The Living Room Candidate

Museum of the Moving Image
The Living Room Candidate Online Exhibit
http://www.movingimage.us/site/online/index.html

The online exhibit is a collection of political issue/presidential candidate television ads that were aired from 1952-2004.

Collection Principles
There doesn’t seem to be much information about how these ads were selected. It seems that the political television ad was born in the 50’s when television became a major source of advertising. These ads reflect the times and fashions of their era. But, not much is given to the user about what it took for a specific ad to make it into this collection. What is interesting is the inclusion of “The Desktop Candidate.” The exhibit takes into consideration the new political ad delivered via the internet recognizing the web as a viable and powerful tool.

Metadata
This exhibit is poor in metadata. The political party that produced the ads are listed, and that’s about all the information the user is given. Under each video that is played there is a short blurb about the issues that were important in relation to that presidential election. The ads do come with transcripts which can come in handy especially when viewing the clip of Jackie Kennedy speaking Spanish, trying to encourage the Spanish speaking voter to support JFK on Election Day. (I’m guessing she was not a fluent Spanish speaker).

Object Characteristics
The user is not given information about the actual footage. Is it taped on a video camera? Digital camera? We don’t know.

Who is the intended audience?
This exhibit is for the casual browser. Although the ads are interesting the lack of supportive metadata does not provide much research material.