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    The Obama-mercial, Dissected

    Posted Wednesday, October 29, 2008 8:46 PM | By Meghan O'Rourke
    Just watched the Obama infomercial. The folksy veneer verged at times on seeming condescending (c.f. the knotted pine in the office, etc.), and the language was pretty plain: Obama mosty offered up boilerplate about his positions. But visually it was great. Davis Guggenheim, the director, used a lot of moody atmospheric shots intercut with footage of "average" Americans struggling to make ends meet. Guggenheim's father was Robert F. Kennedy's campaign documentarian. But surely Guggenheim had also taken a page or two out of Peter Berg's book. To me, the most striking thing about the ad was this: All the Friday Night Lights echoes. The handheld camera, the long shots from the inside of a car, swiveling forward through the passing landscape—which were that show's hallmark. And the music at times sounded like Explosions in the Sky, the band that did the soundtrack for the movie and TV version of Friday Night Lights. It makes sense: Friday Night Lights captures a particular blend of optimism and gritty realism that I think is what Obama is after. But I'm a sucker for this aesthetic; I wonder what others made of it.
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