media, culture, Groupon

[miss_chance]

Groupon has four television commercial out right now that are the focus of a lot of discussion and controversy. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can watch them on Groupon's site, but before you do it's worth noting that these commercials aired *without* the key piece of information you get when you watch them there. Notably, while

Comments

[miss_chance]

"Part of the problem" was my first impression, too, but now I'm not so sure. I feel like for me, I find the apparent intractability of the situation in Tibet so overwhelming and daunting, that more often than not I shut it out. I feel like I can't do anything to help and I can't sort through all the claims of where I could give money, so then I go back to focusing on my own person life, trying to make good decisions about personal spending. For me I think the ads ---with my newfound knowledge of the fund-raising campaigns---make little chinks in the wall I put up between the part of me that wants to solve problems and the part of me that wants to try to ignore them and focus on myself.

I think that people who are inclined to dismiss global issues as not important will continue to do so. This ad won't change their minds, maybe they'll be amused and buy groupon stuff, laughing at the liberals, or maybe they won't. But the people who do care about the issues and also eat in restaurants, get massage, etc... may be shaken into action. I think that perhaps the real target audience of that campaign may have been monied, educated, liberals. The ones with "Save Tibet" stickers on the backs of their Saabs. Or mini-vans.

[imvfd]

Hm, yes, I could see a positive outcome to this if there are enough people for whom this campaign is a trigger of some sort to get out of complacency. Perhaps by making the issue small enough to handle. Or perhaps having people who were "done" with the issue get re-energized by the idea that the issue is being mocked, basically, "Fuck this shit! I'm not going to [let some corporation hijack the issue to make a few bucks/have the issue be made fun of]! I'm going to go out there and make a difference!"

Also, I guess one might argue that the other methods of getting people involved haven't worked as well as one might hope. So might as well try something new. Perhaps things have gotten bad enough that this *is* in fact the best way to get people involved.

[miss_chance]

There was a time when Sally Struthers sitting with starving African children shook millions of people into action. I don't think we're necessarily worse or different than we were then, but I think we've seen that now, we know of it, we've seen the photos and thousands more horrifying and children are still starving. We're less innocent and the problems still exist. How *do* we relate? I don't know and I'm fascinated. And I care a lot. I generally find the Superbowl commercials to be an interesting/intriguing annual reflection of American culture, but the inclusion of actual important topics in Superbowl ads... it seems like a possibly good sign about culture, even if it's bad. ... maybe?