yet the public explanation focuses attention on a smaller entity with practical concerns. Then, as we shall see, Marvel PR distinguishes the company from its own legal department. The effect of all of this: to restore Marvel's goodwill by sacrificing entities with whom the fans have no attachment. Clever, no?
Apology: Never underestimate the power of an apology, even if you & others in the team think you were justified. As you can see in the TC comments, Marvel's apology already has some folks seeing Marvel as the good guy & the critics as over-reacting--a response that further illustrates the value of co-ordinating legal action with your PR team.
Self-mockery: As anyone who grew up with Mad Magazine knows, a good way to diffuse criticism is to the liberal use of self-deprecating humor. If you can make an in-joke that makes folks feel like they're connected to you, all the better. From the TechCrunch comments section, here's a model of the form from Marvel's digital PR VP:
Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention. We at Marvel have discovered that the David Althoff who sent the CAD is not the REAL David Althoff, but a SKRULL who has been sent to disrupt the opening of IRON MAN.
You can read all about the SKRULL SECRET INVASION happening now at: http://www.marvel.com/comics/Secret_Invasion
Please go ahead with your screening. Enjoy the film.
Tony Stark is real pissed and will be dealing with this Skrull personally.
Best,
Ira
Ira Rubenstein - Executive Vice President, Global Digital Media Group- Marvel Entertainment, Inc. http://www.marvel.com
It's long, and I'm in oh-my-god-i'm-gonna-die-it's-end-of-the-semester-and-i'm-screwed mode, so go read it yourselves ya lazy bums. Here's a key quote:
Shah is aware, however, that he can’t poison the well by being too aggressive about turning Kiva into a money-making enterprise. It is only getting its money for loans because it is not a for-profit entity.
In 1994, getting university press books was sheer hell. Grad students bogarted all the best ones at the Yale Library, and the bookstore--well, if they didn't have it in stock (and back then, chances were they didn't--the old Yale bookstore branded itself as the region's best place to buy cheap mass market remainders), you could place at special order to arrive six-to-eight weeks later.
Amazon changed the game. Now we could get academic books whenever we wanted, and the old Yale bookstore died.
One was commerce to serve a charity. The other, a commercial start-up. But for my money, the real social enterprise was Amazon.
Via TechCrunch, Jeff Bezos' Usenet job solicitation from 1994:
I usually skip Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day, but after hearing for the umpteenth that charities use it as a community fundraiser I decided to give it a slog.
I took my place at the end of the long line extending down the city sidewalk. Some were college students, a few were older, and since it was just after a school there were a lot of kids, tykes with moms and others on their own ranging from fourth grade on up.
Then it happened: the charitable donation ask, and I couldn't stop laughing. The deal was that Ben & Jerry's had dedicated all the tips for the day to breast cancer charity, so an employee was walking up and down the line calling on people to give.
Except she wasn't just asking people to donate. Instead she shouted, over and over again:
"Tips for tits, people. Tips for tits!"
I don't feel sorry for Peter Parker. Not in the least. I mean, here's a guy who has invented one of the holy grails of modern technology--superstrong silk--and instead of getting rich off the patent he keeps it to himself. Yes, he fights crime, but imagine if police departments all over the world had access to his invention. Not to mention construction companies, doctors, mountain rangers, rescue squads--the collective good accomplished by his invention would have been far greater if Peter Parker had licensed his invention for mass production.
But noooo--the only way he helps his Aunt make the rent is to use the webbing to glue a camera to the ceiling so he can take crappy pictures.
These scientists, however, probably won't be so dumb.
No Caption Needed points to the real story behind the Miley Cyrus controversy: the way we use the promotion of ethics to justify using imagery that is otherwise taboo:
We are never told the name of the model and there is no way to know her age. Nor does it matter. For whether she is fourteen or twenty-one, the point is that she is portrayed as a young Lolita, her supple body barely covered by a dress that seems to be in tatters. The expression on her face simultaneously performs a cultivated innocence and a primitive sexuality, the two reinforced by her bare feet and skinny, pale legs spread seductively around the back of a folding chair. Her long hair is both combed and yet unkempt, simultaneously complementing and accenting the tensions between nature and culture that pervade her pose and animate the adolescent sexual energy of the image.
