They're absolutely haunted by what they're not

December 24, 2016 12:13 PM

The Ad and the Ego (1997; 57mins; transcript; study guide [PDF]) is a classic documentary featuring sound design by Negativland; it incorporates many well-known ads to ask "Where does advertising end and myself begin?" Aileen Farrar's beginner's introduction (2015; 25mins) to Jacques Derrida's "The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)" [PDF] offers oblique suggestions regarding the "mixed and confused messages" of Orangina's anthropomorphic animal ads to address another matter of self and difference--how "human identity ... rests upon following the animal."
posted by Wobbuffet (4 comments total)

No one makes me think more than Derrida that language is a seizure shared among subgroups of a certain animal, and always only one step from getting completely out of control and destroying all the meaning it has created and then some.
posted by jamjam at 5:25 PM on December 24, 2016

Both as a fish and from my position at the water company, thanks for these Life-Saving^TM links&materials.
posted by progosk at 2:50 AM on December 25, 2016

Gah! It looks like "The Ad and the Ego" has already been pulled by some entity called Paralax Pictures Inc. Negativland just can't seem to catch a break...

Does anyone have a suggestion of an available mirror?
posted by mundaneum at 12:50 PM on December 26, 2016

Wow, that's a shame--it had been posted on the Vimeo channel of someone who at least claimed to be Chris Emmanouilides, the executive producer.
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:07 PM on December 26, 2016