Posted on 04/27/2020 8:12:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
A new kind of television advertisement has crept into our collective consciousness here in the age of virus. In an effort to show that they care, and you know, sell stuff, major corporations are inundating the airwaves with saccharine-sweet, super-sincere TV spots that are not a little bit dystopian. Indeed, the virus, it seems, is inescapable even when we cut to a few words from our sponsors.
You’ve all seen them. They include phrases like, “In this time, more than any other,” or “As we all rise to the challenge,” or “Stay safe, stay home.” The last one is particularly infuriating. I mean, I am home! I’m watching freakin television! Where do you think I am, a sports bar? I’m just trying to tune out watching “Friends” over here.
In a Dunkin Donuts ad, employees in one store are making masks. An AT&T ad like dozens of others is a for-profit celebration of frontline responders. There is ad after ad after ad of cozy indoor shots of parents teaching kids, people cooking, virtual happy hours, all of it.
And they aren’t even honest. A lot of families are at each other’s throats. What there should probably be is more Peloton divorce ads about couples who now hate each other, or some single guy sadly taping together used pizza boxes for the recycling.
It is honestly enough to make me long lovingly for the days “Mike Bloomberg for president” ads were more prevalent than grains of sand on the beach. Remember that? It was about 14 years ago, I think. But annoying as they were, those ads weren’t as cloying and Orwellian as the 30-second spots reinforcing lockdown orders while selling products.
We all know already about the shutdown. It’s not a public service to constantly remind us that we have barely left our houses for two months. One of the big reasons people watch TV is to escape this weird reality for a few hours, to settle into the world as it was, not as it is. But the next thing you know it’s back to hospital rooms and facemasks on the screen, stirring music swelling beneath. Just stop.
You know what I want from TV ads right now? I want pretty people with good, strong teeth pushing products that can dramatically improve my life. I want jokes, and celebrity cameos, contests and yelling. I want some affirmation that someday life will be back to normal, not constant reminders of the current drudgery.
A great danger in a long-term slow-motion crisis is that a narrative can start to set in across the culture. Increasingly. that is reinforcing a victim narrative. After all, there is little some Americans crave more than the mantle of victimhood. It is a message of powerlessness in which all we can do is heat up a can of baked beans and wait for the dictatorship of expertise to give us the all-clear.
Television ads play an outsized role in crafting that narrative. This is in part because TV viewership among Americans is so fragmented that we don’t watch the same news, or the same shows, but we do watch the same ads. It is one of the few forms of television that can still saturate society. Please saturate it with something other than shilling while putting on a coronavirus pageant.
There is a danger of wallowing. Yes, our lives have temporarily changed, but no, coronavirus need not be at the center of our every waking moment. In fact, if we let it be, we will all slowly go insane. So please, big companies and advertising companies, just cut us a break. Let us think about something else. I’ll buy it, whatever it is. I promise.
“Even before the virus, Subaru ads were among the worst, prattling on about how a Subaru is built with LOVE.”
Would you prefer they prattle on about how Subarus are built with weak head gaskets? ;)
Someone needs to start a thread giving TV shows and movies that have nothing to do with current issues.
Here are some that also aren’t full of bad language:
Midsummer Murders
Dr. Blake
Murder in Paradise
Hinterland
Broadchurch
Downton Abbey
Monk
Foyles War
Rockford File
The Crown (has a couple of dirty spots but it’s a Netflix production what do you expect)
The Five
I thought Subaru ads were all same sex things? I guess that’s old fashioned, now it’s about diseases?
Sadly it’s getting harder to find things to watch. For example, Netflix is going to more and more exclusive content that they make. And EVERY single show has a gay theme in the plot. Even a story about 1946 had to have some gay love scene thing happening... It’s so obnoxious.
That phrase triggers me.
F the “new normal,” people want NORMAL.
POTUS has also stated such.
Why, in the age of the DVR is ANYONE watching ads? I honestly don’t get it. I can’t remember the last time I sat through an ad unless it was one of those dogs in truck ads right at the beginning of the string.
Yep, I was looking forward to PBS' "World on Fire" about WWII, and there it was right in the first episode, the gay subplot. *Click*
I make a note of the company so I NEVER buy their products.
Yep
Agreed. I watch ZERO television, a little bit of Netflix. I don’t listen to radio or read the newspaper either. Waste of time, money, and it’s garbage/propaganda.
...and then fart in their general direction!
I agree. I have also seen some new ones saying make sure you fill out the 2020 Census because that will help fight the Virus.
I just started watching Ozark on netflix.
The FBI agents are gay.
figures...
Majority Of Americans Would Rather Risk COVID Death Than Endure Any More Skype Lectures From Celebrities!
Babylon Bee ^ | April 24, 2020 | Babylon Bee
Posted on 4/27/2020, 10:12:46 AM by gattaca
U.S.—A recent survey revealed that a majority of Americans are ready to get back to work. Even when asked if they realize that getting everybody back to work right now could increase deaths from COVID-19, most responded that they were willing to die if that’s what it took to end the nightly parade of self-important late show hosts scolding them all for needing money from the comfort of their fancy homes getting paid millions to shame-Skype America.
“It’s like when you accidentally FaceTime someone you really did not want to talk to. That’s what TV is like now,” said one participant in the survey who then begged for the COVID-19 virus to release him from another webcam Trevor Noah monologue.
Late show hosts are pushing for a longer quarantine period citing their preference to talk down to America on a laptop camera while wearing pajamas, not having to be around all the gross people who show up in live audiences and receiving the same sweet paycheck every week.
Yup, and it was over the top too. I quit watching the show after that. Besides, it wasn’t really all that good anyways, I’m in finance and much of the discussion there was very poorly fact checked.
#together
Every Covid-19 Commercial is Exactly the Same. See for yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM3J9jDoaTA
That soft, lilting piano music has been the standard for quite some time, whenever emotion needs to be wrung out of the audience.
Great video. The celebrities are only taking HRC campaign slogan from 2016
Hillary Clinton: We’re in this together.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/02/20/nevada-clinton-victory-speech.cnn
Poldark
Home Fires
After Life
Shetland
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