Posts from 13th May 2009
13
May 09
Like Having A Zip For A Mouth Is Scary
At the heart of Neil Gaiman’s kids book Coraline is one scary proposition. It is one that the whole book, and film is predicated on. That having buttons for eyes is frightening. Which is OK in the context of the film, which turns out like some sort of kiddie Un Chien Andalou*with pointy needles and the like. But it does tend to forget that in an awful lot of home-made knitted toys, and indeed snowmen, buttons ARE eyes.
But despite giving children morbid fears of their cuddly toys (good), Coraline is a terrific kids movie, properly scary and a proper fairytale. The downside is that like proper fairytales it can feel a little second hand, because – like proper fairytales – the story is cribbed from many other sources.
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Deep Thort
This is a PDF of the cover story on this month’s Research magazine, written by me about the ten current hottest thinkers in consumer behaviour (i.e. those dudes most often mentioned at research conferences).
It has been tested on non-researchers, viz my wife and in-laws, all of whom kindly said it was interesting and even comprehensible.
MEN AT WORK – “Down Under”
A curious feature of Britain’s number ones is how they mirror the history of global travel: “Summer Holiday” in the 50s, Demis Roussos in the 70s, and now Men At Work’s paean to the Australian diaspora, spreading back along the old hippie trail and into Europe. “Down Under” is a song for anyone who’s ever felt the happy shock of familiarity in a strange place.
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the law of comments-thread toxicity (some developments)
alex harrowell of the yorkshire ranter proposes godwin score as a measure of a thread’s usefulness
daniel davies of dsquared digest proposes a better buzzer-causer than h!tler-mention
(useful pointer: the thread that alex and dsquared are actually commenting in is not itself especially relevant to this issue…)
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