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August 29, 2006
I'm Back
Greetings and salutations, blogonauts!
It's been a crazy time here. Since my last communique, the Spouse and I made it official and got hitched in a big, fancy, expensive wedding. (Well, we might not have made it official, as we'd eloped last November, but we sure did make it public. And expensive.)
I spent a week training new grad students to be kick-ass composition teachers here at UVM. As I told them, I've participated in lots of these new-teacher orientations over the years, and I've never seen a group as ready and as sharp as these. Way to go!
The summer course (which went online and became an independent study) is winding down and should be completed in the next week or so. Huzzah!
I'm teaching a fun new composition course for first-year students: Literature in a Wired World. The blog software I'm using for it is WordPress, which I like very, very much. (Not enough to go through the trouble of migrating all of the Digital Digression files over... but it's pretty neat.) Anyway, in Lit in a Wired World we'll be looking at digital textuality and narrative, exploring emergent narrative formats, and trying to suss out the relationships between the kinds of things I post about here and the field of literature as it has been traditionally understood. (Bonus points to the person who identifies the greatest number of loaded terms and assumptions in this paragraph!)
On Thursday I'll have my first class meeting with my senior seminar, The Illustrated Novel. I'll post the link to the course blog when I get it gussied up. I'll also say more about the course, as it has direct revelance to lots and lots of digital-type work.
The post I had intended to do today relates to both of these courses, though, so I'm going to hold off until tomorrow or Thursday for that one. Instead, let's savor the oddness of this commercial from Ford:
Before you read the article on Slate, just click on the "launch" button to the left and watch the ad.
Slate's Seth Stevenson thinks the ad is targeting children of divorced parents. (He's also got some really snarky observations, so you should read the whole thing.)
Then go to Joe.My.God and read his take on the ad.
Now I'm no shrinking violet when it comes to calling ads on their queer content, but I'm not sure about this one.
Frankly, I favor a much simpler interpretation for this ad -- acknowledging that families break up is, as Ford's tag line implies, a "bold move." Thus, the car is a bold move and so is the ad itself. I'll argue that the car itself is not at all bold, but the subject of the ad may be. When I think back on all of the other ads that feature separated parents with small children I remember... nothing.
And that really does make me stop and think. What do you make of this?
Posted by reparent at August 29, 2006 2:59 PM
Comments
In the voice of one of my favorite Family Guy moments: "To be honest Diane, I'm surprised." Every time I see this ad, I feel...bitter? Maybe it is because my family didn't end up like that and I wonder how many families do. Is it bold in so far as showing the "broken family" brought together again-yes. I do appreciate the attempt to "stay real" instead of advirtising with a fairy who can transform everything but the car. A car that is big enough to bring broken families back together (for the weekend)-interesting and yes, bold. But on a personal note, I am still a bit bitter and sad.
Posted by: jackie at August 30, 2006 11:16 AM
Hey, welcome back!
First, a shout out to the latest blog spammer, Eric, who joins us all the way from Holland, peddling his presumably superior blog-services.
Moving right along . . . . As a queer guy who almost completely lacks GAYDAR, my take on the latest Bold Moves Ford advertisement is that this particular "bold move" was when the ex-wife invited the ex-husband along for a wacky weekend with the kids, which almost certainly will earn each child an extra 5 to 10 years in therapy.
Not surprisingly, I detected absolutely no queer element to the ad. Some people see queers everywhere -- even where they aren't. In my admittedly limited experience, such people are either horny queers or religious fanatics.
Posted by: coeurlion at September 6, 2006 8:07 PM
Or both?
Posted by: Liam at September 13, 2006 12:08 PM