Thursday, September 24, 2015

The Walking Mess meets French Fried creativity

I now pronounce creativity is as dead as an opossum's breath, as dead as -- let's go through the litany please...

as a bat,
as a doornail,
as a idiom about things that are dead,
as a dodo on throwback Thursday (that's mine even if it makes no sense),
as it gets,
as yesterday in the rain (that's mine, too),
as a pig in the sunshine,
oh, you get the idea.

Creativity is as dead as it gets. You get it? Dead. Airmailed, dead, as dead as Drew Brees' shoulder. 

I know this because, well, I watch TV.

Here are three examples of the worst of times.

First, the Burger King commercial. A talking chicken says she is pregnant with french fries, therefore she will be giving birth to chicken fries. Oh, my, dear, Lord. Along with being all sorts of trashy, and despite the fact it takes away all of my meager, puny appetite for something called chicken fries in the first place, despite the idea of french fries impregnating a chicken, it's just plain, ol' simple and dumb. Someone currently employed by Burger King thought this to be creative. I assume it was a chicken. Or a pig in sunshine.

Secondly, the latest in a long line of incredibly dumb Old Spice commercials. In this one, and again it is a long line of dumb, there is a rocket-powered Terry Crews. I can't even describe it from there. Someone currently employed by Burger King or someone I can't quite picture thinks this in some form or fashion would make me be interested in buying Old Spice. Not only is that not true, I believe Old Spice should therefore be banned in all forms or fashions simply because of this.

Finally, may we finally be delivered from the remainder of the contract that has given us the once original idea of taking a bite of Snickers. Again, original early. Dumb as a dodo late.

Here's the deal. Eight years ago a man named Ken Robinson, an expert on creativity and education, made a TED speech that revolutionized the topic of education. It has been watched on the TED website more than 38 million times. It takes about 20 minutes to watch it, and I suggest it is worth it if you can bear to take time away from your chicken friends and such.

Robinson believes that at this moment creativity and education can't co-exist. Robinson was knighted in 2003 for his education in the field of education. He says there were no public systems of education before the 19th century; all of them came into being to meet the needs of the Industrial Revolution. He says that at school, you were "probably steered away from subjects you enjoyed because you would never get a job doing that (like blogging, I reckon. Many creative, brilliant, talented people think they're not because everything they were good at at school wasn't valued, or was stigmatized.

"All children have tremendous talent," Robinson says, "and we squander them pretty ruthlessly. Picasso once said that all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe passionately that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. We are educated out of it."

Clearly, the writer of the Old Spice series of commercials was a very educated person.

Or let's put it another way: Do you think the Super Bowl commercials have gotten better or worse?

Or do you think it might be time to say Direct TV has made its point about NFL ticket and let it go, let it go, let it go? Please.

Or can we have TV shows that were not in another life bad movies to begin with? Perhaps someone should actually take the pill that makes one limitless.

Or, finally, can we retire the phrase "reboot?" Movies that worked once should be left to retirement. Movies that never worked (Fantastic Four anyone?) should never be rebooted. How many Spider-Man origin movies do we really need? 

So, here's my pitch for a Super Bowl commercial  Say you had an impregnated mutant chicken wearing a Wasp uniform bitten by a irradiated spider who looks suspiciously like a green Geico, fighting a man-sized french fry.

Call it ... 
Fifty Shades of Stupid, 
or Chicken Poop in the New Age Chicken Coop,
or Game of Goons, 
or The Walking Mess.

Just take a bite of Snickers. You know you're not creative when you're hungry.



1 comment:

kevin h said...

That made me laugh. Thanks!

(But I saw that TED talk, and he and Picasso are right!)