With the return of the television series, Dexter, after such a long hiatus (rebooted this November 2021 from Showtime as Dexter: New Blood), it is inevitable that so much of what we will see will hearken back to the past, uncanny as a visitation by a ghost as our memories are conjured up magically by […]
Tag: television
CALL FOR PAPERS: From Carmilla to Drusilla: Vampires Across Popular Culture (dl: Feb 15, 2018)
International Vampire Film and Arts Festival | 7-10 June 2018 | TRANSYLVANIA The third annual International Vampire Film and Arts Festival will take place in Sighisoara in Transylvania, Romania, on June 7th-10th, 2018. And to celebrate their popular fiction dual degree collaboration, WRITE TOGETHER — in which students earn an MA studying at Edinburgh Napier […]
When Hot Dogs Attack
You may have seen this hilariously strange new ad for Tums Smoothies during the political convention season (2016) on TV. If so, you’ve “Felt the (Heart)Bern” in a way that probably made you do a double-take the first time you saw it: A pack of naked hot dog people, attacking a lone male camper in […]
The Clone Chores — aka. Return of the Maytag Men
Last June, I shared some observations about how das Unheimliche is employed in Maytag advertising that features the newest model of their Maytag Man spokesman. A year later, this great advertising icon is back in a new tv ad that has doubled-down on his inherent uncanniness…by framing the character as but one clone in a […]
Maytag’s New Maytag Man – Renewing an Icon with Uncanny Magic
If you watch commercial television, you may have been surprised to see this year that the Maytag Man has gotten an extreme makeover. The Maytag Man — aka “Ol’ Lonely” – is one of those classic icons of advertising — as commonly known as Ronald McDonald, the Michelin Man and the Energizer Bunny — due […]
We Like Double: the Ford Fusion Hybrid Superbowl Ad
One of the first big budget TV commercials to air during this year’s Super Bowl programming was the “Nearly Double” advertisement for the Ford Fusion Hybrid, starring Rob Riggle & James Franco, which claims to “make history” by airing two commercials back-to-back, or following up the first commercial with a second one that is “double […]
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