This photograph is one of six images that appeared as part of a story titled “Green With Envy.” The story focuses on eco-conscious fashion being marketed to a “well-heeled audience” by Earth Pledge and Barneys New York. It thus operates within the soft porn aesthetic of high fashion photography. The woman above is wearing a Maison Martin Margiela dress made from “silk head scarves that were bleached, cut into strips and asymmetrically woven by hand.” The price is available on request, though the eco-conscious fashion wear on display in the other five images ranges in price from $910 for a smock dress made of “undyed cotton” to $10,000 for a ruffled dress made from “biopolymer—a corn-based alternative to polyester.” What we have, then, is the greenwashing of a soft porn aesthetic, where one progressive cause (save the environment) seems to trump another (protect our youth from sexual exploitation).
Apparently there is no end to what sex can sell, including a sustainable earth. Surely this is no way to save the planet.
Superdickery is a term made famous by a blog featuring pictures of Superman being cruel to his friends, something he apparently did with abandon back in the day.
It also aptly describes a new series on HBO: Hung, the story of a guy endowed with abilities beyond those of mortal men.
No, really:
"Think of him like Spider-Man," Burson said. "He's an average guy who gets in touch with his innate super powers."
The co-creators see the pick-up as a sign that "HBO has been invigorated as a place to go for creative talent."
Today in Malibu, via NSFW AVN:
Shane's World contract girl Casey Parker has banded together with Vivid Girl Sunny Leone, Brooke Haven and Veronica Rayne to raise money for abandoned babies [today] at a charity event to benefit Project Cuddle.
"It’s basically giving a chance for unwanted babies to get another home – our goal is to raise $5,000 but we want to go all the way and raise more," Parker told AVN. "We’re putting on the whole event – there will be live bands and an auction that I am going to host including a date with Brooke Haven and surfing lessons with me."
The fundraiser will take place from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. April 29 at 31800 Mulholland Highway, Mailbu, Calif. 90265.
"Anybody that makes any donation over $400, whether it's products for the auction or a check, one of us will personally go to the office and pick it up," said Casey. "You will get a porn star in your office!"
Given that the only way I can catch my meal is on a menu, I'd say this rare image provides telling evidence of human devolution.
Or primates' ingrained proclivity for mimesis. Your pick.
I found my grandfather's profile on Facebook. He's a prof, but still.
I dread the day I have to say Pop-pop Superpoked me. A world of wrong.
Charitable bracelets have been en vogue for a while, so much so that I think my academic center is the only charity left that hasn't used one to raise money. The picture above shows one imprinted with a slogan any longtime comics fan will recognize: "Excelsior", Stan Lee's trademark (literally) exclamation from his glory days at Marvel Comics. In fact, one of the many fun moments at Stan Lee's NY Comic Con panel: a fan asking him to say it.
The beneficiary: The Hero Initiative, one of several national comics charities at the New York Comic Con.
Walmart has a reputation for being somewhat, ah, loose with respect to its internal regard for sexual discrimination. Here's an interesting twist: a wager that resulted in this local store manager having to dress like a woman.
But the money from the bet went to charity, so of course that means it was OK.
Excellent conference--the folks at Adelphi put together an engaging & informative shindig. They also provided a lot of time for everyone to chat outside the panels, which was great. More later when I wrap up my draft.
I'm going to present a paper today at this engaging conference, so posting will be light today. In case I don't get back here for a while, here's today's Pearls before Swine, which pretty much captures life here at Chez Uncivil:
The backlash against microcredit grows.
A commenter on this France 24 story calls the Grameen Bank mafia.
But the situation is far from rosy in Kalihati, one of the first Bangladeshi villages to benefit from Grameen’s low interest credit scheme. The villagers here who have taken a loan are unable to reimburse their credit, and claim to be harassed by Grameen Bank representatives. Korshed Alom, a former debt collector, was put into early retirement for having questioned the Grameen Bank’s methods: “Their technique is to scare borrowers and insult them. We tell them to sell their clothes, that they have no other choice. I’m not proud of myself, but several times, I had even been obliged to say ‘sell your children.’”
The Bank’s representatives choose not to respond to these accusations. It is impossible to obtain an interview with Mohammed Yunus, and the Grameen Bank headquarters are off-limits for journalists who are too curious.
In the accompanying video, an angry villager tells a Grameen representative, "You're not helping us. You're killing us."
My final fate: to be blown away for drinking coffee out of a styrofoam cup.
Curse you Eco Team!
Via Found, old currency contributed at an Ontario fundraising event:
Just sent out a draft of the last in my Blog@ Superman series. I'll be writing a bit more on the Siegel case as well as other things related to comics & design--in fact, I'd write about the Gordon Lee case now if it weren't 4:20 in the a.m.--but that series had reached a good place to wrap up.
Below: the music that was playing as I hit send, as well as what's been playing a bit as I write. And if you don't get the pun in the title, it's both a reference to the imminent end of the Siegel series and this scene from, well, you know.
It's nonprofit, and it helps people, shall we say, overcome their physical challenges. Pornfortheblind.org has a list of free audio clips and guidelines for you to record your own narration.
For an equally fascinating glimpse into the often ignored world of sex and disability, Susannah Breslin offers this account of a visit to a prostitute by a man with cerebral palsy. The following paragraph distills how a mainstream immoral act can equally serve as a means to transcend an otherwise deterministic physical condition:
I have a physical disability known as Cerebral Palsy and am in an electric wheelchair. I have always struggled in my own existence, largely because I rely on a lot of people to assist me with the most basic tasks, such as dressing, showering, getting in and out of bed, and other basic things that many people take for granted.
My entire life I have been trapped inside a body that I hate. It never does what I want it to. It always conspires against me.
As she completed the massage, my body felt like it could do anything I wanted, something I had never felt before. . . . For that portion of time, having sex with her (even if I had to pay for it) made up for a lifetime of rejection.
It was the most enjoyable experience I have ever had in my life. I would put it down to two things. For once I had gained control over my body, and it felt like I was in control of my life. The worst thing about having a physical disability is the lack of control I have in life. Everything is very clinical, get up at this time, eat at this time, have a shower at this time, and go to bed at this time. I have no control over these things. This time, I got to do things on my own terms. Second, it was the first time I felt like I was being treated like a sexual being with desires and needs that were important. All my life I have been viewed as an asexual being whose desires should be avoided or neglected. The trip to the brothel taught me not to be afraid of my sexuality and not to push it into the background.
Suppose you want to read Golden Age comics--y'know, for research, like me!--but you don't want to be the financial price for collectibles or the legal price for torrenting. In several libraries around the country, you can find hard copies or photo reproductions of thousands of books. Over the next few weeks I'll post links to the ones I know, starting with one of my favorite local hangouts, the New York Public Library. Along with other ample historic resources, the NYPL has an extensive array of comics microfiche from the Microcolour collection, an archival set produced back in the day when fiche was the cutting edge of serial storage. DC & Marvel have moved on to other formats, but this series remains a valuable means of accessing cover-to-cover images (including ads + text pages) of historic comics past.
From the official description:
Usually seen riding their bicycles and preaching door to door, these steamy young men explode with sexuality on each calendar page.
Behind the eye-candy, this calendar has a deeper story -- one that can reshape perceptions, heighten awareness, and perhaps encourage and inspire a broadened acceptance of human and religious diversity.
For more on the controversy sparked by this supposedly "novel" calendar, check out the latest from AVN and read the comments thread. Buy the calendar at Mormons Exposed.
A satirical art show whose web site no longer exists.
by Oliver Jeffers:
There has always been a strong undercurrent of narrative behind Jeffers’s work, but his current interest in making art lies in the anomaly between logical and emotional thinking.
While striving to find a harmonious balance between form and content, Jeffers is curious about the opposing means by which the world he lives in can be assessed. To explore this he has been drawing parallels between the arts and sciences, as in his recent solo show, in which figurative oil paintings were over laid with mathematical equations.’
A portent of the backlash unleashed by Earth Day hype, a West Village dog passes judgment on Natalie Portman's eco-fashion.
This is making the rounds of advertising and design, and deservedly so. Fun and educational, the way things should be.
I'm still working my way through a bunch of things from before the weekend, so for now, a brief illustration of how awareness of expense accounts can inflate business prices beyond the bounds of reason. As Crazy Eddie goes, so goes the world.
(Below the Javits pic--a selection of Crazy Eddie commercials, starting, of course, with the one where he's a superhero.)
Via Crazy Days and Nights, the story of a rock star (Gene Simmons of Kiss is the obvious guess) who refused to contribute to a charity fund raiser because he couldn't reap dividends:
So, what do you do when you are hosting a show and you have a member of a rock and roll super group come in? Well you try and get him to sign something for charity. I mean this group has been famous for 30 years and has licensed everything from condoms to coffins to eyeliner in order to make a buck. This singer and guitarist for the band was asked to autograph a guitar for a charity and he declined. Turns out he only signs things when he knows he will get a piece of the action. Since the show declined to give him a piece of the action, he declined to help the charity.
The Wooster Collective notes this urban art memorial to late Israeli cartoonist Dudu Geva:
Before his untimely death, Geva had been tongue in cheek - or rather tongue in bill - trying to convince Tel Aviv's mayor to liven up the city through weird, wacky and subversive art projects. One dream was to turn Tel Aviv into a city of ducks - an animal character he used often in his cartoons.
