Today we examine the second foray into the advertising world by the visionary artist Filmcow, this time dealing with Biscoff Spread. All you really need to know is that peanut butter is now apparently obsolete.
It's made out of cookies!
The ad begins with a stunning revelation that shakes the very fabric of the toast and bagel industry as well as what it truly means to be human: It is made out of cookies. Much like the opening of Pandora's box, once such a discovery is made the world can never truly be the same again.
Everything is irreparably changed but in this case for the better. In the future people will look back at our time and this will be seen as the turning point in the history of human civilization. Time will be split into two eras: the dark, pre-Biscoff-spread age and the current golden age of enlightenment, where all feast on the cookie based ambrosia of the gods.
Still, not all is well in the new world. In the new global economy all non-cookie related industries are extinct. Grandmothers are enslaved and forced to work in cookie sweatshops to fulfill the growing need. The earth has been terraformed and the raw dough is strip mined from it. From there it is a small jump to terraforming other worlds to keep up with the insatiable demand, and soon it is found that the universe itself has become cookie dough on a molecular level.
Wait, scratch all that. I've just been describing Cookie Clicker.
If you've read this blog at all you may have noticed that I don't have anything nice to say about anything. This is because most things suck. Besides that, I constantly feel the need to over-analyze to an almost Freudian level, except for me everything is a thinly disguised attempt to manipulate me as opposed to just secretly being a penis.
With that in mind let's try something new for this post — and the next one too, for you perceptive few who realized that someone only puts Part 1 in the title if a Part 2 is planned. Let us shed our earthly skins and swim through the infinite void of time and space to the colorful land of imagination!
Just look at all the IMAGINATION!
In the land of IMAGINATION, ads make me totally want to buy their product. Let's take a look at an imaginary ad that is a true cultural and artistic marvel. It is an add that is so wonderful and pure it makes all the jaded and cynical naysayers prostrate themselves in the street, weeping in shame for their own wicked ways.
Look at the time and painstaking craftsmanship put into this work.
Look at the use of natural, yet insightful, dialogue meant to not only inform, but to encourage honest and intellectual discussion.
Look at how Filmcow elevates a mere video advertisement to an artistic masterpiece that is easily on par with Michelangelo's David or the Mona Lisa.
Look upon it and despair for you shall never see another like it. Your life meant nothing up to this point and now that this moment has passed it is truly all down hill from here.
Today we’re looking at an advertisement from Burlington
Coat Factory that espouses the virtues of style. You can thank — or blame, depending on whether or not you like this post — the
lovely and talented Alnycea
Blackwell for suggesting it.
The ad begins with a man confidently, maybe even
triumphantly, declaring that people like his vibes.
I’m not entirely sure what
that means or how he came to such a conclusion. Such a declaration was
certainly shocking to the man engaged in cleaning his car; note his confused
reaction to the announcement. Perhaps the Vibe-master — who I
will refer to as such because of his self-identified mastery of all things vibe
related — is just a narcissist.
That leads us to ad’s second act. It is here the
plot thickens, and we can truly begin to appreciate the potentially dangerous
game Burlington Coat Factory has invited us to play, where the stakes are no
less than the very heart and soul of American society.
What does it mean to
go and get?
What exactly do you go and get, Go-getter? Are you saying
you go and get mass produced clothing in order to make yourself feel unique — and then you bring it back? Are you comparing yourself to a
dog playing fetch? Or are you perhaps referring to the cyclic nature of life, in
that you always go out to get yet always return to where you once were? Hell is
repetition, they say.
Perhaps this is a commentary on thoughtless ambition and the
insatiable lust for “success.” You leave behind everything else in your life
until eventually you return with your prize — the prize
you spent so long dreaming of and scheming for — only to
find that you were wrong in thinking it would bring happiness. You let your
ambition become not the means to an end, but the end itself. Now you have your
warm coat, but it does little to alleviate the deathly chill that holds sway
over your soul.
The ad further reinforces this interpretation by injecting
the ultimate irony: Go-getter, you sought out your heavy coat, but now it
doesn’t look that cold out. It was all for nothing. All that time spent is gone.
Wasted.
You are truly alone now, sitting on a bench crying out to an
uncaring and alienated world to justify your actions. I wonder whom you are
truly trying to convince, Go-getter; the world or yourself? You have all you
ever wanted, but it brings you no joy. You feel uncomfortably warm now, in fact.
Putting out such a message required incredible courage from
Burlington Coat Factory. Imagine it from their perspective: You are sickened by
the consumer and status driven culture that supports you, yet speaking out to
change it could destroy your very foundation. Would you have the moral courage
and selflessness required to do what you felt was right for society, regardless
of personal and professional cost?
Nah, I’m just messing
with you.
Burlington Coat Factory doesn’t care about you, society, or
anything that isn’t money.
“I buy mass produced clothing because a company tells me it
will make me unique,” is what Go-getter is really saying.
Style, not substance.
In the final act the entire ad comes together, and the
meaning becomes apparent. We are bluntly told that style is all that matters.
Style is everything and as such there is no room for substance.
Perhaps Vibe-master himself is meant to represent Burlington
Coat Factory, with his smug and self-assured narcissism. Of course everyone
loves and accepts his vibes, and here we can equate “vibes” with “values.” We, the public, are obviously meant to play
the role of the misguided Go-getter, one who doesn’t question her vibe loyalties
and simply goes out and gets like she is supposed to.
But perhaps Burlington Coat Factory underestimated us.
I feel more kinship with the menial worker, the man who
stopped what he was doing at Vibe-master’s boast and began to turn — perhaps to say that whether or not he liked the vibes was his
choice, not Vibe-master’s — when he was cut off and replaced with Go-getter.
Every individual is free to choose their own
vibes to like, whether you like it or not, Burlington Coat Factory.
And that’s why I probably won’t buy your
product — unless I’m really cold and happen to be right next to one of your
stores or something.
Have you ever been on Google and found yourself thinking, "man, screw critical reasoning and free will; who needs that?" No? Yeah, I figured as much. But the good news that if you have, Bing has you covered.
For those not in the know, Bing is a search engine much like Google. The main difference between them is that Bing seems to be designed for some sort of alternate dimension dystopian 2013. If you've seen Back to the Future Part II, think of the 1985 where Biff owned a casino and was married to Marty's mom — except 28 years later, obviously.
In the Bing timeline, society realized the true perils of giving people too much time to think and make their own decisions. It was chaos, and out of the ashes of the old world came the new order: Don't think, just obey.
I guess the real question here is how Bing even made it to our timeline. Oh well, let's not think too hard about that and just go with it — right Bing?
No thought needed here.
That about sums up the ad’s message. You don't need to think or make decisions, because someone else can just do that for you. Thinking and deciding for yourself will inevitably lead to failure, so why bother? I’m sure quite a few powerful
people and/or corporations wish the Bing dystopia was a reality.
"Don't think, just obey."
"Don't think, just consume."
"Don't think, just be content."
It certainly would make things easier, wouldn’t it? And not
just for the high and mighty, but for all the rest of us too. Choices are
difficult to make. Wouldn’t it just be better if you were free from choice and
just had the freedom to obey? Freedom
is Slavery — and Slavery is Freedom — after all.
Freedom.
I came into this post thinking I was sickened by Bing and its premise, but I was wrong. It showed me the errors of my thought process — mostly that I had a thought process. Now I know better. I don't want to have to think about things or make my own choices. And you know what? It's such a relief.
“O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O
stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears
trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right,
the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big
Brother Bing.” – 1984
From this moment on, whenever I want to search something I'll use Bing to get to Google.
