If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

I live in Laurel Canyon, a (very) mainly white neighbourhood of Los Angeles. Recently the front gardens have made a few additions:

So that’s the spread of BLM endorsement in a white neighbourhood. Many other parts of LA have been decorated with similar messages, as have many other parts of the world.

When Eric Garner died in 2014, BLM was generating around 40,000 tweets a day; in the last month that has risen to 8 million. Of course that growth has come as a result of an incredibly strong grassroots movement, inspired and fueled by many further instances of racial injustice.

But the other reason for the increase has been a masterstroke of branding. ‘Black Lives Matter’ is the name of the organisation, but it’s also the name of the rallying cry. So anyone can take it on without permission, giving it the energy it needs to spread far and wide without the need to go through committees or branding teams.

And that means it can live in the examples above, but also in brilliant work such as this piece of film:

The director, Meena Ayittey explains,

“There are no words that can describe that feeling in the pit of my stomach when I watched George Floyd being murdered on camera. I was driven by disbelief and anger when I conceived the idea for this project.

“The footage that we see of regular shootings of unarmed black men in the USA was more powerful than anything that I could film myself so I wanted to make that the main focus of the film. We have seen these police shootings so many times that it can be almost easy to become immune to the grotesque brutality embedded in these images.

“I wanted to catalogue the murders of these innocent people in a way that doesn’t shirk away from the real violence that people in our society are experiencing. The fury and of the speech by senator Flowers held the exact level of intensity I wanted. Her words expressing her anguish for her son’s life had a profound impact on me.

“For any Black or Brown person watching these images it’s like watching a family member, a father, an uncle, a son, being killed again and again. I feel that both the media and police in the USA in particular, often dehumanise these victims. I wanted to reverse this. I wanted people to remember that George Floyd, Philando Castle, Rodney King, Eric Garner, Michael Brown Jr and all the victims of police brutality had mothers. And to feel that insurmountable and devastating loss that anyone would feel after the murder of a family member.

“I totally agree that people can take the BLM movement on more easily. I also think that the enforcement of the lockdown has forced people to take stock of George Floyd’s murder and to assess their own feelings regarding the killings of Black people because there are none of the usual distractions such as commuting to work, getting kids to school etc. These killings have been going on for decades but this one feels different. The celebrities and brands that are pledging their alliance to BLM might be slightly hypocritical in some instances but I think that’s also giving the cause a lot of momentum.“

Excellent points.

If any of you are wondering how you might make a difference to that movement, the brief is always out there.

Take it on like Meena and my neighbours, and spread the word.

Are you concerned that you’re about to spontaneously lose your penis?

How apples go bad.

So you think you know the banjo?

Great artists at art school.

Classic movies as old books (thanks, J).

I was having a skim though the D&AD winners this afternoon. One of the big successes in the TV section is this fantastic piece of work from Mother and Tom Kuntz:

It’s funny, original, charming… and utterly depressing.

I get it: the point of advertising is to sell stuff, but IKEA, a company that proudly displays its sustainability credentials and initiatives on its website, is shaming people into feeling so bad about anything that’s a bit tatty, messy or ‘outdated’ that they replace it, at a further cost to the environment.

First, lots of people have imperfect furniture, scratches in their wallpaper (does IKEA even sell wallpaper?) and messy homes, and that’s OK. Do we really have to make an expensive piece of mass communication that says these things are supposed to make you feel bad/guilty/like a failure? That’s a pretty shitty thing to do, especially when people are busy trying to make ends meet and bring up their kids and keep their relationships going. So they’re also supposed to feel shit about their ageing, but perfectly serviceable table? Or the mess that exists around their children? Or their mirror that’s 90% fine?

How about we ease back on the expensive, beautifully-made guilt trip? It’s just corporate bullying, the equivalent of the nasty guy at school who takes the piss out of your ‘not-quite-cool-enough’ T-shirt: “Come on, you sad bastard, get a new one! I know the other one works fine, and maybe you even like it, but really, your T-shirt, and by extension you, are just not good enough”.

And ‘This place is small; it’s barely a house‘? Really? Really? Shaming people for living in a small house? Imagine a human being doing that. You’d think they were a right arsehole, and you’d be right. Hey, IKEA and Mother, some people have to live in small house (or – shudder – a flat) because that’s what they can afford. Fuck off for calling them out for it, no matter how cool your grime track might be.

Second, the environmental side of this is really depressing. Sure, patch up the wallpaper and tidy up the mess, but encouraging people to spend their money swapping out perfectly functional stuff for new, resource-sapping replacements? That’s the message for the bling-bling era, or back in the old days of Chuck Out Your Chintz. But it’s now 2020, and we really don’t need explicit messages of pointless consumption, especially from a company that supposedly stands against the further exploitation of the environment.

I haven’t been paying much attention to this year’s advertising awards, but the idea that a responsible, intelligent jury would hold this up as what we should aspire to is truly sad. It’s a great ad for a bad thing, and that actually means it’s a terrible ad.

Could we all grow up a bit, take a bit of notice of the chaos that’s going on around us, and be more responsible about what we put out into the world? And if we can’t manage to clear that fairly low bar, how about not giving the bad stuff shiny prizes?

