MOCKumercials - Deconstructing the Image and the evolving aesthetic of the game generation
Before I left for vacation last month, I sketch out for you my undigested thoughts on the emerging aethetics of the game generation (35 and under): there is a degrading of image quality and techniques that lower-end digital technologies have supplanted into the aesthetic psyche of many younger viewers – just look at the ads created and aimed at the under 30 demographic. Old tricks. Why is that? Perhaps because these kids are expert consumers of electronic stories and know it’s manufactured.... They are deconstructing the image.
Today Patricia Winters Lauro writes in the New York Times that[s]traight direct-response pitches hardly ever work anymore, and increasingly agencies have turned to spoofing their own industry to attract viewers long enough to deliver a new message...Direct-response advertising as a genre is especially appealing to parody because it’s “so cheesy,” Mr. Jendrysik said. It is an inside joke that the public gets, he added, even the GameTap target audience of 25- to 35-year-olds, who may be too young to recall the ’70s pioneers like Ronco, K-Tel or Ginsu knives.
Mr. Jendrysik said the spoofs were also a good strategic fit for GameTap, which was introduced nationally last year and is trying to build its subscription base.
Alexa: I read you post and the clip from Patricia Winders from the NY Times regarding gaming, cheesy advertising and degradation of image. I thiink that anything visual is inherently narrative and thus, images as subject to the laws of narrative constructs. A Book on narrative cycles by Frank McConnell that I remeber left a big impression talked about a hierarchy of stories that he recognized - that suggested as people become more familiar with narratives - the sanctity of the subject is often exercised as a way to create a new approach to a familiar genre. We begin with stories or Gods, then epics of kings, next tales of knights, and finally the warts and all version as experienced by fools. In both cases the sanctity of the product seems to by cycling through this hierarchy quickly as viewers, familiar with the medium, simply equate denigration with sophistocation. To a certain extent, that explains the current political climate where people are no longer accepting of TV, Radio, and TV ads as character gospel, and thus, look to Rush, O'Reiley, and Hannity - to make it real by making it absurd.