Body Double

I just needed a quick read. Preferably a crime caper that would keep me on the edge of the seat and help me finish off the nail that had grown a yukto-milimeter = 10 power minus twenty four (Is there really such a measure? Do people actually go about measuring such small amounts? Crazy!!). So, I picked up this single book in my library that said “Body Double” by an author I had unheard of, Tess Gerritsen, a new genre writer of thrillers, I supposed.

It’s one thing to read about crime, especially of the gruesome type, but yet another to read about how the cadavers of the victims are taken apart in figuring out the crimes themselves. In Body Double, Tess Gerritsen does just that. In a blog post where writers write about the back stories of their own books, Gerritsen says that the plot point for this book came from imagining how it might feel if one had to witness oneself being autopsied - and this she details to captivating extent, framing the driving point of the plot.

There are several layers to this apparent crime/thriller novel. On one level it is a straight forward plot of crime by an animal who is both driven by the rationale of making money as well as an emotional imbalance with a taste for the macabre, and that precisely is the problem. Either a crime is perpetuated by the psychotic or by a fully functional human for rational reasons such as jealousy or greed, but how does one account for a beast with a fascination for the morbid and who uses it making money in an organized way? How does one explain the eventuality that he actually perpetuates it into a family business? And even worse, how does one explain away the fact that this animal dies like an average family man bought into hospital by his loving family, when several families were broken and several children orphaned by his fantastic occupation? How does one explain the lack of justice and retribution which is the compelling issue in any study of crime?

On another level, this book talks of the innocent who by chance is a kindred soul of the animal. The central character of the book is Dr.Maura Isles, a Boston Medical Examiner who loves the precision of her job of autopsying crime cadavers. The book starts with her returning from a conference in Paris and finding a crime scene investigation on her porch. People are surprised to see her since she was the one who was supposed to be dead. One look at the victim makes it clear that the bewilderment is because of the identical physical match with the said Doctor. A DNA analysis proves that they are genetically related – perhaps twins. A background check reveals that they were both given up for adoption, handled by the same agent. That would have been enough for me to go on a personal crusade. To find out how my twin happened to be shot in the head in front of my house, when I didn’t even know she existed should be enough to pique my curiosity. But then Garritsen decides to take Dr.Isles, a rational medical expert into the autopsy room and show how it feels when it could have been her, under the merciless scalpel.

The author further tortures her protagonist by making her trace the path which the dead twin, a microbiologist, had traversed before her, eventually leading her to a correctional facility where her apparently deranged mother is incarcerated. The doctors can’t quite make up their mind if she is unhinged and the ‘mom’ plays the part of psychotic-but not quite, exceedingly well. She was sentenced for the murder of two sisters, one of them pregnant. The visits are an emotional roller coaster ride for the Dr.Isles who has to now doubt her own moral fiber. Is the love for the cadaver genetic?

While the bigger crime and central part of story, with the gory crime and ancestral linage of the protagonist, kind of gets resolved by itself - really, no one solves it, the other part of the story including the murder of the twin kind of takes the readers to a different plane.

Move over, moral dilemma, there is one more layer I can think of. So as to not give the plot away, I’ll pose them thoughts to Tess Gerritsen. Was it some kind of kooky humour, using a full term pregnant police office in a crime involving pregnant woman? Why could’nt Ballard, the Boston Police Officer, have been given a chance? I had quite started to like him – actually I had to keep telling myself not to invest too much in him, lest he turn out to be dreadful character. I couldn’t quite make out if all the attention he was paying Dr.Isles was for real. Even if their relationship was on shaky grounds, I liked him better than the confused priest, that Maura seems to fancy. I really wish you had let Ballard be! Sulk!

Although my library has only one out of the series of 6 books with the Boston Police characters in it, I know I will devour them all when I lay my hands on them! Thank you Tess!

The season of the Dolls!

A far cry from the scary “Sanju” of last years MaxLife Ads are the white-ant like ZooZoos with enlarged heads: Courtesy, Vodafone’s attempt at entertaining us during the IPL this season. Well, since a lot has been said of the ZooZoo’s and their uncanny sense in appreciating life’s little ditties, I am going to lay off that breed of “not quite” animation for the dolls of the new Livon Ads.

