Imagine there’s no death
Below is a new TV commercial for a project called “One Laptop per Child,” which hopes to provide… well, you get it. This new commercial features John Lennon, who died in 1980 and, last I checked, was still dead. In the commercial, the lamentably late Mr. Lennon looks fit, and is garbed in a style most of his more knowledgeable fans associate with the period ” ‘lost in Los Angeles’ to ‘early New York,’ ” also known as 1973-1975. He also sounds rather well, especially after having been dead for 28 years. And I’m guessing that this reappearance from beyond the grave has given him extraordinary powers, because he says, “You can give a child a laptop and more than imagine, you can change the world.” Which is a visionary sentiment, given that Lennon perished before the commercial availability of laptops.
Just as I didn’t like it when an advertising agency dug up Fred Astaire to hawk vacuum cleaners, I don’t like this. This may be for a better cause — although that is debatable, given that the vacuum-cleaner company no doubt was helping to feed employees’ families — but I question whether the cause (donating laptops) merits putting words into the mouth of a dead man who always had a strong opinion about what he was for, and what he was against, and in this case could not be consulted.
December 31st, 2008 at 7:29 am
I’m actually surprised that Yoko Ono allowed this organization to employ his likeness that way. I’m not surprised that she supported the organization or the project–from what I know, she’s a very generous patron–but it would seem that a donation and the encouragement to find another “hook” for the ad, or another spokesperson, if a Lennon-like substitute is required to keep the “Imagine” theme: perhaps Sean or Julian or even Yoko herself, since she performs in the song, too… although she’s not as beloved by the general as her late husband, of course.