Another note in a series on Is the American Dream Killing You? by Paul Stiles.
Chapter Three: The Bubble
Mr. Stiles talks about The Bubble as being the artificial environment created, essentially by advertising. We are, he says, surrounded by advertising of one kind and another, and it is difficult to see past the advertising to anything real. Again, I have a lot of sympathy for this, although it’s not absolutely clear to what extent this is different from previous generations. It is true, I think, that more of our environment is more directly and openly controlled by The Market, but to say more would require more study and care than Mr. Stiles is interested in doing (or that I am interested in doing myself). I will point out a few things where he is obviously overstating himself, though.
First of all, he insists that television is the ne plus ultra of The Market, to the extent that he ignores how much previous mass media and less-mass media were in the service of The Market as well. Yes, there were commercials over the radio. Yes, there was product placement over the radio, and it was far more blatant than most of what we see today (although I’m told that the unscripted shows tend to approach the old-fashioned methods). Yes, the Music Hall was a market, and existed to make money, and there was product placement there, too, of sorts. The lecture tours that I kept expecting Mr. Stiles to bring up as an example of the halcyon days of yore were sponsored, and many of them were little more than snake-oil huckster stands. There were ads in the Saturday Evening Post, and let's not forget that generations read the Sears Catalogue for entertainment. I don’t doubt that we are seeing more advertising and advertising-funded entertainment than we used to, but it’s also clear to me that we are, by virtue of that exposure, less vulnerable to it than our grandparents were.
We don’t, for instance, believe that because Jokarta Celebrity endorses Jokarta Kola and Jokarta Shoes (at Payless) and Jokarta perfume that Jokarta drinks, wears and douses herself with those products. We don’t even assume that she had anything to do with them other than authorizing her agent to sell her name to the highest bidder, and showing up for a quick photo shoot. Endorsement doesn’t imply endorsement anymore, and we don’t think that, oh, Mr. T makes collect calls at all, much less uses the company in whose commercial he appears. And that’s assuming we can remember which company it was, or even what product it was.
And this brings me to my main crankiness about this chapter, the advertising chapter. Mr. Stiles misses the main point about advertising. In fact, he doesn’t even take the opportunity to make the point that everybody makes about television ads: the show is not the product, the show is the wage they pay you for watching the ad. The television company is selling your ad-watching services, and paying you in entertainment. They only care about your enjoyment to the extent that it means you will consider more-entertaining television to be higher pay, and work longer hours for them. Of course, they can’t actually tell if you are working at all, because their goofball timeclock is a joke. Which, by the way, brings up another question—why aren’t there three competing ratings companies? Why do television producers allow themselves to be held captive by an un-natural monopoly on the only thing they have to sell? Don’t they have an interest in better information, or at least cheaper information? Or should they just make shit up?
However, that’s not my point. My point is that, just as the people who make television don’t really care about the viewer, except as a sort of producer of eyeballs for advertisers, the people who make advertising don’t give a shit about whether you buy the products being advertised. I don’t mean Heineken, which of course cares whether you buy Heineken or not. I mean Strawberry Frog, the ad company that comes up with and films a very nice little sixty-second movie about soccer, which it sells to Heineken as an ad. They’re not selling beer, they’re selling ads. Sure, if Heineken sells a few more beers after the ad is aired, terrific, that’s a selling point. But if they don’t, if they sell what they expected to sell, or even a bit less, but people are talking about that cool soccer ad, then Strawberry Frog can sell their next ad to Old Navy for a bit more money. And then ... Coke!
When the fellows who buy advertising decide who they should buy ads from, sure they would like to buy ads from somebody who is guaranteed to sell more of their goods. But really, once you get into national buys, how can you tell? And whoever made the Super Bowl Senate Committee ad with, you know, the girl with big tits? What was that for again? Are they still in business? Who cares? I’m sure the ad company is making big money. And they don’t give a shit about you, and what you actually buy. They want you to talk about their ad, but really, they don’t give a shit about that, either, unless you are an ad buyer for Coke, or go to bars with ad buyers for Coke.
Anyway, all of that is really just another argument for what Mr. Stiles is arguing, badly: much of what we see is insulated from any genuine observation or interaction. And although I can’t get too excited about how today’s sports stadium is likely to have some commercial name, unlike Wrigley, or Busch, or Yankee Stadium, or how there are ads all over the walls unlike in the old HIT SIGN WIN SUIT days, I do think that advertising and transaction-pushed stuff is in more places, and is more difficult to avoid than it used to be.
A better example, and I can’t figure out why Mr. Stiles fails to bring it up, is the extent to which children’s clothes are advertisements. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money on shoes or jackets, you can accept a discount and Dora the Explora or Spongebob Squarepants. If you don’t want Dora or Spongebob, well, you have to spend a little more time and a lot more money. And, probably, explain why to your three-year-old, who will not get it. Just won’t. I wouldn’t have, when I was three. It’s easier to just rent out your child to be a walking ad for some show you quite likely loathe (as for some reason the good shows, and I’m speaking here only of Between the Lions, don’t have Wal-Mart shoes with Theo and Cleo for four bucks). Besides, your child will be attending pre-school with a roomful of toddling advertisements for shows you really loathe, so what good is it doing you, anyway? And the Market has added another layer of transactions onto the production and purchase of a shirt: the intellectual property license. Success!