Two Important Digital Videos

This week, there were two videos that caught the attention of pretty much every online denizen. The thing that’s interesting is that each video, in its own way, broke down norms.

Bob Dylan
Let’s start with Bob Dylan’s music video for his 48-year-old song, “Like A Rolling Stone.” This song IS Dylan. But pushing boundaries, which isn’t new to Dylan, the video is interactive beauty. In a call back to the TV Era, the music video lets viewers change channels, watching TV people lip synch the song. Keep in mind this video is on the Internet, an active medium, not TV, a passive medium. This is not the kind of music video I grew up with; this isn’t even the kind of music video that exists now. But the subtext — the song is about change, about what once was — plays through in both the medium and the message.

Bob Dylan “Like A Rolling Stone” – Official Interactive Video

GoldieBlox
“What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice. That’s what little girls are made of.” GoldieBlox, a toy company that wants to get more girls interested in engineering, says, nah, not really.  When three little girls get bored and frustrated by watching princesses on TV, they create a Rube Goldberg machine. The ad rewrites the Beastie Boys’ hit “Girls” to say that the gender roles ascribed to girls need to change.

“Girls to build the spaceship, Girls to code the new app, Girls to grow up knowing they can engineer that.”