Descent? We're all trying to ascend into a life with more substance and soul. I think your line of thinking is upside down and seems absolutely miserable to me.
> The reaction to this ad reflects a pernicious societal descent into relying on emotion instead of reason and accepting innumeracy instead of analysis.
Being a snob about things isn’t as cool as you think it is.
The problem with the ad is not that it produces waste. If it was 100% CGI it would make absolutely no difference.
The problem is the message. Craftspeople, including artists, value, respect and love their tools. This ads tell them that those tools are valueless, obsolete, objects of ridicule, and that a big tech company can decide to replace them with yet another lifeless slab of aluminium and plastic.
Imagine an ad for condoms that would crush babies. (Why not! Thinness is an important attribute of condoms too.) Critics would not accuse the company producing it of killing babies, because everyone would assume there were some special effects involved. Yet it would be absolutely revolting.
There's a real element of media literacy (or lack thereof) that we have to consider in this issue.
What was the intent of the media?
This is obviously open to interpretation, but to me I see the intent being that all these tools for creative expression are being combined/squashed/pressed into this thing which is very thin. That's why they chose the press. They also chose the press because it looks visually interesting, they are trying to make a fun ad.
I really can't imagine that anyone in that ad was trying to imply that the iPad destroys those objects, or that those objects should be destroyed, or are now valueless. They are saying that this device contains the functionality of all these big items squashed into one crazy tiny thing. Amazement at what it can do, NOT a desire to destroy or make obsolete real pianos.
From that viewpoint, it's clear they VERY clumsily applied a metaphor (combining + crushing into the iPad) with a visually fun thing (the explosions), resulting in people thinking they want to destroy pianos.
But importantly (if one takes the above as true, which you may not), you can't then say that the ad is trying to "tell that those tools are valueless, obsolete, objects of ridicule", that's not the intent of the author.
The intent of the author shouldn't matter when it comes to advertising - it's not the viewer's responsibility to figure out a deeper/alternative meaning. The ad company is injecting themselves between the viewer and the media they actually want to watch. The onus is on the advertiser to make the message as clear as possible to the viewer who doesn't care - and if it misses the mark, it's the advertiser which failed. Not the viewer's lack of effort on understanding it.
I agree, and I don't think this is a good ad for all those reasons.
But if you want to infer values of the company from an ad, and say things like "Apple wants to destroy pianos", then considering the intent of the author is absolutely relevant.
> There's a real element of media literacy (or lack thereof) that we have to consider in this issue. What was the intent of the media?
You cannot ignore the impact of artistic decisions and processes when considering a piece of work, and calling that a "lack of media literacy" is grossly oversimplifying artistic analysis. Intent is important, but so is the impact on the audience. Art is a conversation between artist and audience, and as pointed out by the article and the other comments here in the thread, the message missed for a significant percentage of the audience.
But there are many ways to show that the iPad incorporates all of those things. Make a mini character enter the iPad and visit a succession of caves, each one full of artists doing art with traditional tools. Or put mini instruments in a drawer, one after the other, and when the drawer is opened again it only contains an iPad.
But no! They thought it was more fun to destroy everything. They wanted to make porn. They wanted to make their own little snuff movie.
And nobody in what one imagines to be a long chain of command, felt physically sick watching it.
The whole point was the destruction -- they spent basically all the time in the ad on slow, loving shots of all these artifacts being mangled and crushed. They weren't being combined, subsumed, or absorbed -- they were being flat out destroyed. And not quickly -- slowly and remorselessly.
The problem with the ad is in the semiotics -- the visual language of the ad was all about succession _through destruction_. The message was "all these things, that represent _good_ memories and experiences you've had, are now destroyed." And at the very end they show you a brief shot of the new iPad.
Same. Replace condoms with abortion clinic and the analogy might a little more accurate - but only because I suspect some will see it as story about murdering souls and some will see it as beneficial and necessary. But even then it's still quite a stretch.
> If it's actually just the seeing of a musical instrument being crushed that is so upsetting, then what are we to think of the countless instruments thrown in the trash after our elementary school kids give up on being guitarists, drummers, trombone players, or violinists. Why do we even let a 7 year old touch a violin if only 1 out of 100 ever play a level that isn't torture to listen to.
This reminded me of an interesting documentary from the LA Times on the LA Unified School District's musical instrument repair shop.
I tend to agree. Most people have no idea that every commercial or film, ends up dumping or destroying almost all the stuff in the video.
I remember there was a Scene in one of the more recent mission impossible movies where the director was interviewed as joking about how they budgeted to destroy 3 lamborgini's for a action sequence but ended up needing to destroy 4 of them. These were brand new, straight off the lot lambos that just got shot at, crashed, and blown up for the movie. No one cries about that, instead they marvel at the "practical effects" of the movie.
This isn't even a unique example. A lot or props that DON'T get destroyed and are just used for one quick scene, like a chello in the background, often go straight to the dump after the scene is filmed, because they just bring in a dump crew to get rid of everything.
I guess the difference is ignorance is bliss. People don't see the amount of absurd waste that happens in commercials and movies, so they can enjoy it. Strangly, even seeing it on screen (like a car blowing up) doesn't bother them. But a slow crushing of an instrument for 20 seconds does trigger them.
The amount of waste that this produced is inconsequential, not even a rounding error for the amount of waste that a warehouse up the street from anyone reading this is performing as you read this comment. And yes, there are so many of these companies creating unfathomable amounts of waste that no matter where you live, you have one probably within a few miles of your home that you never knew about.
I would tend to side with those that are triggered if these instruments were antiques that couldn't be replaced. However, these appeared to be common instruments. I actually play guitar and the guitar actually looks like a pretty cheap guitar. These get bought at Costco and returned and dumped everyday. They are commodities, they are pumped out of factories en masse in Vietnam and contain a hundred bucks of parts, wood, etc. Most of these guitars end up in the dump anyway. The upright piano is a little different because they tend to be several thousands of dollars, but again this looks like a modern, generic piano.
I am happy to have discussions about the vast amount of waste humans have, because it is truly unfathomable. Most people have no idea how bad the problem is. But watching some paints, a metronome, a single guitar and piano get destroyed is not even the beginning of the real problem. So if we want to have a discussion about waste, let's have it. It's a serious problem, but this feels like a joke that a handful of items that doesn't even equate to what an average American probably dumps when they move houses, seems like a stupid hill to die on.
> The reaction to this ad reflects a pernicious societal descent into relying on emotion
Spoiler alert: humans have emotions. Apple will gladly spit in your face about emissions all while giving you less product (taking chargers out of iPhones) so they can save the environment (more like, their profits). Not everyone wants to see the message of hundreds of years of art history being destroyed all so you can purchase new product to make some soulless AI generated garbage.
