I Just finished reading…
…The Stewart Lee book, ‘How I Escaped My Certain Fate‘.
There was a passage in it that caught my eye:
‘Whether something is a homage or an act of theft depends on the relative fame, status and wealth of the homager and the homagee. When advertising scum rip off Bergman or Wenders or some obscure brit artist for a campaign and say that it was a homage, the real effect is that simply by virtue of the mass audience their adverts achieve as opposed to the minimal audience enjoyed by most actual art, it immediately renders the subject material a cliche by association rather than validating it in some way.’
I have to admit that I can see where he’s coming from. You do a nice little scene in your classic movie and someone ‘homages’ it up the arse, suddenly transforming it into a work of turdage.
And it’s hard to justify. Someone creates a little bit of genius, you borrow it and it becomes, to some degree, a scene out of an ad that you borrowed because you couldn’t think of something yourself and in the process devalues the original work to the point of shitterama.
Instead of choosing a recent example of this, I thought I’d find the highest ranking film in the IMDB top 250 and its most pathetic rip-off.
I know most of you are too young to remember this, but the throbbing cunt-faced cheek of this ad was the talk of the town in the mid-nineties:
You might also be too young to be aware of the point of homage:
Anyway, I guess that’s the tricky thing about art: once it’s out there, it’s out there, and there ain’t much you can do about it.
UPDATE: Sorry, I didn’t realise that the Schindler’s clip I originally chose had no red girl in it. The new one is much better.
I like Stewart Lee, but he can’t write for toffee.
I think you might enjoy his book, Gordon.
I have always found that Peugeot ad to be particularly vile.
I can’t understand why any sane human would buy that much ball.
I remember that and it pisses me off today as much as it ever did. Which is a lot. I mean who in their right mind thinks that is OK. Forget about disrespect to the artist, how about not wanting your brand to be associated with the holocaust! How many suits had to sit and nod approval to get that through. And yet people loved it. I’d like to gas the lot of them. And don’t even get me started on M People.
I’m surprised there hasn’t been a viral ripoff of this for a car company: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DSyEarRAKo
Or perhaps there has, and no-one cared.
No, fuck that.
Stewart Twat can cunt off.
Many of the best ads ever made were ripped off (let’s not get all posh and use French words) from films/TV shows/paintings/etc.
John Webster had an entire presentation showing where he ripped his ideas from.
Paul Arden made no bones about getting the Silk Cut idea from art.
Holstien Pils was Dead men don’t wear plaid.
Too many ads to mention came via YouTube clips.
We as an industry rip off, big fucking wow.
don’t see much of a similarity really! young girl in red coat could be as much from don’t look now as it could be from
Stewart Lee’s new book is excellent and one of the funniest things I have read. I really enjoyed the expression ‘shit-on-wall svengali’.
Yes, that Peugeot ad is vile (but for so many more reasons than ripping off Spielberg’s visual trick. But what really struck me as I was watching it was “look at the budget on that!” It had en earthquake, and Eastern European revolution (with tanks and everything!) and an elephant in the desert (with a hot air balloon ‚Ä쬆and for about 3 seconds!) All that for the launch of a mid-market saloon car. Wow. How times change.
We are forced to rip something off. Clients & Creative Directors are so unimaginative, frightened of risk and scared of losing their jobs that they can’t by an ad without ref. We can all think up something utterly new (a spaceman with dragons for legs for example) but unless we can show these two idiots what it will be “like” they will not buy it. The fact that it is like something else automatically makes it a rip off.
Anon 08:34 – It’s quite obviously a Schindler’s List reference. Don’t Look Now had an unseen face (that turns out to be something else) in a red hoodie, while both of these clips have pretty girls in nice red coats.
And Mick, I don’t think anyone is disputing what you’re saying but your attitude (and, let’s face it, the attitude of almost the entire industry, including myself) is what Stewart is complaining about. Ultimately it probably isn’t a huge issue, I mean you can’t help thinking about other things when you think about things. But it’s a bit of a shame if anyone watches SL and thinks, ‘Oh yeah, a little girl like in that fucking awful Peugeot ad’, rather than, ‘Oh, that was a bit mawkish of Spielberg. I think he’s rather shitting on the arms of his own movie’.
I read this post last night, shortly before going to bed. I’m not sure what was worse, my vivid and harrowing dream, where I played a Nazi shooting little children mercilessly in the back of the head right in front of their families, or waking up to the sound of ‘Search for the Hero Inside Yourself’ by M People, playing in my head.
