Art & Copy

By Matt Prigge
Add Comment Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Oct. 20, 2009

The latest from documentarian Doug Pray (Scratch, Surfwise) takes an, um, original stance on the subject of advertising. It’s not an evil and manipulative pox on humanity but instead an art form, worthy of genuflection and fawning documentaries. That, at least, is the opinion of the horde of the designers who serve as the film’s talking heads. And since Pray hasn’t bothered to get many naysayers to add levity, who’s to point out that they’re all wrong?

Art & Copy isn’t useless. Sitting down with the trade’s biggest practitioners, Pray reveals details on the history and the methods. The film serves as a worthy footnote to Mad Men, finding the tipping point when ads began to consume our everyday and revealing shifting trends.

But when it comes time to judge from an ethical standpoint, Art & Copy is comically feeble, too enamored with its subjects to do anything but swallow the Kool-Aid. On the subject of art, interviewees ritualistically point out that archaic ads, including those drawn by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec for the Moulin Rouge, often wind up in art museums. Fine. But advertising from the ’50s on is an entirely different beast, and while there’s artistry to, say, the eye-poppingly monochromatic iPod ads, their aesthetics are dwarfed by their sinister m.o.: making money by silencing people’s rational instincts.

Pray’s subjects have a rehearsed answer for that: They point out how horrified they are by the “Morning in America” spots that helped re-elect Reagan—ads so fantasy-America they reportedly made even the Gipper himself wince. It’s here that Pray could’ve asked how their work is in any way less repugnant and, of course, he doesn’t. If the rather immodest claims made by these ad guys are to be believed, these are the most diabolical puppet masters the world has seen. Pray sporadically throws in terrifying factoids about how much is spent on advertising or the price tag of an ad on American Idol, but he’s too awed by his subjects’ skills. C-

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