Dead people are big business. We buy licensed products, DVDs of events gone by and iconic apparel. Their estates continue to earn royalties and hold auctions. Forbes even maintains a “Top Earning Dead Celebrities” list. And earlier this year, I wrote a post here that outlined just how big “dead” is: Elvis‘ estate generates the most money each year at $49 million, with John Lennon pulling in second at $44 million annually.
Lennon’s estate generates the lion’s share of its revenue from sales of the Beatles’ catalog. In other words, Yoko et al make money from what Lennon did and loved most of all: make music.
Now, a television commercial uses Lennon’s likeness and digitally-altered words to sell computers: Nick Negroponte‘s One Laptop Per Child effort, to be exact. We see John’s face, we hear the words… and it’s just creepy.
I think this is a misstep. While I admit that I may have more information about OLPC than the average television viewer – information that puts a sour taste in my mouth – I simply don’t see the connection between children, computers and John Lennon. I think its a stew made of this disconnectedness, an inability to not think about how Lennon died and knowing that Yoko would approve something like this (I rest my case for “weird”) that just doesn’t get me there.John Lennon One Laptop Nick Negroponte Yoko Ono
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