CALIFORNICATION

Californication reflects a real concern (or ‘moral panic’) about the ways in which American society is moving rapidly further towards a shallow, commercial, artificial and ultimately unsatisfying life style. All that Adorno (1991) predicted about the culture industries creating ‘false needs’ is explored and satirized in Californication. Ironically, here we have an example of a successful media production (a song and music video) criticizing itself: far from pulling the wool over the consumer’s eyes, the band are in the forefront of those telling audiences to wake up and be aware of their passive acceptance of what is false and unsatisfying.

This is the preparatory work for our story board which we plan to present as an animatic using Post It notes. In our group of three, each of us undertook one third of the drawing task; this post reflects the initial class work.