Advertisement
The 30-minute Barack Obama infomerical just ended on the East Coast, and since it was partially directed by An Inconvenient Truth Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim, it makes total sense for us to write about it on a movie blog! Spoilers after the jump!
The basic structure: Sitting in a rustic wood-paneled office that could very well be ovular in shape, Barack Obama tells stories about good honest Americans he’s met on the campaign trail, interspersed with bullet-point lists as to how his proposed policies will help these people pay their medical bills, enjoy their retirement, etc. Guggenheim’s camera takes us into the homes of the Americans in question, and this footage is without fail bracketed by wide shots of open skies and unvarnished land and amber waves of grain, moving left to right as representing the view from a passenger’s seat in a car going west. Because Barack Obama will drive us to our manifest destiny!
(Also, there are clips from the Baracropolis at the DNC. Also, testimony from Democrats and business leaders as to how great Obama is. My favorite was Catherine Sebelius, who commended Obama’s “common sense, Midwestern way of getting things done.”)
If the grander theme of the Obama campaign is that if we vote for him, together we can will a fantasy version of America-as-utopia into reality, then that theme was heavily integrated into the spot. The opening shot, in which the camera slowly, slowly dollied towards to candidate, as he explained what he was going to explain over a soft, haunting score, was the political advert equivalent of horizontally spinning a pocket watch and chanting, “You are getting sleepy…” The whole thing had a dreamlike quality. Each of Obama’s Normal American Friends seemed so weary from their lower middle-class miseries that they almost presented as if in a daze. And then Obama’s voice would come in with his solutions, the nightmare would seem to fade away.
Whether or not hypnosis was actually on Obama’s agenda, it had that affect on me. Thankfully, I took notes, because I hardly remember a thing from the ad itself in between that early dolly shot and a moment at the very end, where Obama (live?) sort of bro-hugged Joe Biden and then took a victory lap around a big stage.
Thoughts?
Kevin Buist
FLAME + CITRON Review
Christopher Campbell
Happy Halloween Links. Today in Film...
Brandon Harris
5 80s Literary Adaptations Worse Than...
Kevin Kelly
John Krasinski, Brief Interviews With...
Karina Longworth
SpoutBlog, Now Available in Book Form
Paul Moore
October 31, Karina’s Last Day
Lauren Wissot
Sasha Grey Interview
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
LMAO, great review. I didn’t watch it. I had to have my dose of Raising Dasies. I’m so addicted to that show. It’s the best concempt to come out for a series.
This is too important to turn into ironic film critic-want-to-be crap. And it’s have an “effect”, not “affect’.
It’s refreshing to see a politician actually care about the middle class problems rather than how to funnel even more money to the wealthy. It’s also refreshing to hear a message of unity rather than red states vs. blue states, black vs. white, gay vs. straight, real Americans vs. un-Americans. It’s sad that we’ve become so jaded that any message that isn’t based on fear-mongering or divisiveness is suspect.
POW …changing and transforming all aspects of povery into wealth, starting with terrorist to loverist. (com)…The Owakening Ompowering Oneself…a pando roots kind of movement. Let’s make really really big budget Obama movies with ALL of us as cast, crew and management …what a blast! Sure seems better that money going to boring banks and bankers. Time for the conceptual age to get into high gear.
I’m kinda glad to hear someone else say that they thought the nature of this video was kinda creepy. I kept playing this thing in my head with any other candidate and concluded that if a Republican had done that waves-of-grain-children-running-in-slow-motion-to-the-master kind of messianic video, the ones praising it today are the very ones who would be sticking their fingers down their own throats to induce vomiting.
And I don’t know where it all started — this trotting out individual sob stories before the American people and then claiming the power to take care of them — but I don’t like it. It’s demagoguery AND it’s taking advantage of the already disadvantaged.
As to the promised spending cuts…
I noticed that the preamble to the 1/2 hour spot was Mr Obama saying that he was going to give the specifics of his plans in the time that follows. And he said in no uncertain terms that he was going to cut spending on redundant programs and programs that didn’t work…
….and then didn’t name a single one.
On the other hand, when the congress of ‘94 promised the same thing (spending cuts), the same media that adoringly accepts Mr Obama’s claims of spending cuts without even ASKING for specifics, is the same media that shoved an iron rod up Newt and company’s ass and out their cranium and roasted them over an open fire over budget cuts that didn’t cut a single budget.
Well, that may be incredibly unfair of the media, but to look on the bright side, at least with the media on Mr Obama’s side, he might actually be able to cut spending. Somewhere. When he decides to actually tell us where.
Oh…
…and trotting out Dick Durbin as a character witness? Beautiful. This is the guy who said that our soldiers were like Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot all rolled into one.
I was already pissed off going into the video because the local CBS affilliate had just done a hit piece (in the name of accuracy) on a McCain commercial. One of those segments that every news program is running in some form or another across the country — in this case called, “adcheck”, where they check the political ads for accuracy. Essentially what they did was took a claim of McCain’s (in this case that certain income level’s taxes would go up) and addressed it — claiming it was FALSE (complete with big red rubber stamp FALSE across the ad) because, and I am not making this up, letting the Bush tax cuts expire is not the same thing as a tax increase. Excuse me?
Spout isn’t a political site, and I appreciate Karina’s attempt to analyze Obama’s ad as film and narrative as opposed to political speech. To me analyzing the piece critically on the merits of story-telling is much more interesting than the politics of the party, person or platform.
That being said, thank you for pointing out Guggenheim’s involvement. I think he did the Obama bio video for the Convention as well. It’s interesting to compare the two in terms of tone. As one of the previous commenters noted, last night’s presentation was important, yet it is precisely because of its scope that I think it needs to be picked apart as media and not necessarily message.
http://modernjackassmag.com/2008/10/30/the-audacity-of-trope-obama-guggenheim-emotion-and-film/
The Durbin quote in question is:
“If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.”
In another era, McCain had the integrity to agree with this, before he realized that today’s Republican party is the pro-torture party and he would need to change his position in order to get the nomination.
It reminded me of the ” test” montage from Warren Beatty’s Parallax View- I hope with not the same results for our country.
Karina, has anyone told you that you kinda look like the girl who mutilated herself and blamed a black guy?
Does anyone know who scored the music to this? Was almost Badlamenti-like…
Obama infomercial video is Great. America is ready for some real change. I am so excited!
The greatness of a nation is not how wealthy a few are….but in how you look after the poor and more vulnerable in society.
Great Speech by Barack Obama. Check out Barack Obama Infomercial Video here
http://www.iwebie.com/barack-obama-infomercial-video