Mad men (and women): some hurried thoughts on US advertising

Sunday evening prime-time. 6 September 2009. Labor Day weekend and I'm in New York . The medical TV show House is on Channel 9. I'm quite inured to commercial breaks every 7 minutes. I've almost built them into my viewing experience so that I surf the web or check blackberry messages when the ads are on. The programme is not that good anyway. It clearly doesn't demand attention – it invites distraction: that's US TV. It took me less than the time it takes to watch an NBC comedy special to realise that there really is no point comparing US and British television. They have only a passing resemblance to each other. And as we increasingly get our content chunks through more diverse and mobile media their fundamental differences become clearer and clearer. The television itself after all is only really an exhibition mechanism – it's the systems behind: of creation, distribution, ownership, that really define what it is we watch. Not to pretend that there is no link between medium and message but what we consume our messages on is less significant than how those messages get made, by whom, for whom and to what overall purpose. And I guess that in gener,l I'm in favour of the kinds of purposes that favour some idea of the common good rather than enriching the Murdoch family. (which raises an interesting question that I'm sure those policy gurus at the BBC have been mulling for some time – if no one watches their “tv” on 'tv” any more, how do you collect the licence fee?)...Anyway, I digress, I don't want to go into the more than 20 easy reasons why public service broadcasting is a good idea.

Of course commercials exaggerate, embellish and maybe even sometimes lie but this wasn't what struck me. What really came across was their insanity – a quality of quite extreme illogic and irrationality.

Commercial No:1: An attractive young woman is frantically trying to clean her show-house living room which – horror of horrors – seems to have actually accumulated a little dirt on the carpet. It's the kind of thing that happens when people live in a house and use it. But this poor woman is in pieces. Cut away to a mean looking old woman in the passenger seat of a car speeding towards the house. “My mother-in-law will be arriving any moment and I haven't got the time to do a steam clean!” But then a reassuring man in a red t-shirt proudly bearing the slogan RESOLVE appears at her doorway. Don't worry he tells her. Buy this product and everything will be fine. He sprinkles this magic potion on her carpet and heh presto, shiny immaculate floor. The mother-in-law arrives and the first words out of her mouth are compliments to her daughter-in-law on how lovely her house is. The woman is saved: thank God – approval, my mother in law loves me! On what level is this a healthy, functional, desirable relationship? It's not even the casual sexism of it which is pretty obvious and every day (women, if you don't keep to the highest standards of hygiene you are a failure), it's the total conditionality of the relationship presented between two – one would assume – quite intimate people. The commercial in its bland, mass market way presents the idea that obstacles or conflicts in any relationship can be mediated through consumption.

Commercial No. 2. A reassuring voice speaks over intimate family photographs of a couple mountain biking together. “Ever feel like you don't want to do anything, that you can't enjoy anything?” As the photo montage progresses to ever more blissful pictures of intimate family relationships, the voice-over continues to tell us that the answer to some of these nagging feelings of sadness and inadequacy is a product called Cymbalta. Cymbalta is an anti-depressant that you should talk to your doctor about if maybe you don't enjoy time with your husband, family or friends. It could really sort you out... and yet, federal regulations demand that this nice, cosy voice remind us that Cymbalta should not be taken in a whole host of situations and can lead to – among other things - liver failure. Oh yes and the common side effects include nausea, dry mouth and constipation (if you weren't depressed already).
Seeing these two adverts back to back I couldn't help but wonder that presenting anxiety about what your mother in law thinks of you if you have a little dirt on your carpet might in itself as a NORMAL response could in itself be a factor in depression. Buying product one leads you to product two. Or to put it another way, if the first and the most encouraged response to feelings of anxiety or discomfort – particularly around how we relate to “difficult” or “challenging” people that inevitably all of us have to deal with if we aren't living on our own in a cave – is to buy something, then alienation must surely follow. And this is what made me think that these commercials are truly quite mad.

Postscript: Commercial No 3 was for a new “miracle” Revlon foundation that magically matches your own skin tones and makes you look young and flawless. So much healthier - just common or garden lies.