Kerouac Wore Khakis: Ghost of the Beat Writer Stars in 1993 Gap Advertising Campaign

in Books, Business, Literature | February 11th, 2013

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“When [Jack] Ker­ouac died in 1968 at the age of 47, he was a bro­ken alco­holic, his lit­er­ary rep­u­ta­tion so deplet­ed he was unable even to find a paper­back pub­lish­er for his last nov­el, Van­i­ty of Dulu­oz,” writes The Tele­graph. “Unsure of what val­ue to put on his estate, the bank val­ued it at a nom­i­nal $1. Over the years, it would rise to an esti­mat­ed $20m.” As The Tele­graph goes on to describe, the Ker­ouac estate start­ed gen­er­at­ing its wealth when, dur­ing the 1990s, feud­ing rel­a­tives, exer­cis­ing ques­tion­able author­i­ty over the writer’s lit­er­ary remains, began auc­tion­ing things off. The orig­i­nal man­u­script of On The Road was sold to James Isray, own­er of the Indi­anapo­lis Colts, for $2.43 mil­lion. John­ny Depp paid $50,640 for Kerouac’s rain­coat, tweed over­coat and oth­er per­son­al belong­ings. And pho­tos were licensed off to cor­po­ra­tions.

Enter the Gap’s 1993 “Ker­ouac Wore Khakis” adver­tis­ing cam­paign. The cam­paign drew on images tak­en in 1958, when Jer­ry Yuls­man fol­lowed Jack Ker­ouac around Green­wich Vil­lage, tak­ing pic­tures for Pageant Mag­a­zine. (See orig­i­nals here and here.) 35 years lat­er, Madi­son Ave. mar­keters air­brushed the images, stripped them of col­or, and, some­how found a way to graft onto stodgy pants, worn by desk jock­eys nation­wide, the illu­sion of free­dom. That sleight of hand would make Don Drap­er proud. As for what hap­pened in Ker­ouac’s grave, we can only con­jec­ture.

We’ll have more from the annals of com­mer­cial­iz­ing the Beats tomor­row.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Kerouac’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot, 1943

Bob Dylan and Allen Gins­berg Vis­it the Grave of Jack Ker­ouac (1979)

Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Cov­er for On the Road

Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

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Destination Earth: The Greatness of American Civilization Revealed in 1950s Sci-Fi Cartoon

in Animation, Business, History | February 6th, 2013

Many sci-fi tales go some­thing like this: The human race trav­els into the great unknown, deep out­er space, and encoun­ters beings with forces greater than its own. Greater fire pow­er. Greater intel­li­gence. Greater tech­no­log­i­cal abil­i­ty. But, in Des­ti­na­tion Earth, the stan­dard nar­ra­tive gets flipped on its head. Here, Mar­tians come to Earth — the Unit­ed States actu­al­ly — and dis­cov­er a vast­ly supe­ri­or civ­i­liza­tion. A civ­i­liza­tion supe­ri­or because it enjoys an end­less sup­ply of petro­le­um (used to make gas, tires, tooth­brush­es, cos­met­ics and insec­ti­cides) and the cap­i­tal­ist spirt of com­pe­ti­tion. Now, Sher­lock, if you’re think­ing this isn’t your aver­age Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon, I’d say you’re onto some­thing. Des­ti­na­tion Earth was the cre­ation of The Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute, still the biggest lob­by for the U.S. oil and gas indus­try. And the film was shot in 1956, smack dab in the mid­dle of the Cold War. If you think Mars, the red plan­et, might be a proxy for the Sovi­et Union (and Ogg looks like Stal­in), you might be the new James Bond.

Des­ti­na­tion Earth appears in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online. For more vin­tage pro­pa­gan­da car­toons, check out: Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II.