I disagree about an ‘homage’ bastardising the original. Often I think it heightens the impact of the original. Of course this depends on how it was done, but in the case of Spielberg versus Small, I just think ‘that’s like that kid in Schindler’s List’, and no more.
Mr Positive – I was thinking the same thing – money to burn.
Mr Positive,
That’s a self-propelled gun, not a tank.
What’s the new tv peugeot puzzle thing got to do with anything? It just talks twaddle for 30 secs before slapping on a pun about a missing piece. What a load of shite
i first heard the flower duet on a british airways ad. and the association for me will forever be thus as it was forced down my neck through broadscale media.
as nice as the ads were, i feel i have been robbed of a voluntary artistic association that should really be my right.
it wasn’t a homage to the song. it was a cheapening of it.
i imagine i’ll survive. but still…
i hope the beatles aren’t eventually seen by a generation as a backdrop to selling.
Your hope is in vain…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMXhtFik-vI
inevitability.
don’t you just love it?
I think Nicolas Roeg used the girl in the red coat before ‘Schindler’s List’ in ‘Don’t Look Now’.
And before that, Charles Perrault who wrote,’ Red Riding Hood.’
My point being, that if you go far enough back, and look hard enough, very little is completely original.
But Lee’s point remains.
Of course there are no original ideas (technically). But to steal someone’s work and send it out broadscale with different associations is cynical and unartistic.
What we do, however, is business, and our agenda is not the same as the artist.
But there’s no point denying it. Stewart Lee is right. Only people in advertising would disagree.
Personally, I agree with him. But I don’t really give a fuck.
My spaceman with dragons for legs is original.
Yikes Ben – the full 3 minute version of the Peugeot ad! This got shortlisted at Cannes – and when it was screened the auditorium went berserk. The longer it went on (and – at 180 seconds – it goes on and on) the more hostile the audience became. If the creatives responsible were there I’m guessing they were praying it wouldn’t win a prize – if they’d had to go up on stage to collect it I think they’d have been lynched. Or worse.
It was the “Frank Lowe” year. It got ugly.
Wasn’t it someone whose name is an anagram of Merk Wank?
Surely no client would be stupid enough to pay homage to a little girl killed in a concentration camp in their car advert, would they?
I believe it was.
I’d be shocked if that ad sold more cars.
I remember the people around me (who aren’t in the industry) being disgusted by it.
What really irks me is the fact that it attempts equate all of these struggles with the trails of ‘Mr traveling salesman’.
And I think that this is where Mr Lee has a point. Advertising can be so heavy handed in the way that it borrows. It’s a copy and paste approach to doing things.
spaceman with dragons legs is built on the idea of a spaceman (which is an amazing idea, when you think of it) and a dragon (again, no dragons exist, it was a brilliant creative concept that has lasted forever)
what you have done is combine two ideas – the head of one creature and the body of another. Which I’m afraid is an idea as old as civilisation itself – think of the greek gods. Or more recently, griffins.
I’m afraid there is nothing original except a slightly different combination and application of existing concepts.
if you said ‘a moonhouse with grecian man-vaginas’, then it might be more original. but still not really.
I almost don’t want to ask because I bought the Lee book for my hols which has now been postponed a fortnight if you must know (thanks for asking)so whilst I haven’t read it yet and don’t want to spoil it too much (deep breath) does he go on to say what an acceptable form of homage is?
I’ve always said that advertising is at best a serpent eating it’s own tail and at worst a serpent sucking it’s own cock. But arguably the only people who’d be remotely precious about an ad man “quoting” their favourite “art” movie are middle-class dinner party wankers. I agree we should all strive for 100% originality at all times, but this is an argument based entirely on snobbery, isn’t it?
Fucking shit sorry about apostrophes btw. Just noticed. I keep telling clients it costs extra to proof read.
He goes on about it A LOT.
Check this clip out for a big chunk of what he’s saying:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YE9Kthyaco
But I don’t think it’s based on snobbery. It’s making an observation that borrowing something then puts it in a different context, affecting the way we perceive the original piece.
But it might make it better. Who knows?
Giving products a pretentious frigging halo is the oldest trick in the book. The old Hovis ad? That John Lewis crap a few months ago?
All the more reason to get on with making Schindler’s List: The Musical – it’ll make Les Miserables look like Carousel.
Sorry about the mix-up, Dr Evil.
Valium no prescription….
Valium no prescription….