Scribe, ut possis cum voles dicere: dices cum velle debebis (Pl. Ep. 6.29)

Monday, March 13, 2006

Gathering Moss 17 - Made Me Cry

This time i don't have a TV and i'm watching the election videos on the web.

Likud's videos didn't make me cry. They made me laugh only occasionally. All of them have Russian subtitles, but the one in which Shcharansky speaks in Hebrew has also Hebrew subtitles.

Kadima's videos didn't make me cry. They made me laugh quite a lot though. La-la-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la, Kadima!

Herut's videos didn't make me cry. They did surprise me with their quality. I guess that it means that producing good-looking content with digital equipment is getting cheaper. And their song is groovy. But not enough to make me cry.

Ale-Yarok's videos didn't make me cry. They are quite original, not bad at all, and i am surprised at how well they are putting their message through - that they are more than just a pro-legalization movement, that they support ecology and human rights and freedoms and all that. Several friends of mine, most of whom are definitely drug-free, told me that they are seriously considering it as their prefered option. But i also remember the stupid cynical video that they shot in Gush-Katif a few weeks before its destruction. It didn't make me cry - it made me angry.

Lieberman's video was supposed to make me cry, but it made me roll on the floor laughing. He's going on with mixing Russian and Hebrew to a completely nonsensible but a very effective campaign. The singer is Alexander Rosenbaum, one of the most famous representatives of the Soviet bard movement. My father hates him, but a lot of Russians think otherwise. He's Jewish, of course, but get this: He's a member of the Duma, the Russian parliament, from the ruling party, a kind of Russian Kadima; and he is also a Cossack. This part i haven't yet understood myself.

Hetz and Shinui's videos didn't make me cry. They are just silly and disgusting. They weren't so bad three years ago. How desperate must they be to produce something so abominable. I lost the last drops of respect i still had towards them.

Avoda produced no sensible videos. It almost made me cry.

The National Union's videos made me cry. I swear that it's not because i'm gonna vote for them. Quite objectively they are the best, production-wise. Their jingle is the best, their cinematography and editing are superb, and the texts are carefully worded and well-enounced. If only they were so good a few months ago, Gush-Katif would not have been destroyed. They finally dumped their old trademark home-video quality and boring style which only religious people understand. While Likud are busy showing how bad Olmert is and how good Bibi is, the National Union are producing videos in the best of the old Likud style: good-looking and smiling Israelis, mostly young, mostly non-religious, running around fields, and looking at the sky. In fact, they are doing it much better than Likud ever did - for a few moments they even show people drinking coffee on a street of a big city. Admirable subtlety.

No comments: