SIMPSONIZE YOURSELF! I am amped!

After just bashing consumerist off-shoots with that last post, I thought I should pay tribute to some that I think work. For example, the new Transformers movie. And now, I am especially amped for The Simpsons Movie. Originally, I was EXTREMELY skeptical. Half hour TV shows do not have a good history of changing over to full length movies. I’m not a huge South Park fan so I can’t comment extensively on the relation between the show and the movie, but they pulled it off. Bevis and Butthead, not really. And the Family Guy movie was really just three different episodes patched together with some filler. So I was not all that excited for the Simpsons movie especially with the general decline of the actual TV show. Then I heard they brought back all the old writers and I got a little excited. Then I started seeing trailers, and truthfully laughed at every one. I am now officially pumped. Start the parades.

Also the fact that they converted 7 11’s into Kwik-E-Marts definitely helped.

Any time there’s a 150 foot tall painting of Homer brandishing a donut, I’m a happy man. Apparently, the “natives” (not trying to be offensive) don’t agree. Huntington did warn us of clashing cultures in his article “The Clash of Civilizations” and I’m not sure if this would classify as a clash of that type, but it does provide an interesting clash nonetheless. This one between mammoth advertisements and giant, ancient symbols - this one of a guy with an erection. The advertisement will disappear with the first rain and the erection will remain. So the logical thing is, of course, to perform an ancient rain dance.

The thing is, though, this is going to happen again. Ancient culture will clash with modern. Happens all the time. This, in fact, is a rather mundane example of it. The giant Homer will be gone soon. The thing is that modern culture has always referenced ancient culture, especially with the advent of postmodernism. Our culture is in constant reference to some past culture (I am using culture in it’s broadest sense here). Especially in advertising. Advertising has to pluck some sort of string with us to encourage to relate to a product. To do this, the ads have to reference a sort of communal idea of past (aka something in our culture). So get used to 150 foot painted Homers on grass because they’re just the beginning.

Good Umberto Eco quote on postmodernism after the jump. (more…)

I stumbled across this randomly in a Deadspin thread and was positively blown away. Definitely go there and check out the pics. It’s a convenience store modeled after Apu’s Kwik-E-Mart from The Simpsons (essentially my pick for greatest show of all time - though yes, yes it’s fallen off in these past few years). I think this development is pretty legendary in all honesty. A store modeled off a fictitious store that is in fact a real store. As Jed might say, how meta (I’ve come to realize this phrase means nothing <–very meta).

I do, however, think this is a interesting commentary on how stores and store space operates. While this Kwik-E-Mart is fully operational (not unlike the Death Star in Return of the Jedi - pronounced Yedi, it’s a soft J), it serves more of as an advertising spectacle than anything else, I’m sure. So it’s a sort of hybrid. And then there’s even more extreme examples like the Charmin “store” that existed in Times Square for what was, at most, a month. That “store,” for those of you who didn’t see it, was a quote unquote store because it didn’t actually sell anything. There was no toilet paper or tissues for sale in there. It was a giant public toilet, essentially. The space was a second floor, Times Square centralized location that was only 15-20 public toilets that closed before New Years (interesting note: there are no public restrooms in Times Square so essentially this was a private public service for the time it was there). It was a massively expensive ad space. You went, pooped, and used their toilet paper. And they thanked you for through the entire thing and treated you like hotel guests. Truly bizarre, but yes, the next step.