Eternal Sunshine of an Ignorant Mind
Monday, January 31, 2011
Look ma, an Ad! Or The absolutely awesome & educative nature of advertisements
In one of the great novels of the 20th century, Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace put in one simple line the supposed aim of all advertisements: “Create an anxiety relievable by purchase.”
It is a ridiculous idea that advertisements are meant to entertain and make you feel good about yourself. Their intent is to make you feel horrible about your current financial, social and sexual condition. A great ad has 15 seconds to make you question your insurance plan, your child’s intellect and/or the hardness of your erections. It is supposed to make you feel queasy. You are supposed to enter immediate and complete depression, with the only two possible solutions being purchasing the product or suicide.
Every attractive man/woman/baby mocks at yours, your partner’s and your child’s relative hideous unattractiveness. You are meant to look down at the cold, yellow, syrupy thing on your plate and compare it with the orgasmic food on the plates of the beautiful people on TV and this is supposed to make you sick to the core. You are expected to make an instant connection between your wife getting fat post childbirth and the brand of talcum powder she uses. The pathetic quality and quantity of sex you have must have a correlation with the colour of the fuel that drives your (amazingly ordinary) vehicle.
If you think AIDS is the worst possible disease then you are wrong. It is cancer. Or polio. Or cholesterol. Maybe even AIDS. You can’t be sure. Ads ensure that you are unsure as to what the most deserving cause is. Oh now you will say that they are all equally deserving! Are they? Do all facial creams have the same concentration of olive oil? No. So fuck you.
The always brilliant (but quite an asshole) Norman Mailer has-to his credit- a beautiful sentence, “Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.” An advertisement is meant to make you acknowledge the fact that you are retreating into less, dying a little bit and the only way you can move on to the other option is by making the right purchase. You can end the innuendo by asking the advertising agency and Mailer to go to hell, but for that you need to live a perfect life. But you don’t. Your kid gets average grades and gets beaten up at school. You eat some lentil shit every night and you wife can balance a coin on her tummy but not on her breasts. You cannot ignore advertisements. They are meant for losers like you. So fuck you.
After wrestling with such philosophical thoughts, you drive down to the nearest store to buy yourself a life. You use it and everything becomes beautiful. You become happy. The next time you watch that ad which forced upon you the purchase, you can feel good about yourself. You belong to the same group as the beautiful family on TV. You and that guy on TV get to go have drinks together. Your wife can take beauty tips from his gorgeous and tight wife. Your kids can play with their kids and they can win science competitions together. You belong to them and they to you. All their attributes now belong to you. All your shortcomings are shared by them. You are part of a larger, prettier and more intelligent and successful group.
And why not? After all, you drink the same brand of orange juice.
It is a ridiculous idea that advertisements are meant to entertain and make you feel good about yourself. Their intent is to make you feel horrible about your current financial, social and sexual condition. A great ad has 15 seconds to make you question your insurance plan, your child’s intellect and/or the hardness of your erections. It is supposed to make you feel queasy. You are supposed to enter immediate and complete depression, with the only two possible solutions being purchasing the product or suicide.
Every attractive man/woman/baby mocks at yours, your partner’s and your child’s relative hideous unattractiveness. You are meant to look down at the cold, yellow, syrupy thing on your plate and compare it with the orgasmic food on the plates of the beautiful people on TV and this is supposed to make you sick to the core. You are expected to make an instant connection between your wife getting fat post childbirth and the brand of talcum powder she uses. The pathetic quality and quantity of sex you have must have a correlation with the colour of the fuel that drives your (amazingly ordinary) vehicle.
If you think AIDS is the worst possible disease then you are wrong. It is cancer. Or polio. Or cholesterol. Maybe even AIDS. You can’t be sure. Ads ensure that you are unsure as to what the most deserving cause is. Oh now you will say that they are all equally deserving! Are they? Do all facial creams have the same concentration of olive oil? No. So fuck you.
The always brilliant (but quite an asshole) Norman Mailer has-to his credit- a beautiful sentence, “Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.” An advertisement is meant to make you acknowledge the fact that you are retreating into less, dying a little bit and the only way you can move on to the other option is by making the right purchase. You can end the innuendo by asking the advertising agency and Mailer to go to hell, but for that you need to live a perfect life. But you don’t. Your kid gets average grades and gets beaten up at school. You eat some lentil shit every night and you wife can balance a coin on her tummy but not on her breasts. You cannot ignore advertisements. They are meant for losers like you. So fuck you.
After wrestling with such philosophical thoughts, you drive down to the nearest store to buy yourself a life. You use it and everything becomes beautiful. You become happy. The next time you watch that ad which forced upon you the purchase, you can feel good about yourself. You belong to the same group as the beautiful family on TV. You and that guy on TV get to go have drinks together. Your wife can take beauty tips from his gorgeous and tight wife. Your kids can play with their kids and they can win science competitions together. You belong to them and they to you. All their attributes now belong to you. All your shortcomings are shared by them. You are part of a larger, prettier and more intelligent and successful group.
And why not? After all, you drink the same brand of orange juice.
6 Comments:
there can't be any thing better for the theme.....
BTW I wud like the post to be extended to some macro phenomena like "shining India" and other ads promising a better country or "world" not just a better individual. I share the view but incapable of words.
cheers
Absolutely brilliant!!!!!
(Am kinda tired of saying tht.......:))
what Aman said..
And thanks a lot :)
someday I wish to have such words and ideas to flow in harmony in my writings too :)
2 months!!!!! You should post more often!!
Amazing post :)
ROFL!!!
really nice post man !
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