Mad Men
One thing that I missed while I was in Iraq was TV commercials. The magic of AFN, which allows Soldiers to catch half a Red Sox game in between missions, also allows them to enjoy television free of commercial advertising. Like PBS, though, the military finds its own ways to waste your time* while you’re waiting to find out what happens at the end of The Simpsons (SPOILER ALERT: everything goes back to normal). The military fills the ordinary commercial breaks in programming with its own spots, ranging from the predictable (Sexual Assault is WRONG!) to the quixotic (Spending Time Away From My Family is Something I’m Proud to do — Selfless Service: One Of The Seven Army Values!) to the freaking bizarre (Flying by the Seat of your Pants: Part of our Military Heritage!). Some of them seem to have been made for the sole purpose of filling airtime. It’s hard to think of any other possible justification for the interminable “50 States” series. (I was the first state to sign the Declaration of Independence! My state fruit is the tennis ball! What state am I — 12 second pause — DELAWARE and my capital is Wilmington.)
There’s something almost endearingly guileless about the propaganda commercials that you don’t see at all in corporate advertising. They would almost be menacing if they weren’t so unbelievably corny. Imagine the voice the telescreen would use to tell you that your chocolate ration has been increased to 35 grams a week, only it’s telling you to wear a bike helmet, reflective vest, knee and elbow pads, mouth guard and goggles when you ride your bike to the PX. Oh, and it was filmed in Italy 15 years ago. Having been exposed for 25 years to the full spectrum of Madison Avenue trickery, it was something of a shock to have the TV just straight up TELL me to do things.
As much as I was amused by cartoon pigeons with Brooklyn accents telling me the difference between a general and a special power of attorney, when I redeployed I had a renewed appreciation for the creative effort that goes into professional advertising. Imagine for a minute that I were to walk up to you on the street, show you a can of pomade, and tell you earnestly that if you put this goo in your hair, attractive women like this one here will have sex with you. You would look at me like I was out of my fucking mind before calling the police on me for harassment and/or pimping. Yet this is exactly what the Unilever Corporation tells millions of people every day, with apparent success. The chutzpah, the calculated disdain for the reasoning powers of the average person, the mind-blowing cynicism of a system that will focus some of the finest artistic minds in the world to convince people of that objectively ludicrous premise have always inspired a kind of awe in me.
It’s the same kind of awe that one feels when looking over an ancient, beautiful monument to some long-ignored belief system. It’s marvelous to contemplate the immense effort, creativity and craftsmanship that went into convincing people that Pharaoh Controls the Floods, Rodrigo Borgia is God’s Viceroy on Earth and King Louis is a Wise and Powerful Leader. Graffiti artist Banksy laments the fact that advertising has drawn skilled and creative people away from more meaningful pursuits and directed them towards crass, degrading or even harmful causes. But this is true of countless products of human creativity that only seem grand hundreds of years after the fact. It’s only our proximity to advertising that keeps us from appreciating it objectively, just as the Moses’ proximity to the pyramids probably kept him from truly appreciating their grandeur.
So, no, nothing you put in your hair will make women have sex with you, any more than Pharaoh made the Nile flood. But I hope we can all step back for a minute and admire the audacity and skill that it takes to convince millions of rubes otherwise.
* Some cynical hearts would say that the military has entirely mastered wasting your time. This is correct.