iDiots, an excellent short film about planned obsolescence
Great Big Lazy Robot VFX studio short film about planned obsolescence. In this case Apple is referring to without naming it, but is applicable to virtually any agent involved in the current and dominant patterns of production and consumption.
It’s not a secret, at Big Lazy Robot VFX love robots, so they wanted them to be the heroes in their latest promo clip. Luxury cars with powerful engines to drive through roads under severe speed restrictions, cable TV that allows they to pay to watch all kind of sports, all from their comfortable sofa, and of course, hyper expensive cell phones that do almost everything but making a decent phone call.
Yes, their happiness is based on things they don’t need and governed by entities they don’t control, so what? Sit down and turn on the TV!
The robots were taken from real Japanese robot model kits, and they now hold a privileged position in their freak museum. The bad guy spits real smoke out of its mouth! The environment is made of cardboard houses that were integrated with the help of camera tweaks. It all serves to the purpose of creating a dumb homogeneous atmosphere in which we’re defined by what we’ve got, that is, the same lame things.
Don’t take the message too seriously. This is a promo video from Big Lazy Robot VFX. We all have an i-diot inside, and it’s so fun!
Planned obsolescence
Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence in industrial design is a policy of planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete, that is, unfashionable or no longer functional after a certain period of time. The rationale behind the strategy is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases.