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Subliberal Advertising
While watching TV advertising, I often get the feeling I’m being lectured to.
The Super Bowl yesterday was a series of lectures with this message: “As often as we’ve tried to educate you people out there in flyover country, you remain resistant to our efforts to civilize you. We continue to detect traces of racism, misogyny, and xenophobia in your makeup; so it’s our moral imperative to disabuse you of those ideas.”
If a young girl and a boy are in some kind of competition—running, shooting a basket, doing a science project—put your money on the girl. She’s a shoe-in. It’s all terribly cute, of course. Look, the girl beat the boy! But the schtick is getting a bit tired. Ad folk, lay off the ideology for a bit, for goodness sakes, and let the poor boy win every now and then.
There seems to be some kind of law in advertising that if you show two kids, one of them has to be black. The rule is so strict that there must be some kind of jail (probably on Madison Avenue) for those who break this law. In a group of seven or so, three or four will be “people of color.” They’ll sometimes show an Asian in a group shot, but Asians just don’t count as much as blacks. We’re being lectured to, folks.
In the Super Bowl T-Mobile ad showing a bunch of babies, more than half of which were “babies of color,” we were told that “Some people will be threatened” by the varied hues of these babies. “But,” we’re told, “you will love who you want.” Why do I get the feeling that person who considered himself enlightened was scolding me for my benighted ways?
The Kraft ad in the Super Bowl featured gay couples and interracial couples. “There is no right way to family” (using “family” as a verb) we were told by an ad that obviously was tweaking the noses of the unenlightened.
Perhaps it all started with that Coca Cola ad almost fifty years ago that wanted to teach the world to sing, with a long shot of a multi-cultural group of young people, all mingling peacefully, loving one another, all grokking one another. No borders for these folk.
These lectures are so important to the woke folk on Madison Avenue that the corporations—and the ad agencies that do their bidding—spend untold millions of dollars in which the products themselves never make an appearance. There was nary a phone in the T-Mobile ad, and no macaroni showed up in the Kraft ad.
I was trying to enjoy the Super Bowl, but these darned ads were harshing my mellow. (I can’t get enough of that phrase, which I stole from a DocJay post.)
Published in Culture
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Mr. Henry, thanks. The post seems to have struck a nerve.
Kent
Bingo.
Apparently Jerry Seinfeld feels the same way, when his show was on he said ‘You’ll never see a ‘very special’ Seinfeld” I loved that.
And then they violated that rule for their dud of a final episode.
Kozak, you put me over the top. My previous PR for most responses from a single post was 95 (in 22 posts). Your response was the 96th. Thanks.
Kent
It judged them, which violated the spirit of the show.
I had read an article about Seinfeld when it was taking off, and I think Larry David was quoted as saying “No one will ever learn anything, and no one will ever hug.”
I consider the fate of the characters, even if they didn’t learn anything from it, a transgression, in that it looked down on them.
And the sappy “I Hope You Had the Time of Your Life” montage was a virtual “hug.”
I always resented the ‘show about nothing’ formulation. Seinfeld was a fine show.
@kentforrester
on the formatting thing: You can also hit the quote marks to “leave” that function same as when you started the quote…and return to straight writing. You will notice the cursor jumps back over to the normal format.
Also to correct after you see a posted goof you can go into edit mode and highlight (select) a portion of text and hit the quotes symbol to reverse that portion if it wasn’t what it was supposed to be (quoted or not).
I seem to recall reading that the final episodes (It was a two-parter, I think) was their way of reminding everybody what shallow, self-centered human beings the four main characters really were.
I believe the black jurors on the OJ trial probably resented his choice of wife.
I don’t buy anything with a pink ribbon if I can avoid it also. Companies are pandering to audiences’ emotions are not sure they have a good product.
The social causes that companies embrace are a turn off to me. I really don’t care to be drug into their fantasy that they make so much money and have copious amounts of time to care more than the average person does in their day to day activities. I refuse to donate at the checkout counter also. Notice they like to brag about how much they raise, but if it isn’t out of their profits, they are taking credit for being shakedown artists.
I only like funny commercials.
I find if I am interested in something to buy, I research it on the internet on mulitple sites if I can and see what people who have actually used and bought the product say. And some of those are probably not reliable as actual customers, that’s why I use mulitple inquiries as well as ask people I know.
I know, because they had more empathy for him than his wife. Marcia Clark thought they would be more likely to convict him and she was wrong.
From American Consequence:
“If you don’t buy this $13 Stella Artois beer glass, African children will die of thirst…
…You buy a $13 glass… and Stella Artois donates $3.13 to Water.org for up to 300,000 glasses sold… or about $940,000. The Super Bowl ad space that Stella bought cost more than $5 million.
So buy a glass… or a truck… if you want.
But don’t feel good about it.”