Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Liberty Mutual and Cause and Effect
Ever notice how the Liberty Mutual make no sense. How can the first act of kindness lead to the next act of kindness, which eventually leads to the last act of kindness, which leads to the first act of kindness. So the first act, leads to the second, third, fourth, fifth, etc., all the way back to the first?
Does this involve time-travel at all?
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4 comments:
Thanks for alerting us to this, and of course you're right. Harrogate has watched this several times. There's something damn funny about it. It doesn't seem like it's going backwards sequentially, like that episode of Seinfeld. Yet it doesn't appear to be time travel either, at least not on purpose.
To figure it out you'd need a graph. A step by step kind of thing. Damn it, there is a definite point in this commercial where all reason gives way. But where?
The commercial attempts to be circular (to achieve closure)-- yet it cannot be circular since it involves a conception of time.
1) Man in jacket picks up toy; the mother smiles.
2) Mother helps professor like person with coffee; man in background, who appears like a stalker, notices.
3)Stalker like man helps man who fell on the sidewalk in the rain; man in background looks on
4)Man in background holds elevator door for woman, presumably to ask her out. Middle-aged man in background, who looks jealous, stares off into space.
5) Man on elevator stops bad driver from hitting motorcycle. A woman in the background notices.
6)Woman, who was on the street, is now in an office, making sure a dumbass does not fall over backwards in his office chair. Another co-worker, who looks like she belongs on Pete's couch, looks on...
7) Stoned-looking woman prevents crates from hitting a man, who is talking on his cell phone (and who deserves to be hit). Man in background looks on in amazement.
8) Man in amazement lets a small red car into traffic. A seedy-looking man in another vehicle looks on and plans to do something illegal.
9)Supposedly, the seedy-looking man walks down the street and places the toy into a stroller. The father does not know that his child lost his/her toy because he is not paying attention to his kid.
10) Absent-minded father gives toy to child, with hopes of asking out the mother, and the mother is the mother from step one.
So, we have, an error of reasoning because the first act of kindness leads to the last act of kindness, which causes the first act of kindness.
And, yes, the same holds true for the other commercial.
And, yes! yes! I have spent too much time on this.
That is a hilarious comment. Watching the commercial after reading it, Harrogate begins to feel that the Liberty Mutual people are going a little overboard in arguing for a utopia in which there are no consequences for foolish behavior.
And as for the young woman who looks like she belongs on Pete's Couch, note the prominence of the office plant as we establish the shot where she is watching dumbass almost plummet to his humilating desserts.
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