I saw a commercial today that normally would have set me off like a bomb, but I must be getting resigned because I just watched and sighed. It was for Verizon and featured a teenage boy, his dad, and the boy’s friend on a hike in the woods. The boy is schooling his dad on the use of his phone and explaining how he can still access the web even though they are in the wilderness. Meanwhile, the friend is taking video of the trees and sending it straight to his web page. In the back of my head I felt the vague urge to throw something at the TV, but inertia kept me slumped on the couch waiting to see which cell provider was responsible for this latest assault on our ability to indulge in an unplugged pursuit. I have to admit that I was less aggravated by Verizon’s ad than I am by the AT&T ads that tout “faster is better.” I know this is the world we live in now; I know the cell providers must compete with one another for our increasingly short attention spans; I know that I risk hypocrisy by ranting about media, TV, commercials, the internet, social media, et al when I use those technologies myself. Yet, I continue to be angered and saddened by what these things herald for the future. I find myself both attracted and repelled by tonight’s Oscar telecast blow-by-blow that I can read either on my friends’ Facebook feeds or on sites such as E! Online, or even on NPR of all places. And, I know that this new world of instant technological communicative semi-social gratification is not a harbinger of a complete societal breakdown; but I am sad for the quiet moments that seem to be losing ground. If a phone rings in the woods, no one should answer it.
Tag: advertising
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Enjoy Your VD!
It’s trendy to be anti-Valentine’s Day, so I’m not going to add to the cliches by ranting about how VD is a holiday invented for the benefit of greeting card companies, florists, and candy stores. I’m not particularly a fan of the day myself and have never felt the need to recognize it. However, I am concerned about how much of the advertising for VD perpetuates extraordinarily broad and negative generalities about gender relations.
First, a disclaimer: I have no problem specifying a date on the calendar for celebrating love, whether romantic or platonic. One of the common complaints about VD is that “people should show their love all year, not just on a specific day.” I don’t disagree, but I think holidays can serve as ways to publicly or formally recognize everyday events or emotions by highlighting them on a specific date. Most of our holidays celebrate things that can have daily meaning; I am a proud US citizen every day, not just on July 4. That said, I think VD is one of the worst offenders for creating a forced sense of obligation and a shallow, sexist view of men and women. Specifically, I am concerned about the marketing of Valentine’s Day.
If you watch television or use the internet, you have seen a commercial for Valentine’s Day. Flowers, candy, and jewelry are all de rigueur if a man – that’s right, only a man – does not want to spend VD in the doghouse. For women, the receipt of flowers, candy, and jewelry means they are obligated to reward the male giver with sex. And, if receiving sex is not the implied message of the commercial, then at least not being punished by a vindictive, angry female mate is the next best message. It’s true that some of the softer-toned commercials do not imply sex or domestic peace as the rewards, and focus instead on how jewelry, in particular, is a symbol of romance, emotional intimacy, and commitment… but this is still problematic in that it portrays women as being emotionally fulfilled by shiny trinkets. So at worst, women are childlike prostitutes who will reward men with sex in exchange for stuffed toys, pretty flowers, sugary snacks, and sparkly baubles. Men, on the other hand, are whipped slaves at the mercy of sex-withholding females, and must indulge her need for VD validation or else risk her wrath.
I realize I am generalizing, but if you pay attention to the commercials you really can’t help but notice how simplistic the messages are. I really do have a problem with this, not just because the messages are potentially damaging, but also because, for once, I really don’t think that many people are falling for it. Maybe I have a soft spot on this, but I’d like to think that people who give their loved ones gifts for Valentine’s Day are doing so because they truly want to honor that intimacy. There’s nothing wrong with giving flowers and chocolates; they are the traditional gift of VD and that’s fine. But if people are doing it out of a sense of obligation or because they are afraid of being punished, then that’s the wrong reason. We are better than the commercials want us to believe. Accepting gifts from your partner does not mean you are obligated to have sex with him or her; ideally you share physical intimacy because you share emotional intimacy, and gifts are irrelevant to that relationship. Women do not have to have gifts to want to have sex with their partners. Men and women both can show they love their partners without the traditional trappings of Valentine’s Day; all they have to do is say it. The commercials are wrong.
