Freedom Ads

Reason's 2001 Burton C. Gray Memorial Intern Rhys Southan won an Institute for Humane Studies-sponsored contest to produce the best creative faux-advertisement "encouraging people to think about and discuss freedom." You can check out Rhys's winner--whose theme is that in a capitalist society, even anti-capitalists can get everything they need--and some runner-ups here.

Comments

[Julian]

Hear hear. The jingle makes the ad.

[sara]

i'm going to pile on and agree. the jingle is hilarious. imho, the whole ad is hilarious.

[geophile]

Well... it brings up a hilarious point, at any rate. I don't know that it's as funny as it possibly could be, but it's almost as good as anything SNL could come up with these days. Except for the recent sketch about the peace rally.

[Mark S.]

Hmmmmm... clean it up a bit and loose the goofy "jingle" at the end and the Rhys ads looks pretty solid.

[Hank]

Are you kidding? The jingle is the best part! Its classic.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

Mark is right, the jingle detracts. I like his "think again" idea. On the whole, though, it is a pretty good piece. However, the dog in the cage is much more powerful. More technically well done too. But, the Capitalism/Anti-Capitalism theme in Rhys creation illustrates the world from our perspective in a better way than the dog does to victims of the public school system. That is probably why it won.

TWC

[Mark S.]

The jingle makes the add more like an SNL sketch rather than a serious--albiet satirical--attempt to sell a political message. A sober, dignifed voice saying "Capitalism: Think your against it? Think again." gives it the legitimacy it needs to drive the point home. The jingle makes it just sound silly.