"This isn’t us, it’s an interesting approach but it isn’t us!"
--Melanie Haber (aka Audrey Farber, Susan Underhill,
Betty Joe Bealoski, Nancy, etc.)
Like a great number of underemployed people, I find I'm watching television more and enjoying it less.
Not the programs, so much. Anyone who ventures outside the sanctuaries of PBS and premium cable (a luxury we had to forego some time back) knows better than to expect more than caricature "drama," forced "comedy" and "reality" that bears little resemblance to, well, reality.
No, it is the commercials that are depressing me. Not the crass hucksterism used to peddle useless items which all seem to cost $19.95 (though you can two for simply shelling out twice the "processing" cost), nor the contrived lunacy of ads aimed at the college-aged demographic, but the commercials we are supposed to take seriously, ads for automobiles and clothing and food.
It isn't the lies and exaggerations about the products offered that bothers me; it is the abject dishonesty about the target, about, in short, us.
Yes, I understand that we, or rather a certain view of ourselves, is as much the product as the good or service to be peddled. I understand that advertising is aimed, always, at a predetermined, focus-grouped, MRI-tested lowest common denominator or American.
I guess what makes me sad is how far the image of us as presented in advertisements is from the actual people that make up our nation.
It is not simply that everyone has great skin and has impeccable dental work, nor that their clothing, homes, vehicles, pets, kids, etc. are so idealized. It's not even that the denizens of Commercial World appear to have the disposable income one cannot find in the wild.
It's that the people on the other side of the glass no longer bear the slightest resemblance to the citizens of the United States.
Advertisers acknowledge these days that there are people of differing racial backgrounds, but they all still look like white people, just white people with (ever so slightly) elevated melanin levels or (barely) different eye shapes. Teevee People generally have a reasonable body mass index, though a third of the people on the outside of the screen are obese (or worse).
Most glaring--and grating--to an actual meat person stuck in this country in these times are the smiles. Life in there, which is really how advertisers wish us to believe life out here is or could be, is purty darned swell. Not merely because we have cars topped with giant bows (asshole driver comes standard) or appliances clad in surgical-grade stainless steel, but because, gosh, life is just, well, great. Who wouldn't smile? Heck, even our dogs are happy.
Meanwhile, out here, three-quarters of us think that the country's gone to shite and that only a sucker thinks it's going to get better.
Maybe I don't understand advertising as well as I think I do, but is it really effective salesmanship to present your products in a frame that is so demonstrably false? Doesn't it make the viewer trust the message even less?
Then again, I'm probably not anyone's target demo. I've got a raggedy-ass cat and don't even know what a fleece pullover is, nor what makes leather "Napa leather."
I suppose I am a curmudgeon and a cynic by nature, but I would just love to see an ad for some restaurant chain saying simply, "Hey, you don't eat, you'll starve, idiot. Though, looking at you, it might take a while."
Happy holidays, all. For a limited time.