All that being said, there are definitely people who buy into the notion that Valentine’s Day should be an enormous production, and they hold their partners to ridiculously high standards for how it should be acknowledged. If a person really believes that their partner does not love him or her because they don’t go all out for VD, then you have a larger problem than sexist advertising stereotypes. You have a problem of critical thinking and communication. Our culture does teach men and women to fill some very specific roles in romantic relationships, but with open-minded communication and critical analysis we can step above this sort of gender hegemony and redefine our roles to suit all our interpersonal relationships, romantic and otherwise. The commercials may be wrong, but that doesn’t mean some people aren’t still fooled.
I’ll end with this: men and women both, if you want something for Valentine’s Day, then say so. Don’t say you don’t care, then get hurt when your partner believes you. Communicate. And, even if you aren’t a big fan of the holiday, if your partner is, then do something for them and make them happy. If you are a big fan of VD, but your partner isn’t, then don’t ask or expect him or her to hang the moon for you. Find the middle ground. It’s about compromise, selflessness, give and take, sacrifice, communication, honesty – the things we should do for each other every day anyway.
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Mini Rant: FU, National Association of Realtors
There are many reasons I don’t watch much television, but one of the big ones is how infuriated I can get at commercials. Last night I saw one for the National Association of Realtors that made me want to put my fist through the TV. Over a picture of happy children throwing a ball, the commercial intones that “home ownership contributes to higher self-esteem and better test scores.” Hey, NAR? FUCK YOU. Don’t you think everybody would like to be able to own a home? Do you really think that you are stimulating epiphanies amongst people who are renting? ‘Cause yeah, sure, they’re renting because they want to, and not because they have to. And now, because of your commercial, they’re thinking “Oh yeah, I should totally buy a house so my kids will have better self-esteem and test scores.” This commercial absolutely infuriates me with its tone-deaf message and implicit criticism of those who are unable to afford home ownership. Of course home ownership improves feelings of self-worth and benefits educational outcomes – that’s because those who can afford to buy a home are generally already living in one of the upper tiers of the social and economic hierarchy. What a solipsistic, circular, insulting, and demeaning piece of BS.
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Follow Your Dreams?
I was just sitting and mindlessly watching television, and a commercial for a health insurance company came on. It showed adults walking around the streets of a city dressed in costumes – astronaut, doctor, ballerina. The tagline of the commercial was a variation of “Be YOU. Be what you want to be.” It occurred to me as I watched the commercial, and the costumes representing the childhood dreams of people who end up actually becoming waitresses, construction workers, receptionists, and day laborers, that this is an enormous line of bullshit that we are being fed. This commercial reflects the middle-class ambitions of modern Americans, and promotes the idea that the only thing holding us back from realizing our childhood dreams is ourselves. What a load of crap! I had the same reaction when I heard a snippet of Steve Jobs’ commencement speech to Stanford in 2005, in amongst all the news stories about Jobs’ death. This is what he said: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” I mean no disrespect to Steve Jobs, but he is spouting the same line of hegemonic hypnosis as the health insurance commercial (though I am willing to give him a partial pass, since this kind of cliched spew is exactly what is expected from a commencement speech). Steve Jobs did amazing things that changed the way we interact with our world today, and in many ways I am grateful for that. But Steve Jobs’ amazing success is the exception. It is the plane crash, not the safe landing. It is the thing that makes the news because it is unusual. It is the kind of success that allows the hegemony to be perpetuated, because it gives us an example to point to and say, “That could be me!” Really? Could it really be you? I’m not sure I agree. Hegemony means believing that you can achieve the same pinnacle of success as the richest people in the United States, but it just isn’t true. Yet, here we all are, listening