One man and his Shoes. (15.)
Directed by Yemi Bamiro.
Featuring. David J Stern, Jamele Hill, Scoop Jackson, Sonny Vaccaro, Jim Riswold and Peter Moore. In cinemas. 83 mins.
The man is Michael Jordan, a premier exponent of the Tall Man Bouncy Bouncy game, and his shoe is the Air, an overpriced object that transcends the barriers of class, race and nationality to unite the gullible across the globe. The story is how also-ran shoe manufacturer Nike invested in a supremely talented young athlete before he became a star and used him to create a defining piece of contemporary iconic tat, overpriced trainers that are to die for, sometimes literally.
It's another tale about how everything started to go to hell in the eighties; a story that is both tedious and fascinating. Tedious as a lot of it is marketing people jabbering on with golly-gosh humility about how good they are at marketing, reinforced by cultural commentators gushing on about how wonderful the marketing was. Fascinating because the way corporations coax us into succumbing to materialistic fervour is the defining narrative of our age.
The key was Not claiming Jordan was the best because of his shoes, but getting people to think that anyway. As one of their slogans said, “It's all in the imagination.”
Directed by Yemi Bamiro.
Featuring. David J Stern, Jamele Hill, Scoop Jackson, Sonny Vaccaro, Jim Riswold and Peter Moore. In cinemas. 83 mins.
The man is Michael Jordan, a premier exponent of the Tall Man Bouncy Bouncy game, and his shoe is the Air, an overpriced object that transcends the barriers of class, race and nationality to unite the gullible across the globe. The story is how also-ran shoe manufacturer Nike invested in a supremely talented young athlete before he became a star and used him to create a defining piece of contemporary iconic tat, overpriced trainers that are to die for, sometimes literally.
It's another tale about how everything started to go to hell in the eighties; a story that is both tedious and fascinating. Tedious as a lot of it is marketing people jabbering on with golly-gosh humility about how good they are at marketing, reinforced by cultural commentators gushing on about how wonderful the marketing was. Fascinating because the way corporations coax us into succumbing to materialistic fervour is the defining narrative of our age.
The key was Not claiming Jordan was the best because of his shoes, but getting people to think that anyway. As one of their slogans said, “It's all in the imagination.”