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Caught Mapping: A Cinematic Ride Through the Nitty Gritty World of Vintage Cartography

in Business, Film | November 9th, 2012

Long before iPhones, Garmins, and Google Maps con­spired to make car­to­graph­ic sheep of us all, Chevro­let had a vest­ed inter­est in glam­or­iz­ing any­thing to do with four wheels, includ­ing the process that put maps in a sup­pos­ed­ly adven­tur­ous, car-buy­ing pub­lic’s hands. Caught Map­ping (1940), like so many of the short, infor­ma­tive films the auto­mo­tive giant engi­neered with direc­tor Jam Handy and “the coop­er­a­tion of State High­way Depart­ments,” has all the ear­marks of its time:

Gor­geous black and white cin­e­matog­ra­phy? Check.

Fetishis­tic regard for any­thing that might pos­si­bly be described as “the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy” (includ­ing a big sheet of acetate and a real­ly big cam­era)? Check.

Jaun­ty male nar­ra­tor suck­ing all the non­cha­lance out of peri­od slang? Say, fel­la, what are you “dri­ving” at? Check.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to those accus­tomed to nav­i­gat­ing dig­i­tal­ly is the sheer grit­ti­ness of the endeav­or. Com­pare the ear­ly Euro­pean explor­er shown pon­der­ous­ly wield­ing a sex­tant to the per­spir­ing road scouts (or “map detec­tives”) criss­cross­ing Death Val­ley in an un-air­con­di­tioned vehi­cle, chas­ing down the sort of con­struc­tion-relat­ed detours or topo­graph­i­cal devel­op­ments that could ren­der a paper map obso­lete. One steers;  the oth­er updates the most recent­ly pub­lished edi­tion in ink, imper­vi­ous to such haz­ards as car sick­ness and bumps in the road.  Even­tu­al­ly, the eggheads in the lab take over, trans­lat­ing the intre­pid road scouts’ field­work into a series of sym­bols and sig­ni­fiers as mys­te­ri­ous as hiero­glyphs to the mod­ern view­er.

Tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments aside, it’s the hands-on aspect that proves most thrilling. Some­one should make a movie about these guys for real.

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Where Your Web Searches, Emails, and Videos Live: A Tour Inside Google’s Data Centers

in Business, Google, Technology, Web/Tech | October 18th, 2012

So much of what we expe­ri­ence as dig­i­tal is intan­gi­ble. The col­or and tex­ture of the Inter­net exists only for the time we have that par­tic­u­lar site loaded. With just a click of the mouse, the lush­ness dis­ap­pears.

Except that it doesn’t, real­ly.

Back­stage, every email, pho­to, YouTube video and doc­u­ment we share lives in a very real place, which is weird when you think about it. These mas­sive data cen­ters are like vaults of ones and zeros, some of which could wreak hav­oc in the wrong hands but, hon­est­ly, most of which will nev­er mean any­thing again to any­body.

Every time any­one uses a Google prod­uct, for exam­ple, like con­duct­ing a search or look­ing up direc­tions, their com­put­er talks to one of the world’s most pow­er­ful serv­er net­works, which are housed in huge data cen­ters. Very few peo­ple actu­al­ly get to see where Google’s servers live. These data cen­ters are high secu­ri­ty, for good rea­son.

The com­pa­ny recent­ly launched Where the Inter­net Lives, part of a mini cam­paign to pull back the cur­tain on how the web works. They hired a pho­tog­ra­ph­er to cap­ture eight of their data cen­ters on, well, not real­ly film, but you get the pic­ture. Oh, and the data cen­ters aren’t brick and mor­tar either. More like glass and dry­wall and pipes. Lots and lots of pipes.

And like Willie Won­ka and his famous fac­to­ry, Google invit­ed Wired mag­a­zine reporter Stephen Levy to vis­it and write a sto­ry about the pre­vi­ous­ly off-lim­its facil­i­ties.

Take a street view tour of the North Car­oli­na data cen­ter (and see their “secu­ri­ty team” at work). Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Con­nie Zhou’s images are love­ly and the facil­i­ties are beau­ti­ful in an eerie, futur­is­tic way. See how water is used to keep the proces­sors cool, where data is backed up, failed dri­ves destroyed to keep data safe and how work­ers get around.

