About a week ago my housemates and I settled in for a delightful evening in front of the television, watching The Incredibles and Project: Runway.
Yes, Project: Runway. What, did I stutter?
Anyway, as I was watching Brad Bird's cgi masterpiece I was struck by the nature of ads that were played, and four in particular jumped out at me. The first two were for a plug-in air freshener that was being pitched as somehow making the lives of the talking animal matrons easier. Ridiculousness of the premise aside, the bit that caught my attention, and actually incensed me enough that I raised an eyebrow and grunted in a disdainful manner, was that the animal matrons were all portrayed as being stay-at-home moms with nothing better to do than keep house and tend to their brood.
How very progressive. For the 1950's.
The next commercial was for a twenty-first century version of the Whisper 2000, called the Listen Up. Not only is thing merely a smaller version of the Whisper 2K, but the pitch was almost exactly the same as the W2k's TV ads in the 1980's. Most disturbing about both of these products is that they marketed as ways for the elderly to eavesdrop on conversations from across the room. "Hey", the ads say, "It's okay to listen in on private conversations because you deserve to know all the dirt about the kids in the neighborhood so that you may pass righteous judgment on them!"
No wonder only the younger generations are up in arms about warrantless wiretapping.
The fourth blatant grab for my purchasing dollar was for a god rock collection from TimeLife Music. This one was flat out the most interesting advert of the bunch as it showed footage from concerts, with thousands of (mostly) white youngsters, arms upraised, swaying in time to the music with their eyes closed. Chances are that every one of those creepy little bastards fully believes that the devil's parsley is an honest-to-jesus tool of Satan, and that the only way to live a full and happy life is to strictly adhere to the misogynistic scribblings of a collection of parables, while listening to the saccharine vocal drippings of some twat going on about how Jesus touches him in that "special place".
Okay, that came out a little more bitter than I originally intended but I know that not all god rock has to sound like the emo-bleating of of some wannabe disciple wanker. Want proof? Burlap to Cashmere.
Getting to the point of this post, these four ads were broadcast on ABC Family, nee FOX Family, whose target audience is not closely represented by my current household. What set me on edge then was not that ABC Family was blowing it by not marketing to me, but that there were millions of people out there to whom the ads were speaking!
Of course, I managed to mostly erase the fear and horror that this epiphany had on me by watching three straight hours of Ninja Warrior/Unbeatable Banzuke on G4 television a few days later. Now, ads for ITT Tech and payday loans, that's what speaks to me!
No, wait...they don't.
