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Infomercials:
12 Days of Christmas, 12 Days of New Year

24 Short Videos, Facebook Dec 2015 - Jan 2016

Different words predominate in adverts at different times of the year. I surveyed the key words that appear in adverts in a variety of magazines for women and men, selecting adjectives describing the sort of experiences we are supposed to have at Christmas. Because the rhetoric in adverts abruptly changes from luxurious treats to guilt and diet regimes on New Year’s Day I repeated the exercise during the first 12 days of January. In the spirit of festive unwrapping I used quotations from Marxist theorists to unpack some of the meaning of these Christmas / New Year key words. Like all good celebrations, the resulting video clips are humorous, irritating and a little bit trashy. The videos were posted on Facebook from 13th – 24th December 2015 and 1st – 12th January 2016.

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