Google employ­ees get a fair amount of play, with shots of them work­ing to build, main­tain and repair the machines.

It’s a peek behind the scenes, but it’s also mar­ket­ing. And what’s inter­est­ing is that it’s a lot like the auto­mo­bile industry’s mar­ket­ing (think of Saturn’s ads in praise of the assem­bly-line work­er) and cam­paigns by the Big Three to attract auto work­ers in the 1940s. Some of the pho­to cap­tions recall the nos­tal­gic, Utopi­an mes­sag­ing of the post-War era, when effi­cient, mod­ern sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties were sprout­ing up around indus­tri­al cen­ters. This lunch room looks pret­ty nice, and the sauna is right out­side.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal cul­ture and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her work online at kater­ixwriter

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Braque in Bulk: Costco Gets Back into the Fine Art Market

in Art, Business | October 10th, 2012

In 2006, Louis Knicker­bock­er, a meat dis­trib­u­tor from New­port Beach, Cal­i­for­nia, bought a Picas­so draw­ing online. The price looked too good to be true, $39,999.99. But why have con­cerns when the piece was being sold by the rep­utable art deal­er, Cost­co. That’s right, I said, Cost­co! Said Knicker­bock­er: “They just sell the top qual­i­ty — what­ev­er you buy at Cost­co, whether it’s a wash­ing machine or a vac­u­um clean­er.”

The Picas­so draw­ing end­ed up falling under sus­pi­cion, and Cost­co exit­ed the fine art mar­ket. But now, six years lat­er, they’re back. Accord­ing to The New York Times, Cost­co recent­ly opened a Fine Art sec­tion on its web site and start­ed sell­ing lith­o­graphs by Braque, Matisse, and Warhol, most­ly in the $1,500 range. Per­haps because of The New York Times pub­lic­i­ty, these objets d’art are now all sold out.

The next time you’re fill­ing your cart with 10 pounds of cof­fee and 1728 bot­tles of water (you need to hydrate after all of that caf­feine, you know?), pay anoth­er vis­it to the Fine Art sec­tion. They may have the deal of the cen­tu­ry wait­ing for you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Footage of Picas­so and Jack­son Pol­lock Paint­ing … Through Glass

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

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Campbell’s to Sell Special Andy Warhol Soup Cans, and What Makes Those Cans Art Anyway

in Art, Business | August 31st, 2012

When Mad Men kicked off its fifth sea­son ear­li­er this year, we encoun­tered Don Drap­er and Peg­gy Olson brain­storm­ing an adver­tis­ing cam­paign for Heinz baked beans. The goal? To make this sta­ple of the Amer­i­can diet sex­i­er to a younger gen­er­a­tion. It’s a peren­ni­al prob­lem for many tra­di­tion­al brands, some­thing that real-world com­pa­nies con­tend with day in, day out. Take Camp­bel­l’s Soup for exam­ple. As part of a broad­er effort to make its prod­ucts “more eth­nic, more hip,”  the com­pa­ny found­ed in 1869 plans to sell 1.2 mil­lion cans with art­work inspired by Andy Warhol.

Of course, Warhol is the artist who famous­ly began pro­duc­ing silkscreens of Camp­bel­l’s soup cans back in 1962. When Andy first cre­at­ed these icon­ic pieces of pop art, Camp­bel­l’s was none too pleased. In fact, the com­pa­ny con­sid­ered hit­ting him with a law­suit. But, by 1964, they were send­ing him nice let­ters and free cas­es of soup, and they also com­mis­sioned him to make a paint­ing for the fir­m’s retir­ing chair­man. Now 50 years lat­er, they’re hop­ing that Warhol’s pop art can get their sag­ging sales going again.

The soup cans will go on sale at Tar­get, start­ing this Sun­day, for 75 cents a pop. In the mean­time, we’ll leave you with this — Sal Khan (Khan Acad­e­my) and Steven Zuck­er (Smarthis­to­ry) explain­ing what makes Warhol’s art, art. And, by the way, I spot­ted Sal at the local gro­cery store tonight. Should have said hi. It’s a small world.

