A toxic sea of annoyance…
I suppose this could be interpreted as a follow-up on last Tuesday’s post. People minimize the onslaught of commercials by using DVRs and streaming video now, but commercial interests still bombard everyone with commercials. Pop-up ads on websites, especially those with video and sound, are only a small part of the problem. Theaters, struggling to compete in this internet age, bombard us with commercials too—many of them are the same ones you see on TV. It’s not enough that you have to mortgage your house to buy your candy and popcorn. They sell advertising time too. (I don’t buy anything at concession stands anymore. If I can’t smuggle in trail mix or a fruit bar, I go without. Eating distracts from the movie anyway.) Facebook is even selling political ads.
Some commercials are entertaining if you only see them once. Being bludgeoned by them over and over again is a bit like an eternity listening to that stupid song “Frozen” (unlike many American businesses, my writing business isn’t a Disney subsidiary—I can tell you the truth about their crappy songs!). Even worse, on our local stations, commercial X is played at the beginning of a commercial break and then again at the end. Any cuteness—pets and kids are common—becomes stale (cuteness is over-rated anyway). Any cleverness also becomes stale. Make sure all the knives and guns are safely under lock and key because you’ll soon become suicidal with this torture going on.
My favorite button on my remote is the Mute button. That’s because the soundtrack of a commercial is often more annoying than the video. Commercials have destroyed Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra for me. What’s that? The opening of the movie 2001, for classical music haters (the commercial producers probably want you to remember 2001 and not that Strauss wrote the piece). Same for Strauss’ “Blue Danube” (that was written by a different Strauss), Tchikovsky’s 1812 Overture, and many operatic arias. But that’s nothing compared to furniture salespeople, car salespeople, pillow promotions with bedtime music, law offices guaranteeing litigation success with ominous music and pictures of tumors or botched surgeries—you get the idea.
Then there’s Henry Winkler, Tommy Lee Jones, Fred Thompson, Debbie Reynolds, and other wrinkled old actors and singers trying to bilk the elderly out of what little money they have, in those whining, pleading voices (Fred, of course, is also a washed-up old politician, so he’s doubly affable…and whiny). You wonder which is worse—the raucous annoyance of a pounding soundtrack from the fifties or the has-beens hawking insurance, reverse mortgages, and facelifts. Maybe the second. The first is just damn annoying; the second is pathetic…and annoying.
Commercials are still dominated by three things, though. Cars—new, used, and those from Hurricane Sandy—are big ticket items. Every damn holiday becomes a time for selling cars. They have zombies demoing cars and put huge bows on them at Christmas time. The people pushing these killing machines—don’t worry about the recalls, folks, because you gotta die sometime—are about as obnoxious as they come. Some of our locals dress up in clown suits or as Marvel Comics characters, if they’re not arrested in Times Square for harassing tourists, but they all remind me of snake-oil salesmen from the 1860s. They often have all sorts of “cute animals” too. Where’s PETA when you need them? (I never see the message at the end of the commercial saying “No animals were hurt in the making of this commercial.” What’s their definition of hurt? Dogs have more sensitive ears than humans. They can also have mental problems. They’re probably ready to slash their wrists with the loud sound tracks too.)
The other common commodity is detergent—well, soap and shampoo, too. Maybe it’s a concerted effort to clean up America? Never mind all the soap residue floating down our drains to America’s waterways. Some of these ads are still singing commercials straight out of the fifties. It’s like being in a time stasis when sitcom sex was impossible because the couple had two single beds. I fully expect to see Ozzie and Harriet when the commercial break finishes—or Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, to be more modern. I guess the companies don’t want to pay much for their ads, so they just recycle the old ones. The beds too, although that furniture guy Bob screams at me that he has cheap kingsize beds available.
The third commodity, cereals, is probably the worst. From kids’ cartoon shows to the ten p.m. cop show, you can be slammed with a cereal commercial. They’re ubiquitous. You can’t get away from them. And they have all the bad characteristics I point out above. I think Corn Pops or KIx—can’t remember which one—was one of the first to haul out the 1812 Overture. And Mulitgrain Cheerios rewrite of Shakespeare to “To bee or not too bee” (yeah, I know, that irritating bee is a honeybee, but General Mills should know they’re all dead—I’ve only seen bumblebees for a while now and suspect that fracking and the cancellation of NASA’s shuttle program have something to do with that!). Some have dancers in a noisy production more reminiscent of the MTV Awards (but without any wardrobe malfunctions to make them more interesting). Why are these so glitzy? Think of the price of cereal nowadays. Probably a 500% mark-up even when on sale at your local grocery store! They put a lot of that money back into ads, continuing to browbeat us into buying more of their over-priced, sugary, unhealthy crap!
PR and marketing can be used positively. If you have a good product, no one will know about it until you advertise. So why is it necessary to harp on products with already established names? Dunno. Maybe it’s an NSA conspiracy just to annoy us. Where’s the Guardian when you need it? I’d give a Pulitzer to the reporter that launches a campaign against ads. My privacy is hurt more by commercials than by Snowden. Moreover, I don’t know if we need any anal, self-appointed, publicity-seeking, Putin-loving whistleblower to tell us that commercials attack our privacy almost every waking hour of every day here on the planet. I just know I’m tired of being subjugated to this loud, visually obnoxious drivel. The more annoying a commercial is, the less I’m inclined to buy the product.
Same thing goes for PR and marketing your book, by the way. (I hear some groans. I always have to make that connection to the writing business. It pays for this blog, at least from the IRS’ perspective!) There’s a fine line between a reasonable launch, for example, and spamming the entire internet. Even restricting your PR and marketing to people who want to receive it can be dangerous. But I’m inclined to be more forgiving to mid-list and indie authors. When I see a full-time ad for a Patterson book in the NY Times or a video trailer about a Baldacci book hooked onto an evening newscast—both annoying, by the way—a sour taste comes to my mouth. That’s what a lot of advertising produces—a sour taste. That’s why I know it’s toxic as well as annoying. Instead of Rice Krispies in the morning, we have ricin. (Don’t know what that is? Then you aren’t a mystery/suspense/thriller reader or writer.)
And so it goes….
