Rant of the Week

Selling the Dead:
Marketing Lennon

 

Well, Apple Computer has done it again.  They persuaded Yoko Ono, presumably, to sell them her vampirish endorsement of their computer products.  "Think Different" is the theme of the campaign. 

But wait-- isn't that John sitting beside Yoko?   Isn't that a picture from the "bed-in for peace" in Amsterdam?  John Lennon, who wrote:


Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
Nothing to kill or die for
A brotherhood of man

Well, this takes the cake.  It reminds me of Rolling Stone Magazine, emerging from the flotsam of the 1960's as the first, supposedly, "counter-culture" magazine.  In actual fact, it was no more counter-culture than dental floss.  Jann Wenner, the publisher, simply realized, before almost anyone else did, that there was a lot of money to be made in the "money can't buy me love" business.  A lot of trinkets to be sold.  A lot of images to make and remake and sell.  And all of it while pretending to be "different" from the materialistic older generation.

There ought to be a law against exploiting the dead.  There is something particularly offensive about taking someone like John Lennon, who genuinely did stand for something, and using his image to market consumer products for one of greediest and most self-centred corporations in Silicone Valley.  Yes, Apple, not Microsoft (Dracula, not Frankenstein).

John isn't around to mock the whole idea the way he probably would.   "Imagine there's no Windows/It's easy if you try".  He was one of the few rock stars of the 1960's to stay relatively true to his own vision.

The vampires of Wall Street has no shame.

Copyright © 1998 Bill Van Dyk  All rights reserved.

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 1998 All Rights Reserved