Gorillas, Blood, and Sweaters

Good stuff, I'm digging reading for all of my classes, especially this one. Finally, opposed to high school, I feel like I'm actually learning more, and not just memorizing facts, dates, and places. Now, time to bust out my immensely articulate and intellectual interpretation of the three readings due this week.

Guerrilla Girls

• Mmmm, these ads remind me of the current campaign by that one collective of people completely opposed to smoking, and the use of shock and awe to draw crowds. While the Guerrilla girls use a milder form of this viral marketing, so to call it, it is definitely effective. Based on posting a rather harmless poster in public places, the Guerrilla Girls draw crowds' and critics' attention in a subtle way.
• The positive nature of the messages really works for me, and I would assume that it does for others as well. It's passive-aggressiveness on a new level. It's funny but at the same time screams frustration with the current situation in the contemporary art world. Everyone clearly knows that these women are not happy, and this sort of delivery system works wonders.
• Equality for women in the art world, awesome, right? Well yeah, if you keep it at that. As soon as you have posters like the one in this post, I kind of drift away from your cause. It's great, I totally agree with you and feel that women should be represented in more galleries, you've shown me statistics showing just how underrepresented you are, but please don't start saying things like being a woman artist of "Not having to be in shows with men" Maybe men are misrepresented too, we're not all gun and Nickelback loving creatures, some of us also believe in equality. Some of us believe in a world where men and women can coexist, without sounding cheesy.
  

Circulation

• Fascinating, I've never thought about blood as much as I did over the past fifteen minutes of reading. I suppose that taken in a certain context, blood can be seen as artistic, enthralling even.
  
• I like how blood can be associated with more than one view. Sure, blood is directly associated with death, but I still talk to the boy who became my blood brother a good twelve years ago. Again, context, you can look at blood as the result of violence, but also as life giving liquid, a necessary part of life.
• When they compare the architecture in cities to our own circulatory system, what is that trying to convey? Did ancient builders of cities look at the human body when designing the said towns. Is the Paris description significant as the city works just like our own circulatory system? In order to better circulation, all the streets would have had to be clean and free.
  

United Colors of Benetton

• The first thing I thought about when I saw the name Benetton was that when I was young in Romania, the rich kid and his parents wore this stuff. That's all I knew. So I guess I am reading this article non-objectively, well since when did objectivity exist anyway?
• Right, great cause, I think we can all agree that Benetton has done the world some good, right? But was this the primary concern, or was building a multi-million dollar sweater the primary purpose, and the activist marketing campaign a side-effect?
• I find that I am very skeptical about any kind of commercial, or marketing in general. I'll recognize exactly what the commercial is not saying, but ultimately trying to convey. Axe commercials kind of go like this: "Look, you're 18-25, straight, and quite possibly have a really fun and exciting life, women LOVE men who smell like chemicals, you love women! We have a win/win here buddy, you totally aren't a 13 year old boy or fratboy."
• Ok so having said that, these ads scream to me that Benetton is simply trying to tap into the clientele of activists, and young people ready for change. It's really the perfect setup, you have a large movement in the world, and why not brand yourself the clothing of a movement, you will sell a lot of sweaters. Their marketing techniques don't even seem that radical today.
  
• Also I find it interesting that it seems that this might have been the time when the counterculture merged with the consumerist culture. Suddenly being different was the norm, ads have now become a bit more thought provoking and artsy, so let's all jump all over them and fall in love with them.