Netflix is ??running an advertising campaign these days allegedly based on our contradictions. I have seen it at bus stops, but they must have deployed it in other formats. It caught my attention, therefore it is a good campaign, because it is based on an adversative that I do not understand, therefore it could be a bad campaign.
The first clause of the adversative sentence says “A movie that makes you think” and the second clause “but doubled, so you don’t have to think”. At the bottom of the ad is the brand of the platform and next to it a short conclusion that looks like a Paulo Coelho title: “Embrace all that you are”. The general idea seems clear: we all have contradictions and, as the CUP said at the beginning, “less than five contradictions is dogmatism”. But there is something about the alleged contradiction in the second clause that grates on me. I have seen many films that made me think. I would say that almost all of them, because even the most unguitared ones provoke some kind of thoughts in me, some of which are classified as crimes in the Penal Code.
But I don’t quite understand the second clause. Seriously, a dubbed movie doesn’t make you think? The same movie that in the original version makes you think, when doubled, does it lose all its thought-provoking potential? I know I’m stretching the literalness of the sentence, and that basically what they’re saying is that a dubbed version saves you having to read subtitles. But then, the mere mechanical act of reading subtitles, does it make you think? Reading letters makes you think and reading pictures doesn’t it? Or is it the act of reading pictures and words at the same time that really makes you think?
The text of this ad makes me think so much that I finally come to a conclusion: Netflix is ??running a campaign to promote reading as an engine of thought. All at once I pay attention to them. I unsubscribe and start reading.