George Seibold

This political remix video takes a Walmart advertisement and, through the use of audio adjustment and interspersed clips from The Terminator (1984), turns it into a mock fascistic propaganda piece that looks like it could have come straight from Skynet itself. The Walmart ad used in the remix video is titled “I am a Factory.” The ad consists of a monologue from the first-person perspective of a factory as shots of decrepit factories and old footage of things reminiscent of industry (a rocket launching, cars being made on an assembly line) punctuate the factory’s claims of how it once used to be great. As the monologue shifts from talking about the past to talking about the future, the visual footage changes to portray happy factory workers and active industrial processes. The ad flashes some statements about how Walmart is committed to supporting local industries, and then the monologue closes out with the message “work is a beautiful thing.”

In the remixed video, as soon as the monologue shifts from the past to the present/future, the voice gets perceptively deeper and more filtered, as if it was being said by a machine. The music also takes a turn, becoming more sinister. Both of these aspects of the audio work to shift the implications of the monologue; while the original speech was meant to inspire hope for the future of the American industry, the edited version makes it sound like a grim warning. It’s also not hard to notice some of the dogwhistling present in the ad: while the statement “but I’m still here, and I believe I will rise again” only vaguely suggests the reactionary conservative ideal of traditionalism in the original ad, it becomes a darker portent reminiscent of the kinds of things thrown around by radical nationalist organizations. In this context, the statement immediately following, “we will build things, and build families, and build dreams,” sounds like a fascist slogan that seems like it belongs on signs held by red-faced crowds shouting “blood and soil.”

The remixed video also intersperses clips from The Terminator showing the titular robots being made by similar industrial processes as the one depicted in the ad. One of the final shots, which reveals a completed Terminator after the monologue states “it’s time to get back to what America does best” conveys a scathing critique on American industry and large corporations. The juxtaposition between the monologue and the Terminator clips suggests that the American industry is best at making things that kill people (a critique on both poor work environments and the military-industrial complex), and that American capitalistic ideals are turning factory workers themselves into selfless automatons. Finally, the recut ad closes out on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s iconic red-eyed stare as the altered voice asserts that “work is a beautiful thing.” A large quantity of theoretical work has been done on the aesthetics of fascism, but for the sake of brevity all that needs to be said about the combination of the connotations of the statement, the cultural context from which The Terminator was created, and the juxtaposition of the two in an edited Walmart ad is that it succinctly ties up everything previously outlined in this blog post in a way that’s both humorously absurd yet undoubtedly a little haunting.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/meat/

Robert Kunzig and Douglas Emlen, the authors of “The Carnivore’s Dilemma” and “Astonishing Weaponry of the Dung Beetle,” respectively, both crafted essays that involve transforming heady research into something digestible to the general public, while still managing to draw important conclusions from the data. This is not always easy, and fortunately for Kunzig and Emlen, they’re both writing for publications generally targeted for people who are interested in relatively nuanced ideas. Both the authors form concrete connections between the research they are attempting to communicate and popular events and concepts, so that the reader has a strong frame of reference to draw on. For instance, Kunzig associates his research with the larger public discourse on factory farming and consumerism, so the reader can better understand where his points lie in the bigger picture; Emlen relates his description of dung beetle combat to larger global conflicts, so that the reader can draw inferences from the analogy. Additionally, both of the writers incorporate a certain reversal or subversion of expectations to keep the reader hooked and interested in the ideas they are trying to convey. That being said, their strategies differ in some notable ways: Kunzig, in what was likely an effort to humanize a side that has mostly been seen as an antagonist in the public stage, presents his data as ideas posited by actual people—specifically, the cattle-feeders he talked to. Emlen, on the other hand, provides data on dung beetles in order to prove an entirely different point—the beetles weren’t important, but the similarities between them and us were. While both of the writers used fairly straightforward strategies to make the research interesting to the reader, there were some areas where the fell short. Kunzig cited topics that were relevant to the public discussion of the meat industry, but his only conclusion was that people ought to be aware that the issue is more nuanced than it seems; a valuable point, for sure, but it’s fair to say that a large quantity of people interested enough to read such an essay would probably be aware that the issue isn’t black and white. As for Emlen, his essay makes a fairly abrupt change from beetles to human conflict; he crafted an interesting metaphor, but didn’t really take it any further than connecting the bugs to people. Perhaps if he went back to talking about beetles at the end of the essay and left the conclusive statement in the last paragraph unsaid, the reader could come to that conclusion on their own and have a more fulfilling interaction with the essay.