Skip to main content

Communicating the Brand -- Writer's Poke #344



I first became a fan of KISS in 1987. I was 14, and Paul Stanley was 35. That year, KISS actually received a fair amount of video airplay on MTV, but I have to admit that Stanley seemed old.

Mariah Carey released her first record in 1990 at the age of 20; she is a few years older than I am, but I never viewed her as “old” in the same way that I viewed Stanley as old. Not until I viewed her new video with Justin Bieber.

The “All I Want for Christmas” duet with Bieber is a remake of Carey’s 1994 Christmas release. It’s not unusual for artists to pair-up, and the song has some respectability as a contemporary Christmas classic. But why does the now 41 year-old Mariah Carey want to sing a duet with 17 year-old Justin Bieber?

Bieber is the butt of many jokes, but somebody is listening to his music; and somebody is helping to make him rich. Carey may suffer from Peter Pan Syndrome (I will never grow old), or perhaps she recognizes that Millennials view her much like I viewed Paul Stanley, and she hopes that Bieber’s youth will rub off on her. She’s hoping that she can appeal to a new generation of music lovers. And maybe it’s working. The video has received 2 million views in just the first 2 days of its youtube release.

But the video is undeniably creepy. Mariah spends most of her time in the video standing against a wall. In the opening sequence, Bieber and his bros walk by and she winks at him. Bieber’s goofy expression doesn’t indicate that his head contains any inappropriate sexual thoughts towards Carey, and he keeps on walking. After all, he has to fill his cart with a bunch of stuff before all of the common people are allowed to enter the store.

For most of the rest of the video, Mariah stays by the wall, turning to let her butt face the camera in multiple shots. Is this intended to be seductive? Is she trying to capture Bieber’s attention? If so, it’s not working. Bieber is too busy filling his cart with high-tops and multiple Nintendo 3DS’s.

Meanwhile, all those lucky enough to receive “gold tickets” are finally allowed to enter the store. Is Mariah Carey supposed to be Santa Claus? And is Bieber just Santa's Little Helper?

By video’s end, Bieber and Mariah end up in the sleigh together, with the happy masses surrounding them, their arms full of presents. But who has Mariah been winking at and shaking her booty to? At the 3:59 mark, a shot of Bieber indicates that he’s getting “ideas,” but in the next shot, it’s Mariah and Bieber back in the sleigh. Has the entire scene been imagined?

What message does this video communicate to you? What audience do you think its message is intended to target, and does it succeed?

“There's a lot of bad isms floating around this world, but one of the worst is commercialism.” – George Seaton




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Jesus and the Inconvenience of His Word to American Christians

I'm not a preacher, but if you follow the teachings of Jesus, it was he who said: Do to others as you would have them do to you. That's from Luke 6:31 , and reading all of Luke 6 isn't a bad way to spend five minutes of your time.  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%206&version=NIV I guess a lot of Christians understand the Golden Rule and practice it in their daily lives. Others, however, especially political Christians (and specifically those promoting Christian Nationalism) seem to ignore the Golden Rule. They don't care about humanitarian issues. They claim they either don't exist, aren't the problem of the United States, or are the fault of the victims. They counter with distractions like, "Why do you care so much about THEM when you should be caring about the REAL people who matter?" Sorry, but I don't recall Jesus ever dividing people into those who matter more and those who matter less. Of course, Jesus also said not to j...

Microblogging? The Future of Writing with ADHD

Bill Bennett is a very common name. Right now, I'm reading a book by the Australian film maker Bill Bennett. He hiked the Camino in 2013 and then wrote a book (and made an Australian movie, not available in the U.S.) about it.  Seems he kept a blog about that hike, too. I went to look for his Camino blog, and found he started one years after the hike, but he didn't post regularly... His last post from 2022 announced his had Parkinson's and had kept the diagnosis secret for 4 years.  Now that almost three years have passed from that post, I wonder what's happened to him.  Blogs are weird. They just sit there. Anyone can stumble upon them, and read them. So I decided to keep looking for his Camino blog.  https://billbennett.blog/home/ *** And I found another Bill Bennett, this one from New Zealand, who keeps a microblog. It's current and updated. "What's a microblog?" My wife asked. Well, I said, it's a small blog. Just a sentence or two for a post. ...