Sometime last year I got stuck watching Japanese commercials on Youtube for a few hours. Japan is known for producing weird advertisements, but that wasn't really what I was so entranced by. If you saw Lost in Translation then you're aware that sometimes a Western celebrity will visit Japan to film some commercials or whatever. This was also touched on in an old episode of America's Next Top Model where the girls have to do a commercial and speak a few lines of Japanese and fail miserably. The term for this is "foreign talent" and sometimes people get really famous there and make more money in Japan than they would anywhere else in the world. I guess this would sort of be like Psy in America right now. There are some pretty fun appearances (see: John Travolta's Takara commercials where he heartlessly dances and is clearly irritated that he's under contract), but these commercials in particular haunt me so that I have to watch them again every couple of months. The monkey man's satisfied face after he takes a drink, the look on Boy George's face after staring at the pig man, the pig man's wiggling snout, how Boy George is at once horrified at his choices and also coked out of his mind, the music is so weird, everything. I just feel so strangely after watching these. Like I've seen too much.
Sometime last year I got stuck watching Japanese commercials on Youtube for a few hours. Japan is known for producing weird advertisements, but that wasn't really what I was so entranced by. If you saw Lost in Translation then you're aware that sometimes a Western celebrity will visit Japan to film some commercials or whatever. This was also touched on in an old episode of America's Next Top Model where the girls have to do a commercial and speak a few lines of Japanese and fail miserably. The term for this is "foreign talent" and sometimes people get really famous there and make more money in Japan than they would anywhere else in the world. I guess this would sort of be like Psy in America right now. There are some pretty fun appearances (see: John Travolta's Takara commercials where he heartlessly dances and is clearly irritated that he's under contract), but these commercials in particular haunt me so that I have to watch them again every couple of months. The monkey man's satisfied face after he takes a drink, the look on Boy George's face after staring at the pig man, the pig man's wiggling snout, how Boy George is at once horrified at his choices and also coked out of his mind, the music is so weird, everything. I just feel so strangely after watching these. Like I've seen too much.