Ew. Seriously? So funny.

The insurance company Geico has been producing funny and memorable commercials for a while now. Some people say that their strategy of running several different types of spots at once is counter-productive to maintaining a unified, memorable message. I think what they're trying to do is throw out a bunch of stuff in the hopes that ONE will stick instead of putting all of their eggs in one basket.

It's a strategy that works for me. I don't like the gecko, especially the commercial with Richard Simmons. I don't care for the pig either. I can't tell you how many times I've seen those commercials, but I still have no recollection of how the images tie to the message or what the message is.

But I think they hit it out of the park with the talking heads "we needed to save money" line of ads. The opening is always the same: a person or couple sits down talking to an off-camera interviewer about how money is tight and so they need to cut back. Then they propose a ridiculous solution to their money problems: karaoke dating service, security panther, pet possum.

But I think this one tops them all:

 

The genius of these commercials is that at the start they could be for anything. The talking head interview is such a cliché that just about any product could and has used it. So from the beginning we're set up to at least take the commercial at face value. Then the people leap to an absurd conclusion that they think will solve their problem.

"Ew. Seriously? So Gross" is the best of the bunch though because it taps into a more generalized anxiety than the others: people's concerns about their weight and their ability to fit in. We're a heavyset nation that is becoming more and more concerned with shedding fat and becoming more active to compensate for our mainly sedentary lives. You're very unlikely to hear people say these days, "You know, I think I need to sit around the house and put on a few more pounds." We're much more likely to say we need to get up, move around, and lose some of this weight.

But we're even more likely to just kick back and reach for a handful of snacks. So we identify strongly with this guy's desire to create a healthy lifestyle and understand that he needs some motivation. The beauty of it is that the motivation comes in the form of these middle school girls. Adolescence is probably the time when we were most conscious of our appearance. Appearance was status in those days. We were sure it led to the things we wanted and needed most - a high position on the social ladder and a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Now that we're older (and interested in buying things like insurance), appearance has slipped down the list of important things in our lives. What better trigger to get us back to that adolescent emotional core than a bunch of adolescents whose sole purpose is to remind you that you need to lay off of the fatty stuff?

The set-up and execution in the commercial is great. A medium shot of the guy in his T-shirt, searching the fridge for a snack. This shot allows us to see him reach in and pull out a huge sandwich, sniffing it and smiling. Suddenly a reverse shot of him with the middle school girls in the background. "Ew. Seriously? So gross."Cut to a closeup of the guy. Disappointment lingers, then he reluctantly puts the sandwich back.

As he reaches into the fridge to put the sandwich back, we cut to a bird's-eye close-up of another hand continuing that action, setting down a big plate of waffles and bacon. My first thought was "Yum." But as soon as that thought could enter my head, we cut to the girls again in a medium long shot. "Ew. Seriously. That is so gross."

As much as the commercial is playing with the idea that older people need to give up fatty foods, it also plays on the idea that the only form of communication that middle schools girls use is curt and repetitive phrases. Middle aged men and women are are the target audience and are likely to have or to know young people who talk in this irritatingly abrupt manner and can feel superior to them conversationally even as the young girls make them fell inferior in their eating habits.

Returning to the commercial, once again the man cannot have the food he wants and ruefully grabs a menu, but with a smaller pause than the first time. Before he opens it, we cut to him biting into a burger. I love the fact that he doesn't eat this burger in the restaurant or wait until he gets home. He's eating it in the car shamefully as though he can't even be around other people. This moment of silent shame and perhaps guilty pleasure is interrupted by the flash of a cameraphone. "Ew. Seriously? Dude, that is so totally--"

"Gross. I know," says the man as he tosses the burger into the sack, a blob of mustard smearing his face. The director and editor of the commercial know their comedy and have managed to make the most of the pacing in this thirty second spot. The reaction time to the girls has sped up each time we return to them. In the first scene, there's a moment of hesitation after "So gross." In the second scene, he immediately reaches for the menu after "So gross." But the third time, he abandons the burger before the girl can finish.

The man has got to hear those messages of disgust over and over again until he says it for himself. Not unlike an audience who has to hear the company's message over and over before it becomes ingrained in part of their responses. Geico picked a winner with this one - a relatable commercial that pokes fun of its target audience in a way that lets them be self-deprecating while at the same time making fun of a younger demographic so the target audience can feel superior.

Well played, Geico. Well played.

Next up: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (maybe at a dollar theatre near you)

When Spoilers Spoil!

Are spoilers a good thing or a bad thing? Spoiler alert: I'm going to have it both ways. Here's the podcast!

