[If you haven’t read part 1 of good riddance I highly recommend you do so first.]
[If you have read part 1, I assure you that this post is much shorter.]
I would like to share with you this good riddance chaser, a refreshing bit of honest advertising.
Although it lacks the sophistication of the zoo world propaganda, this ad gives you a clear picture of exactly what goes on inside this facebook zoo app.
dead honest
It makes no sweeping statements or dogmatic declarations (cf. “There are no sad faces in Zoo World.”); nor does it attempt to bolster its credibility by citing some glassy-eyed ventriloquist (cf. “Just ask this laughing hyena!”). There is no nuanced pop-culture allusion here, no sentimental sleight of hand to disguise the death-dealing dystopia festering beneath the flimsy facade of friendly fauna. The most sophisticated element of this ad may well be the visual punnery in the cartoon itself, playing on the common conflation of “gorilla” with “guerilla.” Add the alliterative element of a grenade launcher (or, better still, grenade gun), and what you have is pure visual poetry.
Oh, and the irony in this chaser: when I saw this ad, I [literally] laughed out loud (cf. the fail headline of the zoo world manifesto).
Ahhh! but let’s not forget the popular culture reference to ‘Planet of the Apes,’ (both the 1968 film and 2001 remake) in which Apes do, in fact, use guns. ‘Planet of the Apes’ can also be a cultural reference to the french novel by Pierre Boulle, and allows this ad to ‘cross the pond’ so to speak. This multi-cultural appeal makes this ad not only unique to fb (as I am learning from this blog) but also far more sophisticated than at first glance. Also remembering that fb now allows anyone to join (including those more aged than ourselves), one could argue that the ZooWorld ad depicted here appeals not just to the kids wishing to follow the crowd and play the fb app all of their friends are playing, but also to the slightly more aged (and ‘with it’) members. Who remember not only the original novel, but the original film as well. Of course, the outcome in the ad seems as bleak to some species as the fate of the humans.
I have no idea as to the fate of the Hyenas.
@ A.S.
Points well taken. I appreciate that this drivel has encouraged your thinking to sojourn beyond the bounds of the proverbial box. {Or maybe it’s not proverbial. The line between a “figure of speech” and a “saying” is, at times, a bit blurry.}
Connecting guerilla gorilla grenade guns with those “damn, dirty [gun-toting] apes” makes good sense. Such a comparison does, of course, run the risk of inviting debate over gun control. While the 2001 remake did have its memorable moments (i.e. the shocking Ape Lincoln Memorial at the film’s conclusion {perhaps that’s better termed a memorial moment}), nobody thinks of Marky Mark when you mention the Planet of the Apes. And I would rather remember Charleton Heston as the noble Judah Ben-Hur, a character whose story predates the invention of the firearm, and the formation of the NRA, by almost 2,000 years.
The comparison would also carry more proverbial water {still not sure about that proverbial business} if this was an ad for the Zoo World app. The jump from “World” to “Planet” is easy to make, and the jump from “zoo” to “ape” is provided by the text’s pairing with the primate’s picture . . .
. . . but as nearly as I can tell, this app is actually called “Wild Ones.” I used it as a Zoo World chaser to show how another advertiser presented a similarly violent app in a much more straightforward manner.
While all you have so graciously pointed out is indeed both true and accurate, save for everything that isn’t speculation or opinion…
I do believe that it was stated above that, “there is no nuanced pop-culture allusion.” I was merely offering a non-nuanced pop-culture allusion. Even though I am aware that the statement was referring to the previous post. Be that as it may, the statement is open to intrepretation, is it not? Because once a writer puts a thought to word, they lose control of it.
Anyway, according to the gorrilla (or it could be any number of primates, although we could successfully rule out several species, sub-species and possibly even some classes of primates. i.e. Lemurs and Aye-Ayes.) depicted in the ad, the pop-culture allusion I offer is not nuanced at all. In fact, the pop-culture reference is fairly in your face (figure of speech), all the while being quite sophisticated; as I have already been over.
In reference to my case for ‘Apes’ being a ‘proverbial’ seive (as it does not “carry more proverbial water”) I offer this, Thesaurus.com lists planet as a definition of world and world as a synomnym of planet. Ergo, I didn’t really make a jump at all. You say potato, I say… (saying)
… but as nearly as I can tell, the point isn’t really about the name of the app.
um, what?