For the last couple days I have been bombarded by filmmaker friends who have noticed the new Kickstarter Campaign for Potato Salad. The original goal was set for $10 and at the time of this writing, it has raised $70,924 with 4,995 backers and still 23 days to go. As I scrolled through this project’s Kickstarter page reading the rewards for each donation level, I could not help but wonder whether this is a joke or savvy social satire. All the rewards (for pledges from $1 to $50) include “I will say your name out loud while making the potato salad.” I wonder, “Am I missing the true meaning of the internet potato salad experience?” Or is this a social experiment in the potato salad making space? As I read that the campaign creator’s stretch goals, $250 stretch goal allows the project to achieve “Better mayonnaise (from the natural foods section),” I figure I must not be clever enough to decipher the ironic meta message behind the choice of mayonnaise in the same way 1930s audiences did not readily understand Magritte’s The Treachery of Images! And I am taking this potato salad seriously—to the point that I am bringing it to your attention, because I’m seeing it on Kickstarter, the site that claims to be “a new way to fund creative projects….We’re a home for everything from films, games, and music to art, design, and technology.” So there must be something I’m missing that qualifies this as a creative project. With all the fuss that was raised over Zack Braff and Spike Lee raising money on the site, it’s baffling that Kickstarter has vetted this project to share the space with genuine efforts by artists and entrepreneurs to get all sorts of projects off the ground with the help of others. Is there something we can learn from this experience? For now, I think there’s a lot of potato salad to go around for $71,092. (Pledges have gone up since I began writing.) Maria Raquel Bozzi / Senior Director of Film Education
