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Tuesday II: YouTube Follies
posted at 2007-12-18 22:47 | Last modified 2007-12-19 08:29
Cross purposes
When is a floating cross just a bookcase? Depends whom you ask.
Republican
presidential contender Mike Huckabee’s latest Iowa ad is, at face
value, a fairly innocuous Christmas message. What’s got everyone riled
up is a visual cross formed by a white bookcase in the background.
As
the camera moves around Huckabee during the ad, the white cross appears
to move left to right, ending up just behind his head at the end of the
commercial. Judge for yourself: watch it here.
According to the story from the AP's Liz Austin Peterson,
"Catholic League president Bill Donahue said….. he was especially disturbed by the cross-like image created by a white bookcase in the background of the ad, saying he believed it was a subliminal message."
"Huckabee said the bookshelf is just a bookshelf and shrugged off the controversy: "I will confess this: If you play the spot backwards it says, 'Paul is dead. Paul is dead.'"
Okay, that’s the best comeback I've heard this month. But – I’m no
videographer, but I don’t know a single lens-slinger who wouldn’t have
noticed a glaring white object in an otherwise dark shoot. Hard to
tell whether Huckabee realized what was going on, but I’d bet you money
the guy behind the camera did.
No...seriously?
Yikes. That’s the beginning of Edwards’ new Iowa spot, produced in the style of a Hollywood blockbuster preview. You can see it here on YouTube.
I have to confess I initially thought this was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top humor. But the next time I watched it, I was a little less sure…and even less so the more I watched it. Is it kitsch? Or just blithely cornball?
Maybe I’m not the only one who can’t tell. The spot was suddenly taken off Edwards’ website today, just a few hours after Kevin (“Six Degrees”) Bacon sent out this message to promote it.
UPDATE: The video is back up on the campaign website - they just moved it to a different page. I haven’t heard back yet from the campaign about why. I’ll let you know if I do.
Comments? Drop me a line.
