hypnolibertarian

I was just watching (re-watching) Cabaret, and it struck me that this movie (and the show, if done well) is one of the best examples of changing frames that I know.  You are led into the cabaret, the affair between two young people, and all is happiness and laughter.  They all dance, they all sing, they all laugh at the MC.  He sings a song as he dances around with someone in a gorilla suit, saying “If only you could see her through my eyes,” as the audience laughs uproariously.  Then the last line: “If you could see her through my eyes, no one would know she is Jewish.”  Suddenly a delightful romp become racist from end to end.

Changing frames in this sudden way can be extremely effective, either in drama or in commercials.  I just posted on unconscious responses, and how patterns, or models (some people call them memes) are activated by what we see and hear.  I’ve already spoken of the AT&T commercial.  This is another way of looking at what they do there: they set you up with a frame from a horror show and suddenly change frames to make it rather silly.  The effect is a “clunk” and a change in how you think about what was presented.  It might not get you to buy their product, but it will make you think just a bit differently about AT&T’s cell phone service, which is what the commercial is intended to do.

Another from Cabaret: a handsome, even beautiful young man, blond hair, blue eyes, at a picnic starts to sing a song of optimism and hope: “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.”  Gradually the camera pulls away, and you see the young man is in a Nazi uniform.  As the camera pulls back farther, you see he is surrounded by other Nazis.  Then, in the last moments of the song, all of their right arms rise in the Nazi salute.  What was a beautiful moment has become terrifying, and that confusion is uncomfortable.

Changing frames is a good way to cause confusion, and sometimes to take one set of patterns and cross-connect them to something you want to sell.  I will talk about other aspects of changing frames later, but this one aspect of making a large change after you have set up a situation is often used to make those connections.  Another example is the Target commercials, back when they had the little dog as their mascot; a series of glamorous, beautiful scenes would suddenly resolve to the dog (who looked rather silly) and the Target logo.  This particular switch was not well thought out; it took the glamorous image they were trying to create and brought it down to the level of a cute, but ugly dog.  And that is why you don’t see it any more.  The results weren’t what they wanted.