Emotions vs. Rationality in decision making.
Artists need to embrace the emotional influence their work has in decision making.
Tag Archives: comedy
Jonah Lehrer on Colbert
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Tagged comedy, empirical, media, neuroscience, perceptions, pop culture example, psychology, research
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Candy Raver Russian Revolutionaries
Not everyone has much faith in art-activism, but you can’t please ‘em all. Do symbolic protests accomplish anything more than raising morale for the protesters? If not is it enough to simply raise morale? Or do actions like this War prank create temporary autonomous zones and manifest, albeit briefly, the type of reality the activists desire to live in? Maybe today’s protesters just don’t believe violent resistance is a viable strategy and it’s better to moon the oligarchy than throw bombs at their carriages. Maybe Laser Tag is the new moltov.
Also where were the parliment guards when this went down? You shoot a laser beam at Congress and it’s Guantanamo time here in the good ol’ USA. Nice to know there’s still some Dukes of Hazard style parity in Russia.
via: Exiled Online
Last weekend (Nov. 7 actually–ed), a Russian anarchist revolutionary art group called War pulled a fast one on Prime Minister Putin. Or at least they thought they did. Russian revolutionaries sure do fall far from the tree these days.
On the night of November 7, a group of them set up a laser on top of a building across the river from the Russian White House — that’s the place where the prime minister carries out daily his business — and projected a 150-ft. wide toxic green skull and bones on its facade. But the protest didn’t end there. While a laser was sweeping across the building, a half-dozen people were scaling the building’s 20-ft. front gate. But they revolutionaries didn’t linger, staying on hostile territory long enough to pose for a few photos and a quick Rocky victory jog up the stairs. They were in and out so fast, the cops didn’t have enought time arrive at the scene. Take that Vladimir Vladimirovich! (More pictures below.)
The stunt was meant to commemorate the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, with the laser beam symbolically standing in for the revolutionary signal shot fired from the Aurora cruiser. My first thought was, “Cool!” But then I thought, “Whoa! Are Russian revolutionaries going candy raver?” I mean, this was one of those non-violent and non-confrontational attempts at political change through art. Laser art, probably to techno. It really put Russia’s rich history of revolutionary violence to shame.
Posted in How To Win
Tagged activism, activist example, art, art example, comedy, politics, pranks, stunts
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Mark Fiore's Subversive Cartoons
Mark Fiore is a political Flash cartoonist who cranks out a new short almost every week. He is clearly a liberal Democrat and his cartoons slant that way, but even when I find the ideas annoying or simplistic, or superficially critical, the cartoons are still funny. There are objectively funny moments (if such things can be said to exist) even in the most unoriginal Sarah Palin gag. Which is an accomplishment. I’ll watch anything that’s funny, and then once I’ve watched it even if I disagree with the ideas they’ll stay in my mind.
Check out “The Spies Who Love You” and “Ability.”
Wassup 2008
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Tagged activist example, comedy, politics, pop culture example, popular culture
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Laugh at a Campaign Pitch? Sure. Visit the Grandparents? Not So Much. – NYTimes.com
MIAMI — When Sarah Silverman told young Jews to get their lazy rotund rear ends to Florida to persuade their grandparents to vote for Senator Barack Obama, one question loomed: Would they go?
This weekend was the first big test, a kickoff for the so-called Great Schlep, and so far, momentum has been building with the pace of a nice brisket. Though about seven million people have watched Ms. Silverman’s four-minute Web video explaining why “visiting your grandparents could change the world,” the schlep remains mostly virtual.
Mik Moore, 34, co-director of Jewish Council for Education and Research, the nonprofit group behind the project, said 100 people visited Florida this weekend to convince older Jewish voters that Mr. Obama should be president, while about 100 more visited relatives in other swing states.
Declaring it “a really good start,” Mr. Moore said he hoped that dozens more would officially schlep before Election Day.
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Laugh at a Campaign Pitch? Sure. Visit the Grandparents? Not So Much. – NYTimes.com
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Tagged activist example, comedy, elections, emperical, evaluation, failure, media, metrics, nytimes, perceptions, pop culture example, stunts
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Larry Flynt Producing 'Palin porno' political parody
I think the key line here actually comes at the end. “Whatever you think of Larry Flynt, the man knows his First Amendment,” Kelly concluded. Seriously, that smut monger is a true champion of the First Ammendment, and we should all remember that the freedom of speech is the freedom to be offended. Now is a porno/political parody (is this a new film genre?) about Sarah Palin and a tank full of Russian soldiers going to topple the Washington Establishment? Err, no. Is this “consciousness raising” in some way? Probably not.
