The Mouth Project

[starsystemerror]

This one was also voted on by the IHA Discord! They really had no idea what they were in for with this. All the information I provided was a bowl emoji on a poll with the track title, Best. It's track 5 on Mouth Silence, contributing to the weird clump of songs I decided to focus on first for whatever reason.

This video doesn't have overly bright/rapid full-screen flashing, but has some clips that might be a little tough on the eyes if you're sensitive to fast-moving or flashing video, especially the segment around 2:15.

Artist Statement:

Spoiler

I'll be honest, the initial gimmick of this video was just because of the "best part of waking up" line, but it started to become more and more relevant the more I put into it.

Cereal mascots are a fascinating sub-genre of advertising. They exist solely to promote incredibly unhealthy clumps of sugar to children and their parents, but the competition is fierce and varied. Something I noticed is that there's a few different types of cereal mascot - the main ones being the "hero" who children can trust to provide them with a tasty cereal and exciting life, and the "victim" who acts as a strange "lesser" to the children being advertised to, letting the kids feel superior by keeping the mascot from eating its own cereal. The song itself is goofy and wacky-sounding while exploring themes of temptation and superiority...just like cereal mascots. Huh.

The secondary theme in this video, which was going to be more of a major point before I got overwhelmed by cereal commercials, is the spectacle of televised competitions. Both sweepstakes and game shows are about the same level of random chance in the end, and there's something addictive about watching them, thinking that could be you. They feel a lot like commercials in their own way.