The movie we watched last lecture, Art and Copy (2009) discussed some of the most influential and the emerging advertisements and techniques of our time. One of these techniques, Product Placement, is where companies pay for their products to be placed in movies or television programs. From what I learned about these advertising gurus, efficient product placement is supposed to be under the radar which Lady Gaga’s producers clearly didn’t grasp. In the music video I have posted , Lady Gaga’s “Telephone”, more or less turns out to be a really long commercial (9mins!) Try to see if you can count the amount of not so strategically placed products. There are a total of nine! Including: brand of earphones, virgin mobile, diet coke, brand of laptop, Plenty of Fish website, Chevrolet, Polaroid, Wonderbread AND Miracle Whip.
Adorno and Horkheimer’s Culture Industry can be revealed through this ‘music video’ by not being a work of “Art” and how popular culture is parallel with the capitalist-driven entertainment industry and its mass production of commodities. This ‘music video’ makes it evident that with popular culture, the content is unimaginative and the viewer simply absorbs these commodified messages for entertainment purposes and no real creative thought is sustained about them.
Brianna Hill
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