Unilever’s personal care brand Dove is the again target, this time being called out by GreenPeace for the corporation’s role as the biggest single buyer of palm oil in the world, and thus, a major contributor to the destruction of rainforests because of massive palm oil plantations.

Greenpeace spoofed Dove’s Onslaught ad with great success: thanks to the public support of the campaign and the remix (which received more views on YouTube than the original ad with over a million) Unilever agreed to an “immediate moratorium on deforestation for palm oil plantations”. They also agreed to help clean up the industry by contacting the other major companies calling on them to support the moratorium. Companies like Cargill & General Mills though have still not gotten on board.

The remix did have a budget and does not actually re-edit any of the footage from the Unilever ad but it does re-create it almost shot for shot. The Greenpeace version even re-writes the lyrics for the song LA Breeze by Simian which Dove used as their soundtrack. The new updated song titled “There They Go” (referring to trees) was made specifically for this video by the Czech band Ohm Square.

Thanks to the staggering public support for our international Dove campaign in April 2008, Unilever has now agreed to play their part in saving the Paradise Forests of South East Asia. As the biggest single buyer of palm oil in the world, Unilever has a special responsibility to help clean up the industry that’s behind so much forest destruction. – GreenPeace

In 2004, Unilever launched their Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, a marketing strategy wrapped in a feminist package. Their tag line: “challenging today’s stereotypical view of beauty“. The marketing tactic included the online video Onslaught, that warned consumers about the beauty industries negative effect on young girls.

Rye Clifton noticed that Unilever also makes Axe Body Spray, a product whose brand identity is steeped in misogynistic notions of masculinity. Interestingly enough, the spray is accompanied by a sexist advertising campaign featuring exactly the kind of depictions of women that the company is supposedly criticizing with its Dove brand. So Rye re-edited the Onslaught ad replacing all the images of women with footage from Axe tv commercials. The remix exposes the inconsistency and deep hypocrisy of Unilever’s corporate brand identity. Clearly the only value Unilever is really interested in is money – they will say anything to get you to buy their products. Clifton’s remix was even featured on CNN’s the Situation Room a couple years ago.

Below is the original Dove Onslaught ad for those that have not seen it.

First up is Randy Szuch’s version which takes the audio from the official Avatar trailer and replaces the visuals with footage from Disney’s Pocahontas, amazing it works perfectly.

Next we have Dan Oles’s take which does the opposite and uses the audio from the Pocahontas trailer juxtaposed with footage from Avatar.

Those are two of our favorites but you can also check out many similar trailer mashup on youtube (and another one) as well as a Disney song version and a side by side comparison. There is even a Dances with Wolves mashup. And let’s not forget the inspired revised summery of Pocahontas with the names and locations crossed out and replaced with those from Avatar by Matt Batemen posted shortly after James Cameron’s film was released.

UPDATE: Josh commented and brought to our attention a remix that combines the Avatar trailer and footage from the animated film Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. There are dozens more on youtube mashing these two films together.

If you know of other Avatar mashups please post them in the comments.

ADM CEO Patricia Woertz (1:10)
Click here to view the embedded video.

Klaus Schwab (1:03)
Click here to view the embedded video.

Queen Elizabeth II of England (0:52)
Click here to view the embedded video.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton (0:53)
Click here to view the embedded video.

See more re-dubbed videos on the Yes Men’s parallel WEF site.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If enough people who have money in one of the Big Six banks  (JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) move it into smaller, more local, more traditional community banks, then collectively we, the people, will have taken a big step toward re-rigging the financial system so it becomes again the productive, stable engine for growth it’s meant to be. — Move Your Money Campaign

If anyone is somehow still in denial and doubts that misogyny and sexism are still a problem in society – all you have to do is take a look at the YouTube comments on Woman’s Last Stand to see really stunning levels of hate directed at women.

And just in case you did not already have to suffer through the original Dodge ad during the big game or on YouTube’s AdBlitz competition, here it is…

Now, compared to the guns, blood and guts we’ve become accustomed to in Hollywood movies, this may seem like light-hearted slapstick but this remix highlights the fact that violence has been so normalized in mass media to the point where we often don’t even notice it. After experiencing all the clips of hitting, punching and tackling put back-to-back it becomes clear that violence on TV is the preferred form of humor, communication, entertainment, plot device and conflict resolution.

UPDATE Feb/18/10: Today the Media Education Foundation (MEF) posted clips from their documentary entitled “The Mean World Syndrome” about media violence & the cultivation of fear. In this clip from the film Dr. George Gerbner explains how Hollywood writers are pressured into creating violent stories.

They have global marketing formulas that are imposed on the creative people in Hollywood and I’m in touch with them and they hate it, they say ‘don’t talk to me about censorship from Washington, I never heard about that, I get censorship everyday. I am told put in more action, cut out complicated solutions, apply this formula because it travels well in the global market.’ These are formulas that need no translation and essentially image driven and speak action in any language and of course the leading element of that formula is violence.

UCSB declared D’Alessandro’s endeavors in acquiring and utilizing copyrighted source materials for creating remixes an “offense” as it violates the university’s Terms of Services. In order ‘to protect itself and its students’, UCSB considers any sharing of copyrighted material (music, movies, software and books included) a DMCA violation, even if, as in this case, the result is a fair use. The university also added that

appeals leads to serious legal procedures (in the past four years, no one at UCSB has ever filed ‘counter-notice’, the procedure with which people can appeal with a fair-use claim.)

The trend of policing university networks for DMCA violations is worrisome, as it usually urges the school to locate and save all student information related to the case. Thankfully, the University of Wisconsin, MIT and Boston College have refused to turn over student information and be a middle-man for groups like the RIAA who continue to endorse such network management policies.

From this debacle has come new work: D’Alessandro created a short remix that mashes screen shots of UCSB’s DMCA internet ban and scenes from the movie Step Brothers. She says,

Regardless of this incident, I am certain the Political Remix Video genre is moving toward a direction of net-neutrality, open-source access, and the deterioration of copyright restrictions.

It was the very end of a long day when we were pleasantly reminded of these two remixes brought to our attention by cultural critic Mark Dery, who coined and popularized the term Culture Jamming:

Scary Mary, created by MovieMker, remixes Mary Poppins into a horror film. It is not overtly political but it is a fun example of how additive text and a new soundtrack can turn the carefully crafted Disney-fied world on it’s head.

It’s Raining Men is a simple yet articulate comment on the prevalence of men (and scantly clad ones at that) in the movie 300. Suburbala paired the film’s footage with the famous song by the same name, queering the gaze of the Trogans and satirizing their hyper-masculinity to reveal the homoerotic subtext of the movie.

For more on the one-day conference hosted by Public Knowledge, check out the web-cast from the First Annual World’s Fair Use Day.