(And I only wrote about this very subject last week, FFS.)

Remember when Extinction Rebellion brought London to a standstill?

Or sprayed fake blood on the Treasury Building?

Or organised a die-in in New York?

According the ‘About’ section of their website, ‘Extinction Rebellion is an international movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience in an attempt to halt mass extinction and minimise the risk of social collapse’.

So why is their latest ad so at odds with this brand of bravery and blood?

It’s the usual plinky music, softly-softly, don’t-scare-the-horses climate change ‘ad’ that will preach to the choir while giving them no specific action to take.

It has taken talent, time and money to produce something will make very little difference to anything, even with the Whoopi Goldberg VO.

Where’s the piss and vinegar? Where’s the fire in the belly? Where’s the block-Oxford-Circus-with-a-boat never-say-die attitude?

Because that’s what that’s what got us to sit up and take notice, and that’s what might actually make a difference to this issue.

Either they’re making a weird, twisty double bluff, or something’s cut them off at the knees.

I hope it’s the former…

Statues have been dominating the news lately.

Should they stay or should they go? Are they an offensive example of how terrible people can use their ill-gotten gains to build parks and museums to secure a positive legacy, or a reasonable physical appreciation of kind philanthropists and great leaders? Should ‘the people’ decide if they’re allowed to stay up, or is that a question for the government?

Some have suggested they all go into a museum, whether good or bad, alongside an explanatory note that allows anyone the opportunity to make up their own mind about the subject’s relative pros and cons. Others have provided their own lists of who should be allowed to remain, who should be removed, and who deserves a new statue of themselves.

But whatever we end up doing, it’s fair to say that a lot of people are against the celebration of anyone who did bad stuff. The idea that the statues act as a cover up for their problematic behaviour seems to be the really offensive part, as if the rich can secure a positive legacy through corrupt means.

Which brings me to the advertising industry’s celebration of the Fearless Girl statue.

It’s won so many awards and inspired so much praise, which is odd because it was paid for by a client few of us can name.

Anyway, here’s an explanation of why it was commissioned, and why it’s actually just another one of those statues that are currently being vilified:

Fearless Girl was commissioned by State Street Global Advisors (SSGA), a trillion-dollar financial services firm, to commemorate International Women’s Day and promote the fund’s “Gender Diversity Index.”

SSGA’s blatant hypocrisy was revealed in October, 2017, when the firm was fined $5 million for underpaying women and minorities and ordered to settle with over 300 women following an audit by the Department of Labor.

The Village Voice delivered another blow to SSGA’s virtuosity, reporting: “The statue is meant to draw attention to a larger initiative by SSGA, which announced today that it will be encouraging companies it invests in to have more women on their boards of directors. A quick perusal of SSGA’s own leadership turns up five women out 28 top executives, making its leadership 82 percent male (and 96.5 percent white).”

Just another expensive way to whitewash endemic discrimination.

Is it a good look for us to award it so highly, celebrating it time and again as the best this industry can produce? Should the record of prizes and praise remain? This article suggests that the Cannes jurors knew about the hypocrisy before they gave it four Grand Prix.

Have a look at the case study.

You might think, ‘So what? Look how many women and girls felt empowered by it’. Sure, but this is like Donald Trump playing to potential black voters by sending out a tweet against racism. You could rally around it if you like, but if you saw it for the sleight of hand it really was, you’d dismiss it in a second.

An unfortunate number of people fell for the scam. Every positive share of the statue on social media contributed to the number of people who (if they bothered to find out who was behind it) thought better of State Street Global Advisors. Yes, the same company that discriminated against over 300 women and minorities and maintained an 82% male and 96.5% white board.

Hats over to whoever did this, because they pulled off something amazing. To get that many people to think well of a bunch of utter arseholes takes great skill. But their victory is a defeat for the integrity of our industry.

You might laugh at the idea that advertising could have integrity, but that’s the problem: the success of Fearless Girl makes us look like craven, money-grabbing idiots, happy to whitewash sexism for anyone willing to slide enough cash our way. Then the rest of us award the results.

If you were involved why not give the prizes back? No one will think you’re a worse creative, but plenty will think you’re a better person.

Monumental hip hop archive.

Finding your own consciousness through writing.

Remembering ‘Crash’, the worst winner of Best Picture.

Why auction houses are looking for sneakers.

The most efficient way to destroy the universe:

How MedMen, the Apple of pot, collapsed.

The story of The Sims.

Groundhog Day is a horror movie.

Why men point guns at their own dicks.

Send some poo anywhere in the world (thanks, A).

Stunning quilts.

A Facebook group for people who look a bit like Adam Sandler (thanks, A).

Excellent animation (thanks, J):

Nostalgia is our new normal.

Creative and sex workers support each other through the pandemic.

Pac-Man turns 40.

Best films of the 2000s.

American car interiors (thanks, J).

Videos on some interesting deep shit.

An oral history of Mad Max: Fury Road

Filmmakers at the movies.

Before And After The Marshall Mathers LP.

The three sides of risk.

All about my favourite movie.

The weirdest videos on YouTube: