TV in the 60s was a vast wasteland with occasional oasises of excellence — on the quarter hour. Here are three classic commercials. Little visual haikus with a commercial element.
Remember . . .
Rembrandt was paid to paint the burghers.
Michelangelo, the patron saints.
First, Blechman’s Christmas season promo for CBS.
Invent a malady and provide a cure.
Lastly and most fastly.
Match the dictator with his pre-political profession.
A. Hitler
B. Mussolini
C. Stalin
D. Pol Pot
E. Mao
1. Journalist
2. Art student
3. House painter
4. Librarian
5. Divinity student
Answers:
A3, B1, C5, D2, E4
Did you notice, no lawyers? WTF.
Shot the source photos for this in Bedford, Indiana in a place I heard referred to as Bosnia.
The component images of this photo remix were shot at a nicely overwrought hotel in French Lick, Indiana.
The emphasis on the external context of a work is most compelling in texts which combine, like a collage, artistic and non-artistic components (e.g., the realistic novel with its frequent digressions of a referential nature) or which employ special, “extra-textual” devices (e.g., the epilogue and prologue) to create a distance between the author and the work and explicitly to place the latter in a historical and social setting.
I thought
at first
that there was
some sort of a problem
of course
if you think there’s a problem
there IS a problem
even if that’s the only problem
which it isn’t
this problem has to do with depth
too much here
too little there
perched
nearly naked
on a rotten timber
above a fathomless hole
in the dark
with flat-soled salesman’s shoes on
best just not to move
really I’m lightly
food poisoned
from the buffet
in the guest suite
of a molded plastic products distributor
near the convention hall
where for three days
plastic paid all the bills
wait wait wait
if I just lie down
right where I am
and stay absolutely still
they’ll eventually find me
and put me in a room
with a tv
with a remote
which I can tune
to a nature show
with little ferret-like animals
cute ferret-like animals
(hell, they could be ferrets)
running all over
and I can get out of the bed
and climb on a chair
and put my eye
right up to the tv
and feel the electricity in my cheek
and see the bright little pixies
that hid my clothes
A little Elizabeth Taylor, a little Joan Miró, a little Arthur Schopenhauer, a little Alain de Botton.
Where are we before we’re born? The little death. Here in a little house.
Tears, cracks, rifts, schisms, borders, skins, interfaces. Real and imagined. Visible and invisible. Emotional and rational. Everyday. All the time.