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Click here if you'd like to read a report of the Christenfeld and Leavitt study.
Click here if you'd like to read A.V. Club writer Zack Handlen's thoughts on spoilers.
Click here if you're tired of spoilers and want to watch cute videos of cats. Spoiler alert: Cats will fall off of things.

Community Slashes Mediocrity for 20 Hit Points

From the very beginning of the Cate Blanchett-sounding Lord of the Rings-inspired opening, I knew the "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" episode of Community was going to be a keeper.

You see, I’m a bit of a geek. I played Dungeons and Dragons in grade school and middle school. Collected comics in my early teens, decided it was uncool in my later teens, and then decided it was okay to admit that I missed it and started collecting again in my thirties. I read the Lord of Rings series, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, the Magician series, The Dragonlance series, the MythAdventures…You get the picture.

Either you looked at those titles and nodded approvingly or shook your head and rolled your eyes (as my wife will), but you know just from the titles that these books have a devoted little community of people who know and understand the characters in these books like they know their own family. Much like the community of people who are devoted to Community.

Community is a show like Louie in a couple of ways: it can shift in tone very rapidly but naturally and also an audience does not know what they’re likely to get when they tune in from week to week. “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons” fits into a season that has already featured shows that used the DNA of movies like Space Camp, Adaptation, The Terminator, and The Secret Garden. It borrowed the conventions of thriller/action movies, claymation Christmas specials, and Just Say No programs. It’s a show that continually surprises by showing us familiar cinematic and television tropes in unfamiliar ways.

So it was absolutely appropriate that “AD&D” opens by recalling the epic sweep of Peter Jackson’s fantasy trilogy. This kind of majesty is what players of the game hope to create in their roleplaying. Unfortunately, what we look like instead is Chang, made up in blackface, overacting like a bad Shakespearean actor: “I am BRUTELLATOPS! The magician! Ha ha ha hee hee. Magic user, baby. What?!” Much of the humor of this episode comes from the incongruity of the ordinary situation – people sitting around a table – being elevated to mythic and legendary proportions.

The post-production sound effects such as the unsheathing of swords and the whizzing of arrows, the dramatic camera moves such as the great boom shot that swings down and catches Abed in closeup while he narrates the adventure, the non-diagetic mournful soundtrack as Chang’s character dies and the attendant slow-motion walk to Abed as Chang turns in his character’s sheet, the low angle shot of Pierce on his throne of janitorial supplies – all of these cinematic tricks make the mundane business of sitting at a table and talking larger than life.  This exaggeration is funny because, really, how hard is it to sit around a table and roll some dice?

But gamers laugh because, yes, we know how silly this looks from the outside but outsized opera is actually what’s happening in our imagination. “AD&D” demonstrates how powerful imagination can be in the scene where Annie/Hector seduces the elf maiden. First the story is shocking and gripping enough that the group is either horrified that the seemingly-innocent Annie could describe the scene in such vivid detail (Shirley), intrigued that she could have such a dirty mind (Jeff), or eager to take notes for a future seduction of their own (Troy). Yet the real power of this scene comes entirely from the minds of the audience who must supply their own version of what is happening during the seduction since the scene plays out without dialogue. “AD&D” allows the audience to make the seduction as epic as they want.

All of which brings me to the real beauty of this episode. “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons” shows us that what all of us want to feel is that our lives are epic. The hyper-reality of the episode is kind of like how we see ourselves in our minds. Neil sees himself, not as someone who has been given a cruel nickname, but as a lowly peasant whose destiny is intertwined with his girth. Jeff sees himself, (SPOILER) not as someone who thoughtlessly gave someone else a cruel nickname, but as a knight who must find redemption at all costs. Pierce sees himself, not as someone who got left out of a game, but as a deposed king who must reclaim his power.

I think most of us want to be the stars of our own movies. It just makes everything more fun. As Neil says at the end of the episode, “That was the best game I ever played in my life.” It is better to use our imagination and our ego to make believe that we are the heroes of a mythic quest. Because believing it begins to make it real.

Next up: Where you watch makes a difference

Louie, Like Abraham, Wrestles with God

Louie can be puzzling the first time you watch it. Louie is not a sitcom. It’s not a drama, it’s not a stand-up concert, it’s not an art film. Louie is just an experience like few others on television right now.

I have to admit that when I watched the first couple of episodes, I felt let down. Louie did not act like other tv shows I was watching. The comedy club footage made it seem like it was going to be like Seinfeld, but the stories weren’t really stories and they didn’t have jokes. The character of Louie wasn’t even always likeable, with his excessive profanity and extremely harsh and out of left-field “I’m just telling it like it is” observations. I wanted this Louis CK (star, director, writer, and editor of the series), but instead I got a guy who calls a kid who can’t open his milk “a little b***h.” Not to his face, mind you, but it still put me off a little.

