Volume I No. 15
 09-10-02
 Frank Sinatra and The Bird
 author: Vance Cureton
 © Copyright 2002

 I just saw one the other day. A beautiful new red thunderbird. 

 And a dead person standing right along side it.

 What I really mean is I saw a television commercial where a deceased 
 person is endorsing a new product. It's all done through the wonders 
 of special effects and high tech computer sleight-of-hand.

 Gross.

 This time the victim is Frank Sinatra. He's digitally placed alongside
 the sleek new retro Ford Thunderbird, and appears to say in reference
 to the car. "C'mon little bird. Don't pick up any nails."

 Cool? 

 I don't particularly think so.

 How long has Frank been dead now? Five years? Six? And Frank was
 already in early middle-age when the original 1957 Thunderbird was
 the "got to have it" new car. Coincedence? Anyway, I mean Frank was 
 a great guy - so they say - but to see him reduced to nothing more than 
 a cartoon character, an idiot mouthpiece, for Ford Motor Company is
 in my opinion, quite sad.

 This all started years ago when Natalie Cole sang in a music video with
 her father. And I mean Nat King Cole died way back in 1963. Natalie 
 was just a little girl then. So, the video was certainly unique...and to some 
 extent, even magical. I don't know. I just thought that using Nat that way,
 was somehow creepy. But since Nat was Natelie's father, and the video 
 was an effort of love and respect. I think it was ultimately, ok.

 But, I just don't like this thing of viewing long since dead celebrities in music 
 clips or movie scenes with individuals whose parents weren't even born yet, 
 when these celebrities passed away. To see a piece of film that once represented 
 one "idea" as it were, and to have that snippet of film manipulated, and used 
 in a totally different way, seems disrespectful. It is not a wonderful thing by 
 any means. I mean, we don't print handtowels or wall paper with Mona Lisa's 
 image on them, do we? No one would dream of using the work of the great
 Leonardo Da Vinci this way.

 Every scene in a movie. Every moment. Is a work of art. And to see a John
 Wayne or Joan Crawford or whomever, digitally entered into a scene with
 someone whom they may have dispised, or would never have under any 
 circumstance agreed to work with were they alive today, just seems very
 bizarre. Where is the respect for the humanity of these great stars who have 
 passed on?

 I have nothing against a total digital creation. For instance, if you were to
 take a totally digitally created Bogart, and place him in a small movie scene
 with a Mel Gibson, for example. That would be terrific. And somehow less
 creepy. Because it's not the "real" Bogart. It's a computer recreation of Bogart.
 It's not an imposition on the humanity of a person who lived and died,
 decades ago.

 And such a thing is really going to possible, and perhaps not at all unique 
 in the years to come. Myrna Loy and Meryl Streep. Alan Ladd and Bruce 
 Willis. Bring it on. But just don't use an actual piece of film to create these 
 new scenes. Have a respect for the sanctity of what the actor and the 
 director originally created, years ago. Don't steal from the past. Maintain
 a reverence for it.

 This is water over the dam perhaps. My objection to this mixture of the
 old and the new. But, if long-dead motion picture stars are going to be reduced 
 to nothing more than corporate mouthpieces or cartoon figures. At least 
 when I'm sitting in a movie theatre, say a decade from now, staring up at the 
 screen. I'd like to know in my own heart that a Lana Turner, for example. 
 The "real" Lana Turner, would never have agreed to do that scene. 

 Not at all. Not ever. No way.
 

 ReadingPost.Com
 © Copyright 2002

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