Tag Archives: pop culture

American Psycho: the Huey Lewis + Weird Al edition

Mary Harron’s brilliant, disturbing, satirical movie, American Psycho, contains a now-iconic scene where Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) holds forth on Huey Lewis and the News before killing an associate with an axe. Sorry if that’s a spoiler, but there’s really no other way to warn you that this clip contains gratuitous and potentially upsetting scenes of someone dancing to Huey Lewis and the News:


[embedded clip: American Psycho: Huey Lewis]

I mention this because this funny or die clip is probably a bit confounding if you haven’t seen the source:

Yes, I know that in sharing this I’m essentially advertising a Huey Lewis album since this video was created to “celebrate” the 30th anniversary of said Huey Lewis album, but I’m easily amused and can’t help it.

Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association 2013

Home again after the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference, which was a 4 day whirlwind. Think I’m kidding about the whirlwind part? Here’s the pdf of the schedule – it’s 501 pages long.

(The conference is actually going on until 9:45 tonight but we attended 3 panels between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. and then our brains melted. Well, I can’t speak for Husband, but I can assure you mine did. While I’m writing this, I’m watching Project Runway and I’m having trouble following the plot. Yikes).

My conference paper on the TV show Supernatural was well-received and everyone else on the panel was fascinating so I was in great company:

horror (text, media, culture): television and New Media horror

“Translating tradition: domesticating seasonal horror through television.”
Derek Johnston (panel chair)

“Beyond salt and fire: the agency of human remains in the Supernatural Universe.”
Rebecca Stone Gordon

“Control is Being taken away from You”, Marble hornets and transmedia horror.
Ralph Beliveau and Amanda Kehrberg

I should probably edit the draft of my first TED DeExtinction post so I can get that online tomorrow. I intended to post about that last week and so it concludes with the delusional statement that I’d blog from the PCAACA conference. We can see how well that worked out.

Ikea ads

ikea5

When I first moved to Washington, DC in 1988, IKEA ads touting their high product-testing standards were on TV a lot. My roommate and I loved one with a scientist jumping up and down on a bed chanting, “You’re gonna get hurt! You’re gonna get hurt! You’re gonna get hurt!”

That’s how I remembered it, anyway. We especially loved that ad after we’d been drinking all night at Ireland’s Four Provinces (aka The 4Ps) so, um, do with that what you will.

Over the years, I’ve quizzed marketing experts about this ad campaign. I’ve made phone calls. I’ve searched for this ad on youtube. All to no avail. Samer almost had me convinced that I’d imagined it. Almost.

Recently, I began to wonder if I was perhaps remembering the ads themselves properly, but had the company wrong. I commenced googling, and the first hit led me to a detailed dissection of the whole campaign!

It was real! And it was an IKEA campaign! And it was, indeed, almost exactly as I remembered it!

Thank you so much, Adland! There’s no video, but the picture pretty much says it all, and they break down the ad.

TITLE CARD: IKEA LOGO VO ANNCR: Ikea, Swedish for common sense.

In the closing scene, the male tester is jumping up and down on a bed. …Like a kid.
FEMALE TESTER: You’re gonna get hurt.
SFX: BELL
FEMALE TESTER: You’re gonna get hurt.
SFX: BELL
FEMALE TESTER: You’re gonna get hurt.
SFX: BELL

The post is a discussion of a number of ad campaigns and I’m not familiar with, but the IKEA part vindicates my memory. Lots of Gen X creatives read this site, though, so some of you will probably find it interesting if you remember this ad, or some later ads for other companies that were apparently suspiciously similar.

I loved this note at the bottom of the post, a 2005 update to the 1998 post:

A visitor lets us know that IKEA tv spot in the Badland section was definitely done at Goldberg Marchdesano in D.C. Joe Moscati was the Art Director…he was at the One Show to accept award on behalf of Goldberg, and has the pencil with his name on it to prove it. Wow, this makes the ‘original’ ad an olden goldie, 1988 is a long time ago for a commercial.

I’m glad the website broke down all of the ads in the campaign – they were all funny.

I uploaded their image and put it at the top of this post because this post has been in my draft file for a while and I’ve had trouble loading the adland page a few times and I’m afraid they might disappear. I’m going to drop them a line to make sure it’s okay I’m using it. And to thank them for documenting this ad campaign!