Two sort-of separate thoughts, linked by TOKYO!

One of my favorite parts of the Internet is how hard it is to miss something wonderful if you're really into its subject matter. Here is a tiny account of how I found out (and was reminded, and was reminded again) about TOKYO! (the movie):


Pretty awesome, right? Over six months, I had messages about the movie coming from a blog, a friend and a mailing list. By the time the movie opened, there was no way I was going to forget about it. And how could I, with a trailer like this?


Last weekend, I finally saw it with Jack and I loved it. This is one I'm going to have to buy when it's released; I can see myself wanting to watch little bits of it over and over again.

In short: The movie is three separate stories – all set in Tokyo – directed by Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-Ho. I loved each one for different reasons. There were a lot of "everyday adjustments when you're new to a big city" parts in Gondry's, the feelings of which I can remember/relate to. Also, one of my favorite buildings has a tiny cameo in it.


The Carax story was slightly jarring and hilarious at the same time; it starred Denis Lavant, who nobody ever seems to be able to take their eyes off of (here he is in the Rabbit in Your Headlights video). The Joon-Ho story not only referenced hikikomori... but it also had a TON of sunlight in it, which is one of my favorite things in the world to look at.

I really am happy that I enjoyed Tokyo! this much, because I accidentally read a withering review of it a few days beforehand that ashamedly had me spooked (don't click on that unless you are okay with spoilers): Tokyo! has no real reason for being, least of all as a city portrait. It’s disposable art-house tourism, made by filmmakers with too many festivals to attend. Wowzers! Seeing this movie reminded me why I tend to take such things with a grain of salt, since it's hard to apply the opinion of someone I've never met to the context of my own life.*

I realize that this post doesn't really have a clear flow. Sorry. These are the two separate thoughts that aren't SO separate in my mind but I'm having a hard time explaining (try to poke holes in these if you can, I don't feel 100% yet):

1. The Internet is a great platform for guiding you to things you love: either directly (something you signed up for, e.g.), or via someone else who knows you pretty well. DUH, I know, but I'm just thinking about this now.
2. The more paths that something takes to get to you, the more support there is that you should probably check it out further. These paths are in a way pre-selected and shaped by "what makes you you," right? So all of them taken together are a better predictor of whether or not you'll like it than someone who's paid to write reviews that stand on their own or in a silo. Again, common sense, but I liked deconstructing it a little.

* I think of this in the same way that I think of professional restaurant reviews (I wrote this as a comment in Noah's post about rating systems & personal rules). One of the reasons I prefer public rating systems over things like Michelin is context. Restaurants don't live in a vacuum: they are part of people's lives. On Yelp, you can look at profiles attached to each review to get a general sense of the context in which the review was written. You can also look at the other reviews that that person has written (and what they wrote them for), and get a general gauge of how the restaurants (or shops) play a part in their everyday lives, their particular tastes, their "aesthetic" (gross but true), etc. Yakitori Taisho is not on Michelin's NYC Stars 2009, but it would be on mine because of who I am.

Context of placement

Yes, another one about context, it's my new favorite thing, maybe I should add it to my list on the right there.

A couple of months ago, I stumbled upon an interactive campaign in a Midtown subway transfer: a promotion for the current new season of Big Love. The ads showed a bunch of people going about their everyday business, with headphone jacks above each person's head. So, I went up to one and tried out one or two of the jacks (I suspect the reason was a combination of "I'm in marketing, let's see what this is," and "Cool, something I can play with").


After reading a couple of things about the campaign just now (sorry this is sort of old news but please bear with me, I've been thinking about this a bit lately), I found out that the tag – "Everyone has something to hide" – directly relates to the content of the audio files – each person confessing their secrets.

The fact that I didn't know this detail kind of speaks to why I kept thinking about the campaign for a few weeks after the fact. On one hand, I am not sick of the "audio jacks in subway ads" thing yet, and like that there is some level of engagement involved, instead of static ads just talking at you*.

On the other hand, I wonder if the context of where this campaign was placed was taken into account enough**. These ads are placed in an underground transfer between Times Square and Port Authority. Both stations (and this transfer between them) have high, high foot traffic. The sea of people pouring through that transfer every day has enough momentum to pick you up right along with it, if you hesitate at all. That, combined with the state of mind one might be in at the time ("Oh, this long tunnel again" is how I usually feel), may not make for someone actually stopping to listen to one (or more) of these audio tracks. Maybe I had back luck, but the one I put my headphones into had a really slow start. My boyfriend and I were sharing ear buds, and we both got impatient after about 2 seconds of the "background noise" intro. I'm sure the copy was great, but sadly this was not the time or place to find out.

In short: If you're leading with a strategic idea, but the idea only lives in a place where people can't properly consume it, it falls flat and doesn't accomplish all that it set out to. If this campaign had been placed somewhere people wait instead of walk – bus stops or subway platforms, for example – I would have listened to every single one of the secret confessions by now... all I ever seem to have at bus stops is time (though that may not be applicable anymore, as I recently encountered a family of roaches on a Brooklyn bus and am on an extended bus hiatus).

* (I like the photography, too. The look/feel/lighting vaguely remind me of Jeff Wall.)

** I say "enough" because I read that the headphones attached to the L.A. ads were not included in NY because it was "assumed that New York commuters would bring their own." Interesting observation – and pretty true in a lot of cases – though I'm not sure how willing an average commuter would be to unplug from their favorite music to listen to an ad.