I, of the frizzy-curly hair, am always on high alert for the panacea that will do the equivalent of straightening the dog’s tail. The other day I was pleasantly surprised to see the new packaging of the Livon conditioner – the greasy but non sticky stuff that can be left on the hair after a wash - one can then pretend that one did something to get things in control and forget about it. The proposition now however seems to be more than ‘managing’ hair – its now about ‘beautiful’ hair!

The brand has now acquired an extended family – a purple packaged family of Livon conditioners and serums – they used to be plain old fashioned ‘potions’ before now, in staid white packaging. They are being launched with a really cute set of Dolls – named, hold your breath – “Livon Dolls” – specially designed for Livon by one Mr. Razneesh Ghai of White Light Films, who has also directed the ads.

The dolls have a large heads in proportion to their bodies and even larger eyes. Larger eyes and head apparently make them more expressive, since dolls by themselves find it hard to express emotions. I must say, for dolls with no muscular emoting capacity, the mood of these ads have been created beautifully. The Dolls, as expected, have extremely shiny, beautiful, soft, fluffy and manageable hair. Why do Dolls have it all?

The ads have the dolls in various hair dos and in various settings such as a hilltop, a café, a balcony etc. The music, voice over, lighting and camera work set the mood. Nice, dreamy, introspective dolls seem completely at peace with themselves. With nice beautiful hair - not one out of place - I guess one could feel that way!

The connect with this commercial for consumers, it is hoped, must come from aspirations of the little girl in every woman who wants to look like the doll from her childhood! I hope my daughter has no such aspirations – all her dolls have horribly mismanaged 365-bad hair days. And I don’t remember ever having a doll, so there!

More coverage @ afaqs: http://www.afaqs.com/main1.html

De-fusing Roger’s Diffusion Curve

My last post on the Domino effect of the yucky Domino’s video set me thinking in terms of what it means for the well accepted two-step communication model and the theory of diffusion of innovation.

Before the two step model, was the Hypodermic-needle model which suggested that mass media did all the communication – a single step in which mass media reached out to…well the masses – like injecting stuff into your body – single shot. The two step model of communication was first presented by Lazersfeld and Katz (Personal Influence, 1955) when they proposed that when mass media put out a communication, some members adopt it faster than others and then they in turn propagate it among others - The mother of the Social Network Theory.

This was the sort of idea that appears to have birthed the concept of ‘Diffusion of Innovation’ proposed by Everett Rogers (1962). Rogers provided us with one of the most enduring marketing ideas with his adoption/diffusion curve. Most marketing students would know that there are a small bunch of people with certain characteristics who are innovators and they adopt the idea/product much before the others. The early adaptors then follow suit and then the early majority followed by late majority and the miserable laggards who adopted last – leading to diffusion of innovation – typically an S-Shaped curve. Frank Bass (1969) then provided a rather robust mathematical model to quantify the diffusion model as a combination of mass media and personal influences.

While the idea of the adoption-diffusion curve has sufficiently sunk into our psyches, and the several of us have believed of the Adoption curve and the Bass model as the ultimate in diffusion theory, maybe its time to relook at the process with changing media structures.

A typical viral campaign that goes from mass media and then gets adopted across the late adoptors would be the strategy followed by Vodaphone’s ZooZoo ad campaign. More on that one later – since everyone is talking about it! The mass media creates something interesting worth accepting/acknowledging/adopting and then some people get hooked on to it earlier than the rest. They pass it along – on the internet – more adopters, followed by the early majority, late majority and the laggards – at which point the media might oscillate between television and the internet.

But consider what happened with Dominos Pizza – it was not a mass media that gave rise to the viral Dominos video that got passed along on to Youtube. It first started with individuals sharing a viral video which became newsworthy enough to get on to mass media. Some people heard about it and then checked out the TV, newspapers and the internet! This doesn’t quite follow the two step model or the Bass model - What kind of adoption/diffusion process is that?

Another question that generally bothers me with the diffusion model is the premise that a lot depended upon the qualities of the innovators – they were supposedly a minority and a special lot. Now with increasing adoption and maturation of the market, do we alienate them? For example, one adopts a new technology ‘cos its so cool and one is an innovator, and then others adopt it too – does Mr.Cool then get disappointed and jump the ship? Does a company targeting innovators appropriately for enabling diffusion end up alienating them as the product become mass market? Typically a question asked by my students when I explain how we can actually apply Roger’s idea of diffusion of innovation!

A couple of Wharton professors are apparently working on this:



………and here’s a link to Martin Bishop’s blog at Brand Mix, where he discusses this issue with the example of how Facebook handles this issue.