But, it is at a basic level asserting a constitutional right, and I think that is what’s so important. We are in a time when all rights are being curtailed, and so every single instance of someone asserting an inalienable right is important. Regularly (daily if possible) exercising your Constitutional rights is a vital for of resistance to authority and requires no great investment. Write letters to the editor, to your representatives in Washington, and on blogs that dissent from mainstream analysis. Publicly worship the deity of your choice. Gather together in groups in public places. Own a gun. Stop snitchin. Sign (or make your own) petitions. If on a jury for a case about taxes, vote not-guilty. In New York, if you’re getting on the subway and the police want to search you, turn around and walk to another station. It’ll only be a few blocks. It’s not that big a deal. And, if you happen to be a pornographer, make pornography that skewers the political establishment.
So to you Larry Flint, I say, “Thank you.” Thank you for being a cantankerous, lecherous, old perv who is not afraid (even after being shot!) to assert your Constitutional rights. I find the vast majority of your beliefs offensive, disgusting, immoral, and representative of the worst scum in the human soul, but I respect your tenacity in asserting those views in the face of vast opposition. We should all be so bold.
via: The Raw Story
Publisher Larry Flynt has announced that Hustler is releasing a porn film featuring a Sarah Palin lookalike and a tank full of stranded Russian soldiers.
Fox’s Megyn Kelly was immediately sure that “your average American — it’s offensive, it’s disgusting it’s dirty — they wouldn’t want to see it.” But her real question was, “Is this whole thing actually legal?”
In a consideration of that question on Monday, Kelly turned first to defense attorney David Wohl, who suggested that, although Palin would be best advised to ignore the film, she might “seek a preliminary injunction at least preventing its release before the election.”
Wohl acknowledged that the 1988 case of Hustler v. Jerry Falwell had established that celebrities have no rights to sue when it comes to parody, but he asserted that if the film could be viewed as “a political hit piece,” Palin might have “a good cause for action.”
“Might there be some actual confusion to the non-educated mind out there?” asked Kelly — who is apparently well-familiar with the Fox audience — of legal analyst Mercedes Colwin.
“That’s certainly a tremendous stretch,” Colwin replied. “There’s absolutely no confusion here. It is definitely parody like David said. It is protected by First Amendment.”
“It even pokes fun at our network,” Colwin continued. “It’s called ‘Faux News.’ And actually Bill O’Reilly stars in it as well.”
Wohl, however, wasn’t completely convinced by the first amendment argument, saying that the Hustler case involved a fake ad which was clearly over-the-top parody, while “this is a movie.” He went on to suggest, perhaps unfortunately, that “there’s going to be an undercurrent suggesting somehow that this is the way Sarah Palin lives her life, that there’s some deep dark secret she has.”
A partial script of the movie which has appeared online makes it clear that the film definitely has elements of political parody. In the opening scene, the actress playing Palin flings herself on a tanning-bed repairman, pronouncing, “You’re in luck. I fully support off-shore and on-shore drilling. … God almighty! You are hung like a moose. Now I have to eat ya! … Pound me until my head is so empty that I can’t even remember the name of the one Supreme Court case I actually know!”
“Whatever you think of Larry Flynt, the man knows his First Amendment,” Kelly concluded.
This video is from Fox America’s Newsroom, broadcast October 13, 2008.
The State: Free Market Store
For those not fortunate enough to remember watching The State, it was a brilliant comedy show often surreal or scatalogicaly political. This skit rolls with a black comedy to match the best Monty Python, and gets the viewer with a brujtally funny depiction of Eastern Europe after the Iron Curtain fell. No doubt, the Soviet Union had some major problems, but it also gave people some options they lost when the free market bomb went off. This skit is like Disaster Capitalism distiled to a rueful, cynical chuckle.
Disaster Capitalism
Tropic Thunder – comedy is anarchy
…in comedy, context is everything. “Tropic Thunder”… doesn’t risk simply offending; at times the picture is almost appalling in its tastelessness — I watched parts of it agape. But Stiller and his ensemble… understand that comedy is anarchy. As much as we want our lives to be stable and manageable, comedy demands that we relinquish our sense of orderliness, sometimes even our better judgment. Respectful comedy is dull comedy. In the early ’90s, when Robert Mapplethorpe’s sexually explicit photographs were causing a flap about the public funding of art, I recall seeing people wearing buttons decreeing, “Art can’t hurt you.” But if it can’t cut into you, deeply or at all, what good is it?
Get Your War On: Terrorist Watch List
This is a new video from 23/6.com a political-ish comedy site. The video is about a serious issue, but treats it in a comical-ish way. Which is a fine strategy if done well, but I there’s just not quite enough substance here. All you really get from the video is that there’s a terrorist watch list with a million names, and that means regular people are on it for no good reason. The video has a nice wind-up, but no delivery, no real punch line. I think at the end the viewer should have gotten some insight into the implications of having a million people on the watch list. Comedy can help people understand tragedy (see L.M. Bogad interview for more) and motivate them to act, but there has to be some meaningful information inside the joke. There has to be some “ah-ha” behind the gag.
Posted in How To Win
Tagged activism, activist example, art, art example, comedy, failure, media
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