I’m not sure what made me give the show another chance. I think it was because I wanted to watch a little tv, and Louie was the only short tv show in my Netflix queue. Something hit me when I watched “Playdate,” and that was that this show wasn’t trying to be tv, with some contrived plot and wacky neighbor – the kind of show Louis CK deliberately shows us he rejected in the second season episode “Oh, Louie.” This was a show where the stories are little filmed observations, sketches of moments, scenes of everyday life. Louie wanted to show life as it is – fragmentary, funny, puzzling, alienating, touching, evolving. It was TV not tv.

Of all which brings me to “God.” While the opening scene in the men’s room and the stand up about God’s relationship with Abraham were funny and set up the episode nicely, I want to focus on the main story. (I’m also skipping over these sections because they’re primarily where the rated R stuff comes into play.) In the main story – and there are spoilers ahead – we see nun teaching a young version of Louie learning about the torment and crucifixion of Jesus. He and his friend are not taking this discussion very seriously, which leads the nun to bring in a medical expert the next day to discuss in precise and graphic detail the physical suffering of Jesus. Louie’s friend is brought up to be the stand-in for Jesus, and at the end of the lesson, the doctor asks Louie to help him to crucify his friend for real.

It was at this point in the episode that I got very nervous. By this time in the season, grown-up Louie has been enough of a wise guy and had enough weird experiences that I honestly thought there was at least a possibility that young Louie would go through with it. Maybe he would think it was all a big set-up or that it was going to be some kind of magic trick. In any event, he doesn’t do it, at which point the doctor asks Louie why, if he can’t torture this rotten little kid, does he torture Christ with his sinning?

This question gives Louie nightmares as he remembers all of the sinning that he has done. In a moment of religious epiphany and sympathy he runs to the church, removes the nails from the crucified icon of Jesus and cradles it in his arms, begging for forgiveness. This moment was one of the most touching and deeply religious things I have ever seen on the television. You can see how, if you were expecting a traditional sitcom, you would totally be thrown for a loop.

In the morning, the nun cannot see Louie’s intentions, only his actions. She tells Louie’s mother that he has vandalized the church and suggests he be punished at home. Later, when Louie explains to his mother why he acted the way he did, Louie’s mother is horrified that the church would terrify her son that story in such a manner. She herself is not a Christian, but she recognized the importance of religion in other people’s lives and didn’t want to deprive her son of that aspect of his life. She doesn’t believe in Christ, but she does believe that his moral message of treating everyone kindly is the best path to follow.

So at this point, this episode has shown how a boy found his faith, how his faith was summarily dismissed by church leaders, and how his faith was replaced by a kind of humanism. How then to wrap all of this up? Louis CK leaves us with two small ambiguous endings, and this ambiguity makes the entire episode even better. After telling her son that there is no God, that it's enough just to be good to people, Louie's mom decides to take him out for some donuts. Except the car won't start, and they’re forced to sit there outside of the church. Just a coincidence? Another crappy event in an already crappy morning? Or is it some small sign from the petty God that Louis C.K. describes in his monologue that Louie and his mother cannot leave Him?

The second interesting coda is a very short shot where a volunteer nails Jesus back on the cross. Why include this shot? Does Louis CK just want to show that the statue was fixed after he tore it down? Does he mean it as a commentary on all of us, that we still willingly crucify Jesus? Is he participating in the debate of whether the appropriate symbol for the Christian church is one of Christ suffering (reminding us of our sinful nature) or of an empty cross (reminding us of absolution and the promise of rebirth)?

I think the answer to all of these questions depends on the person viewing the episode. Louie (and by extension Louis CK) comes across as agnostic, deeply suspicious of religion but not discounting it entirely. At the beginning of the episode, the questions he asks the man who is about to risk physical injury for “heaven” are the same questions any agnostic would ask a devoutly religious person: “Why would you do that?” “Why would you take that risk?”

These questions get at the heart of religious doubt. What purpose does religious worship serve? What happens if you devote a life to a God who ultimately doesn’t exist? What if you discover you’ve worshipped the wrong god or followed the wrong teachings or tried and failed to worship in a way that was pleasing to your god?

In this episode, Louie struggles to understand his relationship with God, in the same way that in other episodes he struggles to understand his relationships with his family, his friends, his kids, his neighbors, and everything else around him. In Louie, these struggles are honest, blunt, often funny, and sometimes not. Each show is an ambitious effort to depict an everyman’s struggle with existence. He may not even understand the fight and he certainly doesn’t always win it. But that’s what elevates this supposed “sitcom” into a rare and unique work of art.

