It’s a simple enough object: a pencil box that looks like a smartphone. The box’s lid looks like a smartphone screen decked out with app icons, the ones that all of us smartphone users are used to: the phone, the messages, the various entertainments, the calculator, and so on. Pencil boxes have been decorated andContinue reading “Of Children’s Pencil Boxes And Ersatz Smartphones”
Tag Archives: advertising
On Encountering Resistance And Lovin’ It
This morning my four-year old daughter marched into our living room, and clutching a ‘storybook’–a collection of tales based on Disney’s Frozen—said, “Papa, this is my favorite storybook. I like it a lot. I know you don’t like it, because I know you don’t like princesses.” Having made this announcement, she walked over to the couch,Continue reading “On Encountering Resistance And Lovin’ It”
The Mad Men Can’t Quite Get Hold Of Me
A year or so ago, I wrote my first brief response to AMC’s Mad Men. Three episodes in, I described it as ‘grim’ and a ‘serious downer’. Now, five seasons in, I’m still inclined to that description. (The fact that it has taken me this long to come close to exhausting Netflix’s online repository of itsContinue reading “The Mad Men Can’t Quite Get Hold Of Me”
The Baby Industrial Complex
When you bring home a baby, you bring home something else as well: a subscription, a ticket to a strange new domain, one populated by goods designed and manufactured for babies–and their parents–to better equip them for all of life’s supposed challenges, to train, dress, entertain, edify, and amuse them. An industry of industries churnsContinue reading “The Baby Industrial Complex”
The Mad Men Are Serious Downers
I’m only three episodes deep into Mad Men, and I’m already struck by how grim the show is. There’s misogyny, sexism, racial and ethnic prejudice, sexual prudery (of a kind), depressing suburban life, loveless marriages, loveless affairs, rigid gender roles, corporate language, the vapidity of advertising, and smoking indoors. And alcohol, lots of it. MainlyContinue reading “The Mad Men Are Serious Downers”
Samir Chopra 