to the “follow your heart, follow your dream” message, and somehow feeling a little empty or inadequate because we are the waitress, or the mid-level manager, or the hair stylist, and chances are we will never be more than that, no matter how hard we work, no matter how much we study or train or dream, because there just are not that many seats at the head table. The people participating now in the Occupy Wall Street and related protests are, I think, finally understanding this reality. It’s not just about working hard. Believe me, immigrants to this country, illegal or not, work really fucking hard. Working class parents with the food service and delivery driver and labor jobs work really fucking hard. Will they ever occupy a position like Steve Jobs did? Probably not. Should they believe the easily digestible pablum about following your dream, or should we finally just be realistic and tell people, “This is as good as it will ever get for most of us.” Our dreams should be about more than what we do to make money… shouldn’t they? Shouldn’t we work on making sure that, even if you aren’t an astronaut or a doctor or a ballerina, you are compensated well enough for what you do that you don’t have to worry about feeding your kids or paying your mortgage or going to school? Shouldn’t we have a system that supports the reality of life for most people in America? Isn’t that what the protestors want? So let’s stop listening to the platitudes, and start sharing a dream about making sure the needs of all the people are met instead of lying and making people think that it is their fault that they aren’t in the one percent at the top of the economic pyramid.
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The Tyranny of Advertising
In my last post, I talked about how I had been living without television for months. Well, it’s back now, and aside from a few guilty pleasures such as “Hoarders” and “Pawn Stars,” it hasn’t made much of a difference. However, I do think that my months without television caused a bit of culture shock for me, kind of like a person who visits an impoverished village and then returns to the superabundance of the United States. As it happens, during the time I was living without television I was also neglecting to read my magazine subscriptions (Health, Runner’s World, and Real Simple were casualties of my busy life; I managed to keep up with Mother Jones and The Nation). But now the dissertation is done and I can watch TV and read my lighter magazines without guilt, and I have noticed something: the subtle tyranny of advertising.
A big part of my dissertation discusses the concept of hegemony, which is basically the underlying structures of power that serve to perpetuate economic and social inequality. In the case of advertising, economic hegemony is served by convincing us in barely noticeable ways that we need things that we really don’t. On television and radio, advertising attempts to trick us by using labels that make things sound more important than they really are. These are usually phrases that describe self-evident things in ways that make them sound special or unique. For some reason I tend to notice them in relation to food advertising. Carl’s Jr. touts its “hand-breaded” chicken sandwich as something more desirable than a sandwich breaded by a machine. This is similar to “hand-leafed lettuce” or “hand-crafted coffee.” But when you stop to consciously think about that, you realize it’s meaningless. Let’s assume the breading used is the same regardless of whether the labor is done by man or machine, and that it is applied to a fresh chicken breast that is then frozen to be cooked later. Okay. If I put both a hand-breaded piece of chicken and a machine-breaded piece of chicken in front of you and ask you to taste them, will you be able to tell the difference? I’d wager not. Is there something about a piece of iceberg lettuce pulled from the head by hand that makes it taste better than a piece handled (pun intended!) by a machine? No – iceberg lettuce still tastes like iceberg lettuce. Yet this is used as a persuasive piece of advertising that implies a human touch improves the quality and taste of the food, even when the food itself has not been altered in any way. In all truth it probably does make the consumer more likely to want the hand-breaded or hand-crafted food. It sounds like higher quality, and more care, is going into the product. But the bottom line is that Carl’s Jr. is only using that description to increase its market share and not to give the consumer a better product, and the advertising agency that created the campaign is banking on it. We are being fooled and we don’t even know it. And that, my friends, is hegemony.
