viz.

Image Credit: Norton

H / T to my mom for sending me the video in response to last week's post

Last week on Viz I posted about glitter as an undermining agent in images of solemnity.  In this commercial for Norton security software, the glitter use results in deadly (and delightful) consequences.

The commercial functions through analogy.  "Your on-line bank account" is like an adorable little cartoon unicorn - friendly, harmless, and essentially insubstantial.  Depicting on-line information as a mythical creature, the commercial highlights the "unreality" of computer-based data.  Whereas we can (and should) shred our sensitive information when it comes in physical documents, our on-line information is much more vulnerable through its illusive, unicorn-like existence floating in the ether.

Dolf Lundgren, however, is a very "real" representation (so to speak) of all the nasty bad guys out there waiting to do horrible things to our unicorns.  "Real" criminals can seriously harm our ephemeral information, as demonstrated in the alternate version of the commercial below. Criminal activity is embodied in the looming stature of Lundgren, whereas our own points of vulnerability are disembodied (cartoon) and unwittingly dreaming of rainbows.

Similarly, Lundgren's weapons are also very physically menacing (a knife, a pistol, and a flame thrower), whereas the unicorn's defenses (when bolstered with the Norton software) are just as fantastical as the unicorn itself - he/she/it defeats Lundgren with a cloud of poisonous, sparkling fairy dust.

While I still hold that the comparison between security software and fairy dust might not actually be that reassuring on closer examination, in this instance the incongruity seems intentional.  The fact that the unicorn fights off an automatic weapon with a cloud of smoke shot out of its horn (complete with tinkly fairy noise), causing Lundgren's head to explode into a cloud of glitter, is hilarious.  The seemingly innocuous dust has deadly effects which are made festive and amusing through sparkle.

Overall, I find the embodied/disembodied personifications the most rhetorically interesting aspects of the commercial, but who doesn't love some unicorns and glitter? Or flame-throwers and bad jokes (below)?

Image Credit: Norton

H / T to my mom for sending me the video in response to last week's post