C103 - The Semiotics of Advertising
Week 5, Asynchronous Bundle 15
Written assignment due Friday 7/25 at 11:59 pm
Introduction
- Goal: Further exploration of intertextuality in a variety of ads based on well-known movies.
- Textbook connection: Chandler, chapter 6, esp. 253-62.
Asynchronous material
Q1:
- Here are several ads based on The Wizard of Oz. I hope that all of you will be familiar with this 1939 movie, but as a sample of the source material, here is an extended clip of Dorothy arriving in Oz. The film starts out in black & white (but it was shot with Technicolor film so it turns out as a kind of sepia and white). Her house has been sucked up into a tornado, and eventually it falls to earth in the "magical land of Oz". When she leaves the house, the film continues in vivid color, highlighting the drastic difference between her drab life on a farm in Kansas and the new life in Oz. She interacts with the residents of Munchkinland, and finally they send her off via the yellow brick road to seek help from the Wizard of Oz in the Emerald City.
- Here's a FedEx ad based on parts of that source scene.
- Other ads are also based on the Wizard of Oz (not necessarily on this particular source scene, but some from other parts of the movie):
- Q1. Pick one of the ads based on The Wizard of Oz that is relates closely to its intertextual source, and describe in some detail what it gains from referencing the source text. Make sure you select an ad that uses the source material effectively; I want you to be able to say good and substantial things about it.
Q2:
- In Spike Lee's first film She's Gotta Have It (1986), Lee played an annoying, nerdy character named Mars Blackmon. Nike paired this character with Michael Jordan in 1987, then still a rising star before he reached his peak, but already he was a powerful spokesman for their products. Here's a clip showing you who Mars Blackmon is in that movie.
- And here's one of the trailers for the film, where Spike Lee the director is reprising the style of his character in the film while introducing the film at the same time (you can view it on imdb here as well)
- Now here's one of the earliest Nike ads pairing the two of them.
- They made many of these ads. Here's one from 1989.
- And 1990.
- And even in 1995 (relating to Jordan's retirement)
- I am not aware of any other products which used Mars Blackmon to promote them in ads, although of course Jordan made ads for a huge number of different products. He's still making ads today (e.g., here is his October, 2023 "Beyond" commercial; it's also available on youtube).
- By the way, if you don't know Spike Lee as a filmmaker, the place to start (in my opinion) is his 1989 masterpiece Do the Right Thing.
- Q2. Pick one of the Jordan-Lee ads based on She's Gotta Have It that is strongly derived from its intertextual source, and again describe in some detail what it gains from referencing the source text. (Optional: And just for fun, can any of you identify the song that plays through the last part of the 2023 "Beyond" ad is? Could it have intertextual significance in the ad? I can think of two relevant ideas here, though there could well be more. This is purely because I wonder what you make of it, not for any point credit.)
Q3:
- Tom Hanks starred in the 2000 film Cast Away, in which he played a FedEx executive who gets into a plane crash in a FedEx freight airplane and survives, winding up cast away on a desert island. Hanks won a Best Actor Oscar for the performance. Here's a trailer (unfortunately, all the trailers spend too much time on setting up his character and not enough showing his life on the island, which is the main part of the movie) to give you a taste of the film, and show you what he looked like during the movie. But here is a clip which shows how Tom Hanks looked near the end of his time cast away on the island. One thing I do not think is reflected in the trailer is that a bunch of FedEx packages washed up on the unhabited desert island with him, and while he opened most of them, he preserved one unopened and eventually returned it to the sender at the end of the film.
- Naturally FedEx took advantage of this film and made a clever ad referencing this movie. Here is that FedEx ad. (BTW the actor in the ad is NOT Tom Hanks!)
- Other commercials have also been based on this film:
- Q4. Describe what the FedEx ad gains from its intertextual reference(s) to Cast Away, including several pertinent details from their ad.
Q4-5:
- In Bundle 9 we examined a corresponding scene from two versions of Rent: the Broadway play and a Hollywood film adaptation.
- Well, it turns out that Rent was based on (and has a close intertextual relationship with) the 1896 opera La Bohème, by Giacomo Puccini.
- I'm giving you clips of a single corresponding scene from a staging of the opera at the New York Metropolitan Opera along with the corresponding scene in the play/movie Rent.
- Most of you are probably not used to opera. Never mind! The song from this scene in the opera version is really good, IMHO a bit better than the one you hear in Rent... :-)
- In this scene, Mimi (a seamstress in the opera, later the exotic dancer in the Broadway show) comes upstairs and first meets Rudolfo (a poet in the opera, later the singer-songwriter Roger in the play; you see him at the very end of the clips in Bundle 9). He tries to help her, they flirt, and there is a serious mutual attraction.
- If you want to get some background information about the opera, well, there is always Wikipedia:
- Q4-5. [8 points] Consider the original opera scene as the intertextual source for the corresponding scene in either the Broadway play or Hollywood movie version of Rent (pick one version of Rent, don't use both). Consider this from two perspectives: a) what is retained faithfully or at least fairly closely from the original scene, created more than a century earlier? and b) what has changed between the two? Concentrate on the fundamentals here: the characters, their relationship, their words and motivations, the general conduct of the scene. The details of staging are unlikely to reflect intertextuality, since the opera performance I have clipped here is actually more recent than either the play or movie versions. Go into as much detail as you can. Hint: I personally think this assignment is easier to consider using the play version, since it is more parallel to the opera staging, even though I personally have a deep and abiding crush on Rosario Dawson (the actress who plays Mimi in the movie version).