Saturday, October 06, 2012

Picture this...

Dr. David will give you a whole new look!

Sally handed me this ad from one of those mailers full of coupons and local advertisements that fill up our mailbox. She was giggling over the pictures of the snaggle-toothed people, turned into pretty people with flashing white teeth. We thought that not only did they get new teeth, they got new faces! The man went from having limp blond hair to a full head of dark hair, the girl became a beauty queen.

Then I noticed the asterisks, and read at the bottom, “Not actual orthodontic patients.” Well, there went my fantasy. I was about to call Dr. David to see if he could turn me into George Clooney, or a reasonable facsimile. The age of that kind of miracle is not yet upon us.

Mitt back on his White Horse!

Another image of Mitt on a white horse showed up in my local newspaper yesterday. It might have been inspired by the New Yorker cover, which I have joined with the editorial cartoon, after posting it here. It might be alluding to what I suspect the Barry Blitt cover was making reference to, that “White Horse prophecy” of a Mormon saving the Constitution, which is “hanging by a thread” until he comes along to rescue the nation. As I've mentioned before, it is not a universally held belief by Mormons, and Mitt Romney is specifically quoted as saying it has nothing to do with him running for president.

Notice what is coming out of the horse, piling up at President Obama's feet. That's a pretty fair assessment of how most Democrats saw Romney's performance at the first Presidential Debate this past Wednesday night.

Mr. and Ms. Hitler

We're back to the New Yorker again. The startling ad to the right is the back cover of the October 8, 2012 issue, It looked familiar. Sure enough, when I Googled images of Adolf Hitler I saw the resemblance. (The conjoined pictures were conceived and done by me.) Is the intent of the ad to draw a comparison to Der Fuehrer, or is it just a coincidence? According to the books, Subliminal Seduction and Media Sexploitation, by Wilson Bryan Key, which I wrote about in 2008 in a post called “Sexing it Up”, there are no coincidences in advertising. Millions of dollars go into ad campaigns. Did someone along the line say, “This girl has a Hitler haircut,” or was that the advertiser's intention to get attention? I don't know. It's interesting to speculate, though.

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