Monday, December 29, 2008

The Lennon Legacy

Thank god somebody has her late husband's best interests at heart.

Thanks to today's technology, the Beatles' late lead singer John Lennon is being featured in a new TV advertisement for charity, twenty-eight years after his death. The singer's widow, Yoko Ono allowed the use of voice and images of her husband for One Laptop Per Child Foundation, which is campaigning to supply computers to children in the developing world. The commercial used the same digital technology as in other advertisements that brought back deceased celebrities like Jim Henson and Fred Astaire.


You can watch it here; personally, I think it's creepy and cheap, but what the hell. In any case, I'll have a link to the Courtney Love approved spot featuring Kurt Cobain hawking infant formula tomorrow.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Eeek!

And, frankly, it sounds more like the Lennon from "Yellow Submarine" than it does like the real one.

But this is relatively tame compared to that Broadway debacle ....

MBowen said...

Well, Yoko has always had someone's best interests at heart...

TJWood said...

I saw the ad and have no opinion of it, although I'll agree that it does sound more like the animated Lennon than the actual one. It doesn't help to explain how this campaign works, however--who supplies the laptops, in what developing countries this program is located in, how children will learn to use them. Yoko has been on record as saying that John would have been very involved in using the Internet to further the social causes he believed in, so I'll guess that's the basis for her approval on this.

Alex said...

Good cause, but definitely a little creepy. (And it does sound more like someone impersonating John than it sounds like John...)

Anonymous said...

I think it's more than a little creepy, and, as has already been stated, a really bad imitation (it actually sounds more like Neil Innes as Ron Nasty than Lennon to me).

Kind of a shame, really, because it's a very good cause that has now been saddled with a cheap trick.

Anonymous said...

By Yoko standards this is pretty mild.

ROT(Plumber)