lifeisbrutallyunfair.com - mainstream challenge?

mainstream challenge?

_POSTED_BY desik

Thursday, 23 October 2008

Oxfam's new tv ad campaign with voiceover by Annie Lennox

The ad reminds me of Soviet revolutionary imagery , the iconic poster of the siren proletariat calling to the downtrodden masses to rise up and cast off their chains or the old woman with the glasses in the famous steps scene in Battleship Potemkin , it has that same rousing heroic social realism feel about it , the same silent film era out of sync dubbing just a modern digital HD update without the Shostakovich score . What struck me about the campaign is that it's a real time reaction to rising food prices and global economic instability and inequality as the future of capitalism is openly questioned against the background of certain recession and a resurgent interest in the iconography and economics - if not politics - of the revolutionary left. .This is the second time within a week where i've seen a mainstream effort - first was th.2058 at the Tate - and thought if lifeisbrutallyunfair.com ran an installation or ad this is what it would probably look like!