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Artsy PSAs Hit the Web, from Aronofsky to Lynch to Pee-Wee
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Remember when public service announcements were cheesy, condescending TV spots that you'd laugh at rather than learn from? Forget the fried-eggs-this-is-your-brain-on-drugs-ads of yesteryear; the web has become a showcase for bizarre, innovative, terrifying and succinct PSAs, perfectly suited for the short-attention spans of the internet audience.
Thanks to BuzzFeed for spotlighting this new trend, which includes Requiem for a Dream director Darren Aronofsky's new videos for Montana's Meth Project – watch one particularly affecting spot called "Mother" – to David Lynch's nightmarish anti-littering PSA photographed by Eraserhead D.P. Frederick Elmes. "Perhaps the scariest commercial ever made," writes the YouTube user who put up the video. We agree.
BuzzFeed highlights also how, in retrospect, Pee Wee Herman is actually far more creepy than cute in this old PSA about the dangers of crack cocaine.
And if you want provocative PSAs, just check out the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' litany of controversial ad spots—the most recent of which features actor Casey Affleck describing the evils of meat, intercut with horrifying images of slaughtered animals, which was just banned from TV stations last month.
For more PETA PSA fun, there's the shocking, the sexy and the '70s porn spoof.
