by Peter Berryman
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So, did you watch Ralphie in A Christmas Story again this year? You know that part where he is crushed because his new Little Orphan Annie decoder ring translates the secret message as "Drink Your Ovaltine"? Had that scene taken place today, a contemporary Ralphie wouldn't have been disappointed. At least that's what Kurt Andersen suggests in an interesting piece called "Universal Advertising Acceptance" in the New York Times Magazine's recent "Year In Ideas" issue.*
Andersen's point is that suddenly "hybrids of advertising and entertainment" have become totally acceptable, and that the idea of what he calls "cultural purity" has become extinct. The advertising industry is well aware that people generally don't like commercials, so it has begun thinking of its spots as little entertainment videos instead of ads. And as he points out, often these bits are more entertaining than the shows they interrupt.
In addition, he also talks about product placement, which has been a fixture for years in Hollywood, now appearing in such formerly commercial free works as novels, where authors are paid to put a product in their story; in software games whose creators McDonald's has paid for McMention in their various virtual worlds; and even on Broadway, where a recent production of La Boheme actually exhibited paid billboards on stage, somewhat appropriately worked into the set design. So not only have ads become more like art, art has become infused with ads.
Have a look at a hip magazine like Wired, and if you're an old coot like me, you can go for pages without being able to tell whether you are looking at an article or an advertisement. Not only that, most of the articles are about things to buy anyway, making you wonder if product placement is the rule in those rare non-commercial column inches.
So, have they fooled us again? Have they cast commercialism and art into some sneaky mortar and pestled them up together while we were sleeping? I do think that corporate America can have vast, sudden, subliminal impacts on daily life, and can't even remember how I was coerced along with the rest of the nation to clear my own table at fast food joints. Suddenly not only girl scouts and soap salesmen trotted their litter to the bins, but otherwise unreconstructed scofflaws and iconoclasts like survivalists and punk rockers tidied up right beside them. Weird. How did they DO it? Must have been a secret project by the Ward and June Cleaver Division of the Military Industrial Complex.
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So maybe they've pulled another fast one, and made advertisement-acceptance as much an urge as bussing our own tables. How bizarre that Garrison Keillor, who has the luxury of a commercial-free program every week, finds that it works to DREAM UP pretend sponsors (like Powdermilk Biscuits) to make his show more entertaining! How interesting that members of one modern subculture disdainful of social conformity -- bikers -- are so much more ready than other, more traditional and supposedly conformist groups, to wear a corporate logo on their clothing (Harley Davidson). How fascinating that a big symbol of 20th century art is a painting of a Campbell's Soup can.
So it seems that cultural purity may not be desirable these days even when it is available. Bikers could wear whatever they want on their jackets; Garrison could go a whole career without one commercial; Warhol could have chosen to paint anything in the whole universe.
Besides, in my lifetime and for quite a bit before it, I'm not sure how pure many of the arts have been in this country anyway. Medicine shows, from what I understand, were an amalgamation of selling and entertainment way back in the 1800s. Radio shows often had a sponsor's product worked into the dialog somehow, and radio and many TV shows had a product right up there in the title, like the Dinah Shore Chevy Show. I remember a segment of I've Got A Secret, with Garry Moore, in which a lineup of six contestants trudged out onto the set. The sponsor of the show was Winston cigarettes. The idea of this show was that the panelists, through a brief series of questions, were to guess the secret held by the contestant(s). On this particular episode, the secret was that the names of the contestants almost created the slogan of the cigarette. If I remember, the contestants were Mr. Winston, Mr. Tastes, Mr. Good, Miss Lika, Mr. C. Garrette, and because they couldn't find anyone named "Should," a Mr. Schultz. Winston Tastes Good Lika C. Garrette Schultz.
I used to have an old Popular Science magazine with a cigarette ad consisting of a full page picture of Caruso puffing away on a Camel.
In the 60s, the musicians of the counterculture were less likely to do such a thing, which would have been considered "selling out;" the idea being that an artist should try to keep their art uncorrupted by the crass temptations of rewards for testimonials. Can you imagine John Lennon or Janice Joplin posing for such an ad in the 60s?
But a while ago I overheard two teenage girls talking about a band. One was saying that the band was passe and going downhill. The other girl said something like, "Oh no, you're wrong, I just saw them in a Nike ad." This is the exact reverse image of a conversation that would have taken place in the 60s.
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With this new acceptance of artistic impurity, I have often wondered if, with private pirating of recordings so easy these days and corporate America losing its share of the musical pie along with pop musicians, product placement won't begin to show up in song lyrics. Will Coke and Nike start slipping rappers a million dollars to put their product in a verse or two here and there? Have they done so already? I wouldn't be surprised! Would I write a Pepsi line into a song of ours for a million dollars? Well, fortunately, the closest we've come to having to make that decision was one goofy night back in the seventies at the Club de Wash, when Bobby Hines, jumprope king, jumped up on stage and offered to give us twenty dollars every time we said "Lifeline Jumprope" into the microphone. We declined, but for another $999,980, who knows?
This month's column has been brought to you by Feedbag Cookies. --WZ #63
*New York Times Magazine, December 15, 2002, p. 132.