One Laptop Per Child has enlisted the legendary John Lennon to promote its charity in its latest ad- despite the fact Lennon has been dead since 1980. The ad, which features actual footage of Lennon over a vocal impersonation, was authorized by Yoko Ono, who owns the rights to her husband’s name and likeness.
I’m not so much offended by this ad as I am baffled. Aren’t there any living celebrities with the same type of cachet of goodwill as Lennon that OLPC could have used to promote their cause- ones that didn’t die before laptops existed? The fake Lennon, seeing as it uses actual footage, is not as creepy as, say, the fake Orville Redenbacher, but it is still rather unusual to hear John Lennon say words like “laptop.”
Weird, poor voice acting, and offensive, IMO. We can’t know if John would’ve supported OLPC or not, so leave him out of it. I personally find it [OLPC] a little weird and can’t imagine I’m the only one.
Using Lennon’s voice like that is pretty bizarre. If Yoko wants to support the program, that’s great, but she can use her OWN voice. She could have said something like, “I know John would have loved this idea…”
But putting words in his mouth, even for a good cause, just seems wrong to me.
If this is the charity I think it is it doesn’t surprise me.
With all of the problems in Africa its priority is to give every child in NIgeria, of all places a laptop.
I’m sure that they will be put to good use whoever actually ends up owning them.
Yoko’s actually been going on for years about how Lennon would have loved the Internet. In fact, she’s also said he likely would have spent all his time just surfing message boards and posting his drawings to DeviantArt.
On the other hand, I too find OLPC really weird and I’m equally weirded out by the dedication some people have for the cause. I remember reading a Wired article on it a while back which talked about people donating ridiculous sums of money to the charity just to get one of the laptops.
I agree with you guys. Using a voice actor to impersonate a dead guy is just as weird and grotesque as it would be if they were to turn his corpse into a marionette.
I can believe Yoko’s right that he would have liked the idea, but in that case it would have been far more tasteful and appropriate if they had been satisfied with using prior existing footage and music from him to support the campaign.
The sooner they learn how to run email scams, the sooner they can support themselves? :dubious:
Honestly, I think the whole thing is a dumb idea too. Even if the laptops do get to the kids who are supposed to get them, I think the money that’s been spent on these laptops would do more good if it were spent on simpler, cheaper forms of help like books, medicine, and food. Or on education about environmentally sustainable farming methods (it doesn’t help anyone if we wire up the whole world but destroy the entire planet’s ecosystem as more countries develop massive industrialization on the scale of USA, China, etc.).
In a very minor defense, I believe these are the hand crank laptops and they come with the equivalent of a small library worth of books. So no power or books needed at least.
I have to ask what "cachet of goodwill’ really? Lennon is generally admired for his musical contributions, but personally (if various bios are to be believed) he was regarded something of a self centered, attention whoring dick. I honestly don’t think he is all that “admired” as a person (vs as a talent) or regarded all that fondly despite the shock and sense of regret over his murder.
In looking at the video that is some incredibly bad voice work. It sounds nothing like him.
Y’know, I had heard bad things about her, but I never would have pegged her as an exhibitionist necrophiliac. Raping a corpse in public like that… won’t somebody think of the chil’un ?
Put me in as a vote against Virtual Zombie Lennon. It just strikes me as going a bit beyond merely using a dead celeb’s image/rep to get associative goodwill when you actually fabricate an endorsement from the dead celeb 28 years after he’s gone.
Then again the sponsors must have known that just having images of John and “Imagine” playing in the background whileYoko or Sean’s voice tells us that supporting this cause would be in the spirit of John would not be too effective.
Oh, but the impression of John as dick was among those who had the chance to actually meet him or follow him closely (and fans disgruntled over the whole Yoko thing, which was none of their business anyway). However, the image that was and keeps being projected to the rest of the public-at-large, the only one most of the public-at-large had access to, and upon which this ad campaign hinges, is that of JL as “The Imagine/Give peace a Chance Guy”, noble embodiment of all that was Good about the 60’s ideals, perpetuating the fallacy of equating admirable talent with admirable person.
He probably would have hated that, having himself acknowleged that he had some personally-unpleasant issues, and expressed rejection of “canonization” in many interviews. Had he lived he may have sought to discourage it and would be telling us all to Get A Life in those would-have-been blogs and deviantArt pages (where, were he to post pseudonymously and not as John Lennon, he’d likely be getting banned every other month and enjoying that greatly).
I would’ve liked it better if they’d put an effort in. But it was a very bad impersonation, and a very bad digital lipsync. I agree that it would’ve been better to use his music instead.