Imagine: Lennon in TV ad 28 years after his death

[Ichingcarpenter]

Source: reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Imagine, John Lennon makes a television commercial for charity -- 28 years after his death.

Through the use of digital technology, the former Beatle urges people across the United States to support a campaign by "One Laptop per Child" to deliver tough, solar-powered XO laptop computers to the world's poorest children.

"Imagine every child no matter where in the world they were could access a universe of knowledge. They would have a chance to learn, to dream, to achieve anything they want," a voice and video image of Lennon has been created to say.

"I tried to do it through my music, but now you can do it in a very different way. You can give a child a laptop and more than imagine, you can change the world," says the musician in a play on one his best known songs -- 1971's "Imagine."

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE4BP30U20081226?rpc=64

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You can see the ad here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x253362


I think the laptop project is a good idea, but this advertisement is a little unnerving for me.

[ogneopasno]

1. I posted in your other thread, but yeah, the idea is bizarre and a little gross. I also don't like

the charity's premise, either.

(I'm not chasing you around; I just saw you had posted it twice.)

[DavidDvorkin]

2. It's ghoulish.

[BrklynLiberal]

3. This HAD to have Yoko Ono's approval...right??

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. Yes according to the news report and Another Bad Call from Yoko

I find this commercial disturbing

[BrklynLiberal]

5. I guess she is done suffering from his death, and is now cashing in on it.

[cstanleytech]

6. Oh? I must have missed where it said she had been paid by the charity

[notesdev]

8. If Lennon were still alive

he surely would have strangled her by now

[Deja Q]

11. According to the biography "John Lennon: The Life", he was an avid beater of women

(of course, his son said that he tried turning his life around before his death, and I've got to give the man some respect for being true to words he'd sung 10+ years prior to...)

[Donnachaidh]

18. which son said that?

I'd take anything from Sean Lennon with a huge grain of salt. He stands to gain from the deification of John. :sarcasm:

[Ken Burch]

30. And Julian DOESN'T? How do you figure that?

n/t.

[Ichingcarpenter]

23. I appreciate your contribution to humanity like John Lennon did

You just beat up LOVE.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

28. An excellent new biography.

John Lennon:The Life by Philip Norman.

It's over 800 pages and has lots of new information from sources that have never before commented. Sean, Yoko, George Martin, and many others.

Very well written as well.

[Ken Burch]

31. No, but he might've beaten the shit ouf of you for saying that.

If Yoko approved of this, she did it as a charitable thing. The woman hardly needs the money.

[sofa king]

32. But since he's dead...

You could probably charge the battery on the OLPC by hooking it up to his spinning grave.

Or you could have, had not OLPC ditched the hand-crank charger, which was the most attractive feature of the device.

[jeff30997]

7. Very disturbing indeed.

K&R

[Alexander]

9. Very creepy. I don't like it one bit.

Didn't "Sopranos" do something similar, using digital technology to bring back a dead actress?

[Deja Q]

10. It wasn't his real voice; one hell of a vocal impersonator.

Especially after recent biographies about the man, the fact Ms Ono is hyping up his grave, that song, et al, isn't putting warm fuzzies in my stomach, or any other body part.

She just wants money and what better way to get it than to use parts of hubby's corpse. It IS ghoulish, grizzly, unnerving, and hypocritical. Or perhaps it's revenge on her part, in which case I'll happily retract 99% of this response.

[pitohui]

13. i don't have such a dark view of ono

i don't think the story of john and yoko was about money, if it was, he could have cashed in for someone younger and more beautiful, i think there was a meeting of minds there and i think she did suffer terribly when he was shot

still there is a point at which decades have passed and the most valuable thing you own is licensing rights and you're old...

yeah i would prefer not to see words put into someone else's mouth after their death BUT this isn't a bad cause after all

at least she isn't selling his voice and/or face to hawk toyotas

most of the "greats" from the olden days, you hear their voices in car and truck commercials

we're upset about this because lennon meant something to us, but we let led zeppelin, the who, even macca himself be in much more crass commercials and we don't bat an eye

[awoke_in_2003]

16. Well,

hearing a Led Zeppelin song being used to sell cadillacs makes me a bit sick.

[KittyWampus]

22. hearing Iggy Pop on a cruise ship commercial freaked me the heck out.

[awoke_in_2003]

24. didn't much care for that type

of music, but it surprised me too

[Manifestor_of_Light]

27. It's "grisly", not "grizzly." Thank you.

Grizzly is for bears.

Grisly is for yucky stuff.

Gristly is meat with too much cartilage.

[Ken Burch]

29. If you cooked a grizzly, it's meat could be gristly...

Which you'd likely find grisly.

(Caribou Barbie makes all Alaskan schoolkids memorize that nowadays. Once they've got it down, she graduates them.)

[onehandle]

12. Shot in the back with a handgun.

Dead.

[TurboKitty]

14. John Lennon

One of the reasons I loved Lennon so much was because he was such a visionary and not just musically...I believe Yoko has her heart in the right place by allowing the commercial to run...the children of the world need all the information and education they can get though I probably would have chosen a different format for the entire commercial myself...I hope it works...

[awoke_in_2003]

17. Information is good...

but I would rather get some food in their stomachs first. It is disgusting that even in a country as rich as America, children go to bed hungry. Nourish the body, then nourish the mind.

P.S. Even if you can't afford to give much, volunteer at you local homeless shelter. It is quite rewarding.

[Libertas1776]

15. ...

I think it is very distasteful. Oi, as if Orville Redenbacher reanimated to promote his popcorn again and Gene Kelley going gaga for Volkswagon wasn't bad enough. They're dead, let them alone.

[kaygore]

19. The TOC for laptops to too high and the laptop itself is very poorly designed

Toc=Total cost of ownership

The computer was designed by a team with little consideration for the fact that simply having a computing device does not equal learning...among other problems.

I think that Lennon would be horrified if he knew about this.

The poorest kids in the world deserve much better than this ill-conceived laptop.

[Donnachaidh]

25. what I've seen about those laptops -- they seem to be total CRAP.

I think it would be much better to send that $100 (or whatever they are asking you to give) to a group that is providing FOOD, or perhaps healthcare services.

The odds are good that these laptops will find their way onto the black market, once the novelty has worn off and the kids realize having a laptop doesn't really change their situation much.

[dugaresa]

20. seems over the top to me....including the ad

what use a laptop for a child without food? shelter? without safety?

what about first taking care of the basic needs and then working on their minds...granted technology is grand but there are children who are slaving away in sweat shops to make trinkets for the rest of the world...when will they use the laptop? will they sell it to eat?

what good is a laptop in a refugee camp when you have nothing in your belly?

I love the idea of spreading knowledge but I tend to be more practical. Books require no power, are made of relatively renewable resources and can be shared easily or passed on...high tech stuff tends to have a shelf life whether we like it or not and shouldn't be "thrown away"...

[Berry Cool]

21. It's one thing to use his image in an ad

but to have a guy imitating him and trying to sound exactly like him voicing the ad and expecting us to pretend it's him talking? Tacky and tasteless.

I'm glad someone explained it was an imitator. Prior to that I was wondering how the hell they did it. Wondered if they put it together the way that video was assembled of Bush "singing" "Deck the Halls," where they obviously carefully snipped video examples of him speaking each of the words in the song's lyrics and edited them all together in order. I was afraid Yoko had them do that with John to make this ad! (Splicing together examples of him saying "lap" and "top" to make "laptop"--a word he probably never had occasion to speak in his lifetime!)

Anyway, it's just...creepy and goes one step too far.

[carlyhippy]

26. freaky....John would have approved that

I miss John....