Next up: Community: "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" (Available on Hulu Plus)

Turn on and tune in to avoid dropping out

How do you tell when a movie or TV show is any good? That’s an important question, although the answer is very subjective. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure (see the success of Jersey Shore).

Let me tell you how I go about answering the question of quality. The first thing that I try to discern is whether what I’m watching is a movie or a film, tv or TV. Those terms may seem synonymous (or just a matter of capitalization), and for most people they are. I use them to make a distinction about what the work is trying to do. A movie and tv are primarily intended to entertain; a film and TV try to illuminate some facet of the human condition. Movies and tv are lowbrow; the others are highbrow. Film and TV are literature; the others are just stories.

Does that mean that one is all bad and the other is all good? Well, there are times you need a snack and times you need a meal. At the end of a long week, I don’t want to sit down and watch Schindler’s List. On the other hand, a steady diet of nothing but How I Met Your Mother is no better than a steady diet of candy with no fruits or vegetables. (Although such a diet would be legen – wait for it – dary.) Watching too many movies and tv shows leaves you intellectually stunted while too many films and TV shows make you pretentious.

Knowing the filmmakers’ aims is important for setting expectations and gauging the amount of effort you'll have to put into your viewing. For example, the final few episodes of the sitcom Mad about You got very serious as the couple that had engaged in several seasons of lighthearted banter and kooky adventures suddenly began to grow emotionally apart and contemplate having extramarital affairs. This was not the entertainment my new wife and I tuned in to watch.  We wanted tv and got TV.

But sometimes having chocolate in the peanut butter (peanut butter in the chocolate?) is a good thing. I went into The Dark Knight wanting a movie about a guy with a utility belt who fights crime in the dark, and what I got was that AND a thoughtful movie about the nature of truth and morality. The film gave me everything I expected and more.

All of this is just to say that before you judge a work on the big or small screen, I would encourage you to take a moment to align your mindset with the filmmakers’ intention. This will prevent you snobs from delivering a kneejerk dismissal of Friends with Benefits and you slobs from trashing An Education before you see it. If you’ve done your best to see the film in the right frame of mind and you still don’t like it, by all means say so, but at that point you’ll have better reasoning behind your review.

Next up: The Louie episode I promised in my last post; I just needed to get this discussion out of the way first. Oh, by the way, I think this episode would be RATED R if it were in the theatres because of the opening scene before the credits. Louie is filled with profanity and R rated discussions of sex; however, this episode really stuck under my skin, and I want to explore why.

Taking the Blogging Plunge

As a high school teacher developing a course called Film as Literature, I thought it would be helpful to look at my own feelings about the screen stories that are a part of my life. Although I am an avid reader, I think it's probably safe to say that I have "read" far more movies and television shows than I have books. In fact, I've been keeping track of the number of movies and books I have "read" so far this summer, and movies outpace books two to one.

When I was in college, I tried to have a book discussion group. At the first meeting, we were on top of things and discussing character motivation and themes, but by the second meeting, Book Club was already an excuse to get together and to party. Talking about books is often a bust.

I don't think the same is true about movies and television though. It's very hard to connect to my Facebook friends about things I've read, but a status update about a movie I just watched will always catch a few comments. Movies and television, at least for the time being, still have a positive socializing effect. They give us something to talk about when we can't talk about anything else. On one of my all-time favorite shows, Seinfeld, TV is the only thing that makes George Costanza's relationship with his mother work: "You know, I think we really need to be in front of a television set. You take T.V. out of this relationship, it is just torture." (See http://www.seinology.com/scripts/script-107.shtml if you don't believe me. What a world where we have Seinfeld scripts on demand.) 

Around my house, we're in front of the TV a lot, but not because we can't stand each other. We watch TV shows and movies separately and as a family because we enjoy them, but we do it very passively. We watch and laugh or get tense or cry (mostly I cry; the rest of my family doesn't share this crying-at-movies trait with me), but at the end we say, "That was good/bad/okay/whatever," and leave it at that. As I said, passive.

My wife and I have been pushing our kids and ourselves to do more - to avoid being boring Boyers. Go, do, be, create. This blog is an attempt to avoid being a boring Boyer. I want to develop a method for analyzing the strengths and weakness of the screen stories on television and in film, and I want to sharpen my writing skills. No more passivity.

I want to discuss the things in movies and television that excite, bother, and move me and to explore how and why they affect me in the way that they do. I don't want to sit blankly in front of a screen; I want to analyze what's going on, to learn more about the craft of screen storytelling, and to share those insights with people who are similarly interested.

I hope you'll be there with me - correcting me, challenging me, inspiring me, and perhaps even agreeing with me.

And now I can totally rationalize watching more TV.

Next up: Troll 2 (available on Netflix Watch Instantly).