Magazines are another story altogether. The actual advertisements are usually pretty obvious, although women’s magazines (and probably men’s) often employ advertisements that look very similar to articles, and you may even start reading them before you notice the tiny-print “ADVERTISEMENT” label at the top of the page. But what’s much more insidious is the advertising in the articles. To wit: you read an article about this summer’s new hairstyle trends. There are a few puffy paragraphs about ponytails or hairclips or what have you, accompanied by product suggestions and pretty pictures. “To get this look, try Revlon Silky Shine Spray, $4 at drugstores.” Or “Get the perfect glossy lip with Lancome Pout Perfection, $18, Macy’s.” These are commercials. IN the article. Try an experiment: grab your favorite light magazine and go through it page by page, and count how many pages do not have a single advertisement or product suggestion. I would bet that you will find maybe 10 percent of the pages are product-placement free.
This is hegemony. This is what we are led to believe. This is what we think we have to have, and we don’t even know why. This, we are told, is what keeps the capitalist machinery operating – and that part of it is actually true. I’m not saying we’re all automatons without free will, but I am saying that advertising can easily fool even the most skeptical of us. Try a week or two without your TV or magazines, then go back, like I did. I’m sure you’ll see it too, if you haven’t already; and if you’ve noticed it before, it will be even more obvious after you choose to ignore it for a while.
Now excuse me while I go shine my hair, perfect my pout, and eat my hand-breaded chicken – after all, there’s an economy to grow!
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Don’t Trust Jimmy Johnson
My knee has been bothering me a little bit, so instead of going for a run outside today, I went to the gym to do 45 minutes on the elliptical. This was at about 11 am. I never watch television on Saturdays, especially during the day, so I was intrigued to see that several channels on the overhead monitors were showing the TV equivalent of spam, i.e., infomercials. One starred Heidi Klum. She was hawking a line of face products designed to cover wrinkles, complete with “unretouched” (but not unblurred or unlighted) before and after photos. Another one was making the preposterous claim that YOU can buy YOUR OWN PROPERTY for ONLY PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR!! Yes, that’s right, YOU could own A HOUSE LIKE THIS for only A FEW HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!!! On yet another screen, 2-TIME SUPERBOWL CHAMPION HEAD COACH JIMMY JOHNSON was selling financial kits that will allow YOU to MAKE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN JUST A FEW HOURS doing online stock trades. These “programs” brought many questions to my mind, not the least of which was why the hell I should trust 2-TIME SUPERBOWL CHAMPION HEAD COACH JIMMY JOHNSON to give me financial advice.
Are there that many gullible, ignorant, naive, and/or just plain stupid people out there who fall for this stuff? I guess there must be, because the infomercials persist. It’s a sad indictment of our culture that we are caught between two conflicting mythologies: the cultural value that those who work the hardest will have the most success, and the tantalizing idea that anybody can get rich quick. Both of these propositions are absurd, but there are enough people out there who fit the myths that people believe them. This is a perfect example of confirmation bias – only acknowledging or remembering the evidence that supports your view, and ignoring the evidence that doesn’t. My personal name for this is the “plane crash theory.” You remember the planes that crash, because nobody talks about the ones that land safely. Can you imagine how boring (and not to mention long) the nightly news would be if the safe landings were reported? “We now turn to Bob Bobson for tonight’s safe landing report.” “Thanks Brian. Today, planes landed safely in Topeka, San Jose…” (Three hours later…) “Now back to you, Brian!” Obviously this can work the same way for our cultural beliefs about success and making money. The recent immigrant who works two jobs for minimum wage just to pay for a ghetto apartment that he shares with five other people might not agree that the hardest workers have the most success. But for every ten thousand hard-working, yet low income people, we have a “boot strap” story about somebody who “overcame tough beginnings” and became a millionaire. This is what we remember. And, for all the thousands of people who sign up to sell Amway or Acai berry juice or whatever and fail to get rich, there are one or two people who do succeed, and again, this is what we remember. It is all magical thinking, complicated by those correlated, but not causative, success stories. So, what’s the moral of the story? For me, I guess it’s “don’t go to the gym on Saturday mornings!”