37 lines
2.6 KiB
Plaintext
37 lines
2.6 KiB
Plaintext
2wenty minutes of goo
|
|
<p>Went to see the latest Harry Potter flick last night and got —<br />
|
|
no, I won’t say “assaulted”, I’ll say “oozed on” by the infomercials<br />
|
|
Regal Cinemas started running earlier this year, some sludge called<br />
|
|
“The 2wenty” that tries to be trendy and hip and cool and attractive<br />
|
|
and fails miserably on all four counts.</p>
|
|
<p>I deduce from the existence of this thing that either (a) ad<br />
|
|
executives have the brains of planaria, or (b) they’re engaged in a<br />
|
|
conspiracy to waste their clients’ money. The 2wenty isn’t even the<br />
|
|
kind of in-your-face bad that leaves an impression — it’s just<br />
|
|
unbelievably lame-ass bland, a kind of elevator music dressed up<br />
|
|
in video effects.</p>
|
|
<p>It’s all the more unbelievable that this thing got produced<br />
|
|
because, presumably, it was done by people who get paid to be current<br />
|
|
with popular culture. I’m just a 47-year-old white computer geek but<br />
|
|
it is dead clear that even <em>I</em> have way more street cool than<br />
|
|
whatever “creatives” they found to put the 2wenty<br />
|
|
together, fo’shizzle. How did that <em>happen</em>? On the<br />
|
|
production values alone they have to be sinking at least $300K a pop<br />
|
|
into these, and they can’t out-hip one single aging baby-boomer?<br />
|
|
Geez…I think I’m offended as much by their incompetence as by<br />
|
|
its results.</p>
|
|
<p>Neil Postman and Naomi Klein and their ilk have made a growth<br />
|
|
industry out of running around whining about consumer culture, how<br />
|
|
it’s all a spectacle designed to distract people from what’s really<br />
|
|
important. Never mind that their definition of “what’s really<br />
|
|
important” is tired Marxist bullshit…if <em>this</em> is<br />
|
|
representative of what the merchants of spectacle are pumping out,<br />
|
|
they have no worries. The 2wenty couldn’t do an effective job of<br />
|
|
distracting a hyperactive three-year-old. It’d be more likely<br />
|
|
to put the tyke to sleep.</p>
|
|
<p>Ah well. I look on the bright side. When Big Media wastes money<br />
|
|
and putative talent on this scale, it’s good news for the rest of us.<br />
|
|
It’s resources they’re not spending on screwing up our culture or our<br />
|
|
legal/political system in more effective ways.</p>
|
|
<p>UPDATE: After some discussion, my wife and I think we may have identified the 2wenty’s target demographic — early-teenage girls of the mall-rat persuasion.</p>
|