How to Fix Your Family - Exercise #9

How to Fix Your Family was created in Adobe Premiere Pro from footage of the show Maury, a Fallsview Casino commercial, and a Cash Money commercial.

The intention behind Maury is to bring parents and children together in an attempt to reconcile their conflicts often through the results of DNA tests; in this particular case, the father has not been with his daughter for 31 years and wants to be a paternal figure to her for the remainder of her life. After she asks what his definition of a father is, Fallsview Casino cuts in as an interruption of his thoughts. This is done by overlaying the ad footage over a time-stretched clip of the father. The Cash Money commercial enters as a way to advertise that the way to remedy this problem is not to spend an extensive amount of time together as a family, but to borrow money as a quick fix, by use of the ad voice-over with the repeated clip of the audience clapping and cheering, ending the video with the Cash Money jingle and contact information.

The meaning is altered from a family moment meant to be poignant and forgiving to a dark depiction of falling to the capitalist trap of gambling, greed, and addiction as a way of coping with domestic issues.