When Geva died, his dreams to liven up Tel Aviv with bizarre art installations and stunts lived on. The Duck was just one of the ideas.
Geva had been quoted saying that Tel Aviv was in dire need of decoration. "City Hall," he said, "is a lost cause. If a giant duck is placed on its roof, everything will be turned upside down. The idea is to bring joy to people's hearts and to make art a part of daily life."
Given what I've been working on the past couple weeks, this banner made me smile.
University work is done for now & a conference paper for this Friday looms, but I'll be wrapping up the Blog@ Superman series later today, followed by observations on design and meaning gleaned from the Comic Con.
If the purpose of the OLPC program was to give children the opportunity to share our experience with computers, well, it looks like they succeeded. Via Slashdot:
Many participants in OLPC's 'Give 1 Get 1' program of last November are now encountering what has come to be known as the 'stuck key' problem, in which one or more of the keys on their XO-1 laptop's built-in keyboard become stuck in an activated position, or are activated when adjacent keys are pressed. As of January 30th, the official word from OLPC is that the root cause of this problem is unknown because '[t]here are several manufacturers of the keyboards.' ('So far we don't know of any _reliable_ method of fixing the keyboard or the exact root cause.') It is unknown just how widespread this problem currently is, as the 30-day manufacturer's warranty has already expired for most G1G1 participants. However, the OLPC forums are full of reports. OLPC is currently deploying the XO-1 to children in Mongolia and Peru, as well as other developing nations. If OLPC is actively deploying units with known, critical hardware bugs, without a dedicated support infrastructure in place, to children who have never seen a computer before, should they still be considered to be a responsible organization? Did OLPC deploy their hardware too soon?"
And the giant roaming Ugly Doll still stands out amidst the whirl. Have some University stuff to do before I get back to more public writing, but suffice it to say I met a number of fascinating & creative folks today. More about the good stuff they're doing this week.
I've been rather busy this weekend talking to folks + scribbling away in the professional lounge (free soda and popcorn--yay!) at the New York Comic Con. The one thing I've lacked is an internet connection, since the Javitz Center charges an expense account rate of $30/day that I'm refusing to pay on principle. I've also still not picked up what I need to hook the Mac up to my phone, so in the end, I guess, it's my own $@#! fault.
I'll be posting some more on the weekend soon enough, but as I'm looking over Archie stuff--make the connection, socially entrepreneurial people; it's there--I couldn't help post this fascinating Earth-Archie picture of our fair city. It would seem to be about a block or so from my office were it not for the fact that this looks nothing like Earth-Prime's City Hall or environs. No matter, though, as it aptly conveys the image of New York to a young 'uns who have never been there--tall buildings packed together in a cosmopolitan international scene, hybridized with their own town or suburban experience. It reminds me of Times Square, actually, which mirrors what visitors expect New York to be.
My first reaction to the following dress, featured on the marketing material for the Met's superhero fashion exhibit, was that it was a blatant trademark infringement.
Then Counterfeit Chic explained the visual joke.
Genius.
The nineteenth century temperance movement promoted its message by telling melodramatic stories of the effects of male drunkenness on wives and children. However well intentioned, the campaign was a major cultural force in relegating women to a separate domestic sphere. In the iconography of that era, men are public critters--they work, drink, play sports, do politics. Women maintain the home, take care of children, need to be protected and, well, nag men into giving up their freedom to perform their household duties.
Below: a new beer mug designed to keep guys from getting drunk & engaging in domestic abuse. Because nothing will make a guy respect women more than a stern face shouting "Stop" every . . . time . . . he takes . . . an effin' . . . sip.
The image above is new promotional art for Friends of Lulu, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting women readership and participation in the comics industry. One of the refreshing things about FoL is that while other nonprofits are trying to amp up fundraising by pimping sexed-up images of women (a recurring subject of skewering on this site, you might have noticed), Friends of Lulu strives to provide an alternative to the hypersexual reductionism that is all too common in modern superhero comics. I enjoyed meeting their estimable prez Valerie D'Orazio at their New York Comic Con today, before my own panel on comics copyright.
"After eating Matzah accidentally baked with radioactive water in a microwave oven, this future heroine discovered that the molecules in her body had been charged with hyper energy."
For the entire roster of the Corps, check out their page on International Hero. My favorite is probably Shabbas Queen, whose electromagnetic "wand needs to recharge one day out of every seven."
A local report in the NY Times tells of a Bronx man whose image of the Pope draws people to his shop selling stuff emblazoned with the papal likeness. It's Baudrillard meets social enterprise.
Judged by the reactions of passers-by, it pleases many people with no tickets to an