I haven't watched much television since I arrived on campus in late August. Sure, I'll occasionally hop onto YouTube and cram in 2 or 3 episodes of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam before I call it a night, but aside from that, I've avoided flipping on the idiot box. It was pretty strange when, a few days before Thanksgiving break, I realized that one of the things I was really looking forward to doing when I arrived back in Birmingham was sitting around the living room with my family and watching football. So, after arriving and consuming close to a metric ton of various foodstuffs with my family, I sank into my couch, grabbed the remote and turned on the TV only to be greeted by this distressingly shitty, unforgivably stupid earworm of an ad for Napa Auto Parts.
My brow furrowed, my eyes narrowed, and as another advertisement began exposing itself to me in high definition, my mood worsened. It wasn't that constant advertisement, something that we've all unfortunately grown up with, didn't bother me before I came to Hamilton. It totally did. I think I'm just more sensitive to these commercial enticements now. This is a painfully obvious point to make, but they're fucking manipulative. Those ads for Ford's latest gas guzzler, for eHarmony, for Nerf guns: manipulative to their very core. Of course, when the football game came back on things didn't get much better. Talk about a clusterfuck of corporate imagery. I think I'll stick to the internet, where at least the ads I'm blasted with are catered to my personal tastes.
I almost vomited during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.. The line between advertisement and content was nearly nonexistent.
ReplyDeleteThe NAPA ad is ironic because you're pretty much guaranteed to get the wrong part at NAPA if you rely on an employee to find the right one.
But the video isn't all bad.
Rewind to the other guy's face at 0:24. I'm laughing my ass off just watching his face over and over again.
Yeah, I had a similar experience. I'd never really watched the Parade before, and after this break, I don't plan on watching any of it ever again.
ReplyDeleteCommercials with jingles make me want to put an axe through the TV and this is no exception. I appreciate music that can be put to a manipulative effect subtlely or artfully, like "Twisted Nerve" in Kill Bill, but without that skill it's the equivalent of a sandpaper Q-tip. On a slightly related note, I don't think anyone in horror movies would die if they could just hear the soundtrack: they could just listen for screeching crescendos or abrupt silences and then have the common sense not to open the fucking door or look in the mirror or whatever.
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