I really hate television commercials.
That’s just one of the reasons I don’t watch much TV. Unfortunately, every now and then I’ll be watching a movie and one of those beasts will interrupt my viewing. Here are a few for which I hold particular disdain:
Another is for some kind of automobile cleaning product. The tagline says it all:
“Restore your car, restore your pride.”
Wow. Maybe that’s the guy with the bathroom cleaning job.
It was a year or so ago but, in one BMW commercial, a purchaser of a used BMW declares the day of his purchase to be the “best day of my life.” His wife and child stand by in amazement. So do I. What odds do you give that marriage? That kid? There’s a reason the old joke comparing BMW’s and porcupines is so funny.
I learn a lot from watching commercials, though. For instance, if a classic movie shot appears in a commercial, it has officially left the realm of tired cliche and entered the Vapid Zone. It should never be touched again. Example: Some superhero or wannabe falls into a three point crouch, usually shattering the ground beneath. It was cool in “The Matrix”, still mildly fun in “Iron Man”, but commercials have been using it for a while now. Yet movies still lean on that hack. Retire the insipidity.
Here’s another lesson I learned: Remember Veruca Salt in the “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” movie? The diminutive actress who portrayed her performed one of the great musical numbers in film history: “I Want It Now”. In case it wasn’t obvious enough from the Oompa Loompa’s song (“Who is to blame when a child is a brat?”), she was a bad girl. She was selfish. The lesson was to not be like her.
So when did “I Want It Now” become a good thing? No less than two commercials – for beer and a cell service, there could be many more; I don’t get a very wide sampling – use the chant as exemplary. Yes, American marketing tells us, we should all strive to be little Verucas, sulking and screaming and throwing tantrums if we don’t get what we want NOW.
Encouraging lesson: My era’s music still rules the airwaves. As much as I hate to have my musical heroes sell out, it’s great to hear their tunes in surprising places, such as commercials for Lay’s (Bread), Stop & Shop (Three Dog Night), video games (The Turtles), as well as many others. Either those groups are timeless or all these commercials are made by geezers like me. I’m guessing the former.
Finally, it occurs to me that advertisers are consistently telling us that their customers, both current and prospective, are jerks with warped priorities, q.v. aforementioned Beemer drivel. Think about it next time you’re viewing advertising. It’s always wise to watch commercials with a discerning mind. One good practice is to think critically and ask yourself: “Do I wanna be lumped in with those creeps?”
I vote “no”.
Spewing chunks
Speaking of uncomfortable content, which you might recall I was in my last post, what’s the deal with all the puke in movies recently? I thought it was just me. It seemed as if every movie I watched had someone barfing up their innards. Like the F-bomb issue, it was unrelated to genre or (lack of) consumer demand.
Then I saw an online discussion of the phenomenon. Others had noticed it, too. I was relieved. But only a little.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with occasionally spewing a few chunks on screen, especially if it fits. Pregnant women often throw up in early stages of pregnancy. A stomach bug is bound to bring back breakfast and a few snacks.
But every movie?? If anyone is even slightly off-center about something, here come the chunks. Confused? Dizzy? Angry? Depressed? That’s all it takes to lose lunch these days. In the aforementioned discussion, someone made the claim that every movie nominated for a Best Picture Oscar this year had a puke scene. I can’t verify that because I haven’t seen them all, but every one I saw towed the retch line.
This isn’t reality because people don’t puke that often. It isn’t commercially necessary because nobody goes to the movies saying, “Man, I hope someone hurls in this one!” It’s not edgy because it’s mainstream.
So why all the regurgitation? There can be only one reason and it’s the same reason young kids take up smoking, swearing, and stealing: Everybody’s doing it. You’d think artistes would want to rise above the morass of the mundane and stick it to the status quo.
You’d be wrong.
They’re lemmings just like the rest of us. Monkey see, monkey puke.
I can deal with this. I just ignore it, since it doesn’t add anything to the story. What worries me is what’s next. What about when it becomes cool to show people with diarrhea? That episode was in a major movie last year. And the dumper was nominated for an acting award. Could the Hershey Squirts be the next offensive trend? Unlikely because the movie was a flop, but you never know.
Nose-picking is a likely candidate. Starts innocently enough but before you know it, they’re drawing blood as they strip mine for nose gold. Great visual. Hawking loogies, fingernail (and toenail!) biting, squeezing zits. There’s a deep well of unsociable behavior to draw from.
All this talk has made me sick to my stomach. I gotta…
I thought this was a new trend. Sadly, this guy noticed it eight years ago. It must be getting that much worse.
Defusing the bombs
Someone wiser than me (that’s covers pretty much everyone) once observed that no one ever left a movie theater saying, “Yeah, it was a good movie. I just wish there had been more swearing.” Plenty of audience members yearn for more violence or lurid sexual content, but swearing is not really in that great demand.
I guess the market is saturated.
This topic came to mind recently when I read an online discussion among screenwriters wondering whether the whole F-bomb thing had gotten out of hand. The discussion was initiated by someone who questioned whether movies rely too much on that popular profanity to convince viewers of the film’s edginess.
Funny thing about that. F-bombs have been defused merely by their ubiquity. They aren’t spoken only by nasty thugs in edgy movies or shady characters in bleak noir films. They’re in goofy comedies, historical epics, and science fiction. They’re in everything! We’ve been carpet F-bombed. As a result, the very effect they supposedly serve is gone. It’s just another cliché. A cliché no one questions.
Let’s think about it. If a character in a movie said any other word as often as Robert De Niro or Chris Rock use The Big One in an average movie, no one would take them seriously. The argument is that this is the way people talk. Which people? I don’t know them, and I’ve been in some pretty rough environments. In my experience, the number of times a person uses that word is inversely proportional to the IQ of the speaker.
Besides, film characters aren’t written to speak the way people really speak. The “um”s, “uh”s, and “er”s are generally banished because they’re boring, just as excessive swearing has become boring. Suppose, for example, a character said the word “like” as often as many people do today, say, like this. That dialog would be unlistenable. It would never pass development muster.
So we’re on our way to completely declawing another obscenity. We’ve seen it before. When I was growing up, there were still older people who remembered where the word “screw” came from. If we innocent children referred to something as “screwed up”, we were shushed or, if we were unlucky, went on a soap diet. We had no idea why. Today no one bats an eyelash at screw, which means essentially the same thing as… well, you know.
For better or worse, our culture is in the midst of the dilution of another cuss word: suck. No one said this when I was young. It was a “swear word”. Like the other no-say-ems, it referred to a sexual act. Now it means… well, it means nothing. And everyone says it with impunity, from children to parents to ministers to teachers. It’s just another word.
Crap, heck, darn, shoot, screw. The euphemism backlog is growing as the “real” swears fade into impotence. I’m not sure if all this is good news or bad. Are we lowering the standards of the language or are we gradually removing the words that hurt?
I don’t friggin’ know.
Addendum: OK, just so you know it’s not only narrow-minded bloggers like me who think this way, here’s a quote from a recent newsletter from Richard Walter, chairman of the UCLA screenwriting program:
“The downside to writers having the freedom to write whatever they want is that it allows us also to write as badly as we want. The relentless exploitation of vulgarity is supposed to foster a sense of authenticity. In fact, however, it usually achieves precisely the opposite: heavy-handedness, thudding self consciousness, and a tone that is overbearingly shrill.”
To which I say, “Amen, Professor Walter.”
Scribbling in the Sand 