( 3:41 PM )
Thursday, April 22. Late Afternoon. Music Currently Playing: Skerik's Syncopated Taint Septet
Just read Dustin's Modest Mouse Review, and his mention of the newest Nissan commerical using Modest Mouse got me pondering in general about the use of music to peddle goods. This is not a new subject to 2walls - I seem to recall Mike ranting at some point about how despicable it is to have Led Zepplin songs played in car commericials.
I would tend to feel a similar disgust. Commericals are... well, commericial. I guess you could say I am suspicious of them. This suspicion derrives from an awareness that the primary purpose of advertising has changed. I think originally advertising existed as a way to notify consumers of your product, and to a greater extent, show them what differentiates your product from your competitors. In that way, a commericial is the natural expression of a business in a democratic and capitalist context. And yet, commercials have become much, much more. They now appeal to our emotions in strange ways. They use abstract imagery, music, visions of beauty and sexuality, visions of adventure, visions of humor and comedy, and appeal to us on a much deeper level than merely the logical, reasoning place where we would assume our decisions are being made.
Maybe this is the result of having too many choices. Do we need thirty-five different ways to wipe our asses? When I stand in the aisle at the grocery store, even a hip, semi-organic grocery store like Trader Joe's, I face such a tremendous selection between products as basic as toilet paper that a mini-existential crisis occurs. What kind of toilet paper defines me as a person? This question is actually more important than it may originally seem. I think that this is the exact type of decision a consumer ultimately makes when faced with the prospect of spending money - indeed, this is actually a conscious factor when it comes to things like buying cars and houses - what will make me happy? is what we ask ourselves, and we settle for a compromise between value (cost, gas mileage, reliability) and enjoying ourselves.
If enjoyment, identity definition, or some other abstract factor is the thing that helps us determine which product to select, how does it come into play during the decision process? I can't speak for others, and I don't have qany research to cite. What I can do is share with you my personal experience. The basis for my purchasing decisions come down to two things - price, and product recognition. I will generally, when selecting products like this, chose whichever product is cheapest, and my problem is solved. But if more than one of the same product has the exact low price, I end up needing to make another decision. What makes Happy Flower Suprise brand toilet paper so much better that Flowery Suprise of Happiness brand toilet paper? I look to the packaging. Let's see HFStp promises a cushiony soft experience because of its extra layering. My anus approves of cushiony soft. On the other hand FSoHtp offers dual ply, which insures the soft fluffy feel. Again, my anus says "Soft, and fluffy!"
You can see my dilemna. Other than the fact that I am hallucinating a helium squeeky voice for my heiny, I still have not been able to make a toilet paper purchasing decision. At this point, my wife is calling for me to help her lift the 645 pound bag of Guapo Gato's New and Improved Hairball Reducing Catstravaganza Feline Food. And my son is trying to convince me that it is indeed in my best interest to purchase him a squirt gun (depsite the fact that I have said "No" fourteen times allready) and that I too could use it for such hilarious antics as squirting the cats, the mommy, the mommy holding the cats, or even the dangerously slippery kitchen floor, and damnit!-I need to decide which fricking package of TP I'm going to spend the next two weeks getting intimate with. So I let my gut decide. And my gut is probably deciding based on that gut experience it has had watching commericals.
So commericals become ways to manipulate not merely my mind, but my gut. I find this appalling and strange, and somewhat embarassing - that I still have that animal mind in me, and it's that animal mind, that Freudian "ID," that gut feeling that is responsible for making some of my decisions. Our culture, our society doesn't like to admit we have that animal mind. Indeed we are appalled continuously by examples of others in the news excercising their various unrestrained desires, leading to violence, stupidity, harm. Consider the puritanical response to a little bit of Janet Jackson nipple. But as much as we try to knit together the illusion of our civility, it seems like on the other end, things like advertising, the commercialism of MTV, etc, is unraveling it from the other side....
Just thoughts. Some impulse in me tells me I should just embrace that animal mind, accept it for what it is, realize that I cannot rid myself of it, and that as a natural force within me, being in synch with it may lead to far greater success, as a human being, than fighting against it and repressing it... Why does this possibility still seem so frightening?
Reading Heart of Darkness with my students right now, and that may be why. Kurtz, the monster, turning the severed heads inward toward him because he needs an audience, because he has so fully embraced the inner animal that there is very little man left. That his lack of restraint lead to violence, madness, and death. That, I think, is the reason to struggle against that inner animal. Because the lack of restraint, the lack of civility is the thing that leads to an early, untimely end...
Whoa, way too philosophical for a blog.
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