I didn't watch TV for about 20 years. I didn't think I was missing all that much. In the last 18 months or so, I've become a TV fan again. We don't have anything flash like a Tivo or a DVR, so that means that we're watching all the TV. We get to watch the shows we like AND the commercials. We've got a thing for House, but other than that most of what we watch comes on the Food Network.
What we see on The Food Network are many food commercials. I've come to categorize them in two broad categories. First, there are the "food is dangerous and it must be resisted" commercials. Think here of all of the diet food commercials. They are the ones that try to push non-food low-cal fat-free alternatives on us. Then, there are the crazy "just indulge yourself" commercials. My least favorite one in this genre shows an Oreo truck driving through a city. It is chased by zillions of Oreo-crazed women, who finally overpower the truck, pull boxes of Oreos off the truck, and start bingeing on the oreos in the street.
Very few food commercials (though I'll admit, I've not taken the scientific method here) seem to be simply about food. Food is either something to be treated with suspicion or something to be consumed in immoderation. It's no wonder we've got a national weight problem.
2 comments:
Nearly all advertising is like this. Branch out from food commercials and look at cars. You drive insanely ("closed course with professional driver"), or the cars get smashed to show you how safe they are.
Fran, am I hopelessly uncool if I admit that we don't even have our TV hooked up to rabbit ears at the moment? We get our TV via DVDs and Hulu.
I haven't seen a single huskies game live, I think that Kings is a book of the Bible, and I'm not sure why the housewives are so desperate.
I'm a classic modern day loser... ;) Save yourself.
But you avoid the commercials if you do DVDs...
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