Somewhere

It’s rather regrettable, but I rarely go to the cinema anymore, especially not to see brand new films, so I guess I’ve become estranged from the segment of population to whom film posters are aimed at.
Yet, the poster for Somewhere has really got me. I know nothing about the movie, only that is directed by Sofia Coppola, a lady with a hell of a last name who had written and directed Lost in Translation, which I had enjoyed watching at the time (so I’m admitting an initially positive bias).
However, I guess it is all of the inspiring questions that the poster puts forward what has been the bait I’ve bitten.

Usually, film posters present a clear range of expectations about the films they advertise, certainly their genre and often even a sketch of their plots. They typically offer questions for the ‘reader’ of the poster to guess in a quite easy way.
But the poster for Somewhere, I would say, poses questions with unsure answers: what is the relation between the two characters? Have they just met? Where is that location? And when is that? Is that a dystopian scenario à la Ballard’s ‘Drowned World’? Are they in their own dream? Are they maybe in my dream? Ultimately, am I losing the grip of myself?

So I’d say that the poster’s appeal is more about what it hides than what it shows, more about what is uncertain and open to (my) speculations than about what is dully evident: there, something is happening to someone at some point somewhere…, but where, when, who, what? It is –I think while inhaling deeply from my joint– as if it spoke of some unspeakable depths I should hear about.

I’m afraid, though, that in the end I won’t go to see the film, as I’m one who lives in fear of utter disappointment.

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Focus Features International: Somewhere
Euston Station (LU)
London

Come on show me your cocoa beam

I confess that for some time I enjoyed looking at this ad. Maybe it was what seemed to me an unselfconscious style, a refreshingly naive and warm-hearted quality, a feel-good element.

But then I started to wonder, and so I paused my enjoyment, that maybe I was being a little bit of a victim of my own exotic gaze, that there was something a bit patronising about the ad, or at least a reasonable suspicion of being patronising.

Although not strikingly obvious, the ad is actually an ad within an ad, seemingly a picture of a roadside advertisement painted on a wall somewhere - one imagines - in Ghana, since it is there where Cadbury claims their cocoa beans are from.
So an "unselfconscious", "naive" and "warm-hearted" Ghanaian piece of advertising - an 'authentic', an 'original' - has been basically pasted on to the billboard spaces of the grey, cynical and decadent Britain, where a bit of Fairtrade chocolate will surely bring some comfort for the soul (and for the sugar-addicted metabolisms), and the joy of life of the wise African peoples will definitely do us good.

Well, am I being too ill-thinking to see a bit of the condescending myth of the noble savage there?

How not to get in a bad mood when being awaken from a sweet dream? And sweet is the Orientalist dream, I'm afraid, even more if it's Fairtrade.

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Cadbury Fairtrade: Come on show me your cocoa beam
Finsbury Park Underground Station
London

Walk Oman. The soul of Arabia

How likely would one be to find the soul of Europe by visiting the Alps?
How likely is tourism to deliver us souls of any sort?
Why might we want to chase souls in any case?

By pressing the button of the exotic spell, I know the ad probably gets what it aims to. But come on, this is the 21st century already: "The soul of Arabia"!? What's that?

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Oman Air: Walk Oman. The soul of Arabia
Russell Square Station
London

Cool Japan. Fusion with tradition

The Japan National Tourism Organization, the Japanese governmental institution behind this ad, knows well how much geishas are liked over here, that’s why it’s geishas they give us.

How many tourist brochures, articles in travel magazines, guidebooks on Japan, covers of Japanese novels, souvenirs, etc., feature images of geishas! And yet, how few actual geishas will average Japanese people ever encounter in their lives these days.
But, hey, geishas are a well-established symbol, widespread, recognisable and unmistakeable; in many readers’ minds ‘geisha’ (or maiko, or for that matter any girl dressed in a fancy kimono) = Japan; quite a temptation for advertisers. At the same time, it is worth noting that the symbol ‘geisha’ renders a particularly exotic, erotic and feminising representation of its object, i.e. Japan, with all the discursive implications involved in such process (on which I won’t go about here).

This said, these geisha girls in the picture do not seem very serious geishas to me; one could think they might actually be just posing as geishas, playing at being geishas, phoney geishas; they are geishas with a twist. And I reckon such twist must be close to what this “cool Japan” brand is all about. “Fusion with tradition”, they say. Rather, I’d say, a re-invention of that tradition; recycling with a marketing agenda; ‘tradition’ reshaped to fit around the commodity mould.

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JNTO: Cool Japan. Fusion with tradition
Waterloo Station (LU)
London