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Kids (and Less Savvy Marketers) Imagine the Internet in 1995

in Business, Technology | August 17th, 2012

In 1995, a group of 5th grade kids in Hele­na, Mon­tana got togeth­er and made a PSA for the Inter­net (above). And, man, were they hip, with their tech­no music and their “by the time I’m in col­lege, the inter­net will be your tele­phone, tele­vi­sion, and work­place.” In the annals of overblown pre­dic­tions and tech­no­log­i­cal hubris, mid-nineties inter­net-fever will go down as the ulti­mate excep­tion. These kids even antic­i­pat­ed the cute cat mania that would infect the inter­net for­ev­er. Of course, none of them could have fore­seen the Twit­ter rev­o­lu­tion, the Face­book decline, rub­bable gifs, or spher­i­cal panoram­ic views of Mars, but that’s just quib­bling.

It real­ly is aston­ish­ing to look back a mere sev­en­teen years at what a prim­i­tive tech­nol­o­gy the inter­net was. Of course it wasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly evi­dent at the time that the online world would indeed become our “tele­phone, tele­vi­sion, and work­place,” and some naysay­ers, like astronomer and hack­er-catch­er Clif­ford Stoll, called BS on the hype. In a 1995 Newsweek arti­cle titled “The Inter­net? Bah!,” Stoll wrote:

The truth is no online data­base will replace your dai­ly news­pa­per, no CD-ROM can take the place of a com­pe­tent teacher and no com­put­er net­work will change the way gov­ern­ment works.

In 2010, Stoll was forced to retract, com­ment­ing on Boing Boing cov­er­age of his sour­puss skep­ti­cism with:

“Of my many mis­takes, flubs, and howlers, few have been as pub­lic as my 1995 howler.

But who could blame him? This was the age of such clunky Web ser­vices as AOL, which promis­es much in a 95 ad below, but ulti­mate­ly deliv­ered lit­tle.

Not all web adver­tis­ing in 1995 looks so dat­ed and sil­ly. AOL’s com­peti­tor Prodi­gy, which fared even worse, cer­tain­ly had a bet­ter ad agency. Their 95 ad below, fea­tur­ing Bar­ry White, is a romp.

All of this reflec­tion war­rants more wis­dom from a chas­tened Clif­ford Stoll, who in a 2006 TED talk says: “If you real­ly want to know about the future, don’t ask a tech­nol­o­gist, a sci­en­tist, a physi­cist. No! Don’t ask some­body who’s writ­ing code. No, if you want to know what society’s going to be like in 20 years, ask a kinder­garten teacher.”

via Pre­fix

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Martin Scorsese Appears in New Apple Ad with Siri, Plays on His Chilling Cameo in Taxi Driver

in Business, Film, Television | July 25th, 2012

In 1976, Mar­tin Scors­ese made a chill­ing cameo appear­ance in his thriller, Taxi Dri­ver. Per­haps you remem­ber the scene: Play­ing a beard­ed, name­less char­ac­ter, Scors­ese enters a cab, boss­es the dri­ver around for a while, then pro­ceeds to explain, in an uncom­fort­ably mat­ter of fact way, how he plans to kill his wife. It’ll make your hair stand on end. In a new com­mer­cial for Apple, Scors­ese plays a bossy back-seat rid­er again. But this time, there’s no killing involved, just shilling. It’s an ad for Apple’s iPhone, and it’s the lat­est in a new series of ads fea­tur­ing celebs like Zooey Deschan­nel, Samuel Jack­son and John Malkovich.

Of course, the par­al­lel between the Siri ad and the 1976 film was spot­ted by Roger Ebert. All props to him.

P.S.: In case you think we’re see­ing a par­al­lel that does­n’t actu­al­ly exist, it’s worth not­ing that both cabs have the same num­ber. Great spot by @sinyc.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.