{"id":643,"date":"2005-11-21T17:57:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-21T22:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nolanpro.com\/wordpress\/?p=302"},"modified":"2005-11-21T17:57:00","modified_gmt":"2005-11-21T22:57:00","slug":"riots-water-balloons-and-video-games-oh-my","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.granateseed.com\/futilepodcast\/2005\/11\/21\/riots-water-balloons-and-video-games-oh-my\/","title":{"rendered":"Riots, Water balloons, and Video Games Oh MY!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"<\/a>A few weeks ago I saw a rather artistic looking commercial. It was “artistic” in the sense that there was clearly care taken to consider a film stock and to set up and film the commercial on whole. Essentially the setting is sort of a ghetto “war torn” like city area mostly in grays and blues. As the activity of the commercial begins we see children in small groups become engaged in what escalates to a massive water balloon fight. Ironically the music used in the commercial is Teddy Bear’s Picnic<\/strong>. Ironic because this song is usually associated with children in gleeful play out in nature and here we have children who in a juxtaposition are gleeful while the surroundings and composition of the commercial seem to elicit the dirty documentary style that was employed during scenes of rioting in such films as The Battle of Algiers<\/strong>. The subject matter of this film being that that the native residents of French occupied Algeria are using terrorist tactics to fight for their independence from a French occupation that subjugates the the native people.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Okay so this is all pretty involved. On one level, albeit the “deeper” level, the commercial plays as a political commentary about guerilla warfare. However, on the surface the commercial shows children not suffering but playing. In large numbers the young people are enjoying the warm sunny day while having a w<\/a>ater balloon fight. No one is shown to be crying or having a bad time, the occasional adult walks by and is oblivious to the fun that the youths are having with their picnic in the ghetto.<\/p>\n

So what the hell was this commercial all about? It wasn’t a commercial for water balloons, it wasn’t one of those government PSA’s about getting outside and playing with other children. This commercial which though it had underlying themes of collective warfare, was really just about children playing outside and having fun on a sunny day, was for the new Xbox 360<\/strong>.
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I suppose it is a romantic notion that children can play and have fun outside in the numbers and in the environment shown in the commercial. Still I am quite concerned if we have become such a technophilic culture, so detached from our physical world with sunlight and wetness from water balloons, and the laughter that comes from playing with other people that a commercial that features all of this so prominently is used as an advertisement for a video game box where you sit inside and play with people who are somewhere else.<\/p>\n

I will concede this point. One of the more popular games for this sort of video game system is Halo<\/strong> which is a war game where an individual or a team fight to save the world, etc. I just don’t think the sytlism of riotous warfare made parody of in the commercial (which I will admit people in this day and age would associate with movies, video games . . . the news) is more strong than the “sense of play” that is conveyed in the content of the commercial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I saw a rather artistic looking commercial. It was “artistic” in the sense that there was clearly care taken to consider a film stock and to set up and film the commercial on whole. Essentially the setting is sort of a ghetto “war torn” like city area mostly in grays and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.granateseed.com\/futilepodcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.granateseed.com\/futilepodcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.granateseed.com\/futilepodcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.granateseed.com\/futilepodcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.granateseed.com\/futilepodcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.granateseed.com\/futilepodcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.granateseed.com\/futilepodcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.granateseed.com\/futilepodcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.granateseed.com\/futilepodcast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}