Creative+Commons+Licensed+Video

=Creative Commons Licensed Video =

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**Production Value**

The two videos I have selected for this assignment uses the medium of animation. The //Breakfast Pals// (1939), is a techno-color animation short presented as an entertaining cartoon for children. It is a commercial but not as we know it today. It would blend in perfect in between Popeye pushing spinach and the high jinks of Tom and Jerry. While product placement advertising is a part of shows today, cartoon programs are not explicit commercials like the //Breakfast Pals// short. The second video is a black and white cartoon from Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1952 presidential campaign promotion. This animated commercial uses a catchy tune with the gestalt principle of common fate to promote its message. The viewer’s attention is directed forward through simple white shapes with “IKE” in black throughout the artifact. This type of visual imagery and use of a memorable jingle is still in practice today. The catchy concessions short played at the movie theater where a hot dog, soda, popcorn bucket and box of candy dance across the theater screen singing, “Let’s all go to the movies…” is an example of how it is still used today.

**Content and Culture**

Cartoons are meant to entertain as well as sell products or ideas. Cartoons are usually light-hearted and function to encourage the audience to have fun and enjoy themselves. Once in this frame of mind the audience can then associate those positive feelings towards a product or idea. //Breakfast Pals// uses a narrative to associate Rice Krispies with adventure and action while the other cereal as bad even criminal. The IKE short uses a catchy tune and repetition to imprint “I Like IKE” for the 1952 presidential election. These marketing tactics are used so frequently it has become a part of the American television culture. While we have not seen a catchy-tune singing caricature of Barack Obama or John McCain in the past 2008 presidential election bopping across the screen, we do see animation sell products or ideas. Bart Simpson has been used to sell Butterfingers since the 1990s and Eminem hawked energy drinks during the 2011 Super Bowl via animation. Icons are created through branding and advertising. Snap, Crackle and Pop and “I like IKE” are examples of iconic symbols in American culture fostered by marketing. We all know Snap, Crackle and Pop as the three guys from the Rice Krispies box and most have heard of the slogan “I like IKE,” even if they were born decades after the 1950s. These two shorts are examples that support the notion of America as a consumer culture.

**Breakfast Pals (1939)** media type="file" key="VideoBreakfas1939_512kb.mp4" width="300" height="300" [|VideoBreakfas1939_512kb.mp4]

Source: [] CC License: No Rights Reserved

**Eisenhower Campaign Spots, 1952 Presidential Campaign (1952)** media type="file" key="Video Eisenhow1952_512kb.mp4" width="300" height="300"

[|Video Eisenhow1952_512kb.mp4]

Source: [] CC License: No Rights Reserved