Looking at corporate messages

The first corporate message I looked at for this assignment was the music video for the song Pork & Beans by Weezer. The video is essentially a compilation of internet trends that have recieved huge appraisal by viewers around the world. The lyrics of the song are about how the singer, as a representaion of normal people, is defiant of the typical messages broadcasted to us by society. "Imma do the things that I want to do, I aint got a thing to prove to you" is a clip of lyrics from the song, clearly stating how this person is independent and doesn't need to live life based on how the owrld says he/she should. To emphasize the concept, the video shows clips of people like Chris Crocker, famous for his internet rant "Leave Britney alone", the afro ninja, and the bassist imitating a video of a man who sets out to conquer the world record for most shirts worn at a single time. These images coincide with the mesage of doing what you want to do regardless of other people's opinions on things. Also, the song reflects on the sheep mentality of people today, saying "everyone likes to dance to a happy song, with a catchy chorus and beat so they can sing along". The message in those words being fairly clear, the video uses a clip of people performing the Soulja Boy, a trendy dance from 2006-2007. I would say that this is a marginal to mainstream message of doing whatever you feel, marginal because it ridicules people for being sheep but mainstream because every musician says to be different.

The second corporate message I looked at for this assignment was the movie Jackass 2.5. In it, a group of young white men perform "stunts" that involve publicly humiliating themselves, hurting themselves in some way, or stirring up disturbances in public areas. The people involved are personified as stupid and reckless, and for the most part they try to fufill that personification. This movie is a compilation of unused clips from the 2006 film "Jackass number 2" and the ones excluded. An example of some of the stunts in the movie are painting and dressing up one of the actors as king kong and standing him up on top of a port-a-potty to "defend" the damsel in distress, who was another actor, a dwarf dressed as a woman. The other actors were made to fly hand-controlled RC planes into the two standing atop the port-a-potty so as to reenact the final scene in King Kong. This kind of stunt serves the purpose of dissuading people to do something like this, and serves the purpose of being a mainstream message; don't be a fool. Don't try this stuff in front of your friends or anybody. At the same time it also says that it is reallt cool to hang around with your friends and do whatever you find to be really fun. by not saying that explicitly, they get the message across indirectly, making this a spokesperson for the mainstream message of don't be stupid on the outside, and the marginal message of do it because it's fun and you'll make people laugh.

The last bit of corporate culture I examined was an Ad for the Wii game "Wii Music". The ad features many different kinds of people using the Wii controller to make various notes using various instuments to contribute to the general Super Mario theme. The ad featured people like an elderly couple, many teens, and several young adults, aged 20-26 or so. There seemed to be a lack of emphasis on the child audience for once, showing that Nintendo is trying to make its product more relatable to more people of different age groups. It had many teenagers performing music with "cool" instruments like drums and electric guitars, and it had the nice-looking sensibly dressed people playing instruments like the fulte or the piano. It profiled all these age groups into musical preference, and had everyone beaming ecstatically, as though they were enraptured by the game, as though it were something never witnessed before, when in actuality it is just Nintendo trying to tap into an already successful francise of musical video gaming. The message was wordless, and was very mainstream- buy this product so you can be happy and have fun! You want to be like all these smiling people because they are all just like you!