Ad I’ve noticed – #1
October 21, 2012
Before I start waging my war on the ads we’re seeing, I’d like to do a bit of research – with you. I’m going to quickly discuss ads I’m seeing now – airing across the country, into family homes – and then (hopefully) gain some insight from you – see if there’s a reoccurring pattern in what our media outlets are unveiling to us and what messages they’re circulating.
I’d like to use you as a gauge. I – like everyone else – am not immune to seeing things a little less-of-centre at times and willingly admit this. It is all about perspective, after all, and I am deeply curious to learn whether we’re on the same page about this issue, that is deeply concerning to me.
Before I start, I want to explain that I don’t have cable TV, just free-to-air. I don’t turn on the telly until the evening, but really (especially in this ‘down season’) – I don’t watch much. This isn’t to say that the TV is switched off. It’s generally left on, in case we stumble upon something engaging to watch.
This means that as I’m cooking or writing, I do, on occasion, notice the ads. Obviously, when we think about ads, we automatically think of product selling, but there are also the ads for the TV shows themselves…and it’s the content in these ads that are also of great concern.
I’ve written previously about how TV is dumbing us down and how – as a capitalist, obsessed society – we’re possibly heading down a path towards The Seven Deadly Sins.
Well…isn’t it possible? If the answer is, “Yes” then what do we need to do?
I think the ads we’re being exposed to (children and teens especially) – together with a WHOLE smorgasbord of other factors and contributors – are changing the neural pathways of our brains. Conditioning us. More urgently, conditioning the way our youth perceive reality.
Ad #1. TV show – Glee.
Now, I’m not a fan of this show – ever since it started to drip in the hyper-sexualised behaviour of the girls; on top of knowing that their main fan base are young girls. I wrote a post about another ad for Glee a while back (with the clip attached). They are not promoting healthy messages, which is a shame considering the reach they have.
The new season is apparently about to start and we are, of course, getting bombarded by the promotional tsunami that seems to come with the start of new television show seasons.
I wasn’t able to find the clip of the ad that’s being aired in Australia, so I’ll just describe the simple, yet dangerous, messages I think the ad is delivering to young girls and women.
Two things.
One: Kate Hudson plays a new character in the series as a dance instructor at what appears to be a high end place in New York (NY Ballet?), that the main girl Rachel now attends. Kate’s character appears fearless, bellowing how the majority of them are going to fail etc. etc.
She walks up to one of the new students and says:
“Hi. What’s your name? Muffin Top?” (when some fat sits over the top of your pants)
“No, my name is-”
“No. You’re name is Muffin Top. From now on it’s rice crackers and ipecac (a drink that makes you vomit). Cut off a butt-cheek. You have to lose a few pounds.”
And the girl is slim. Plus it really bothers me that it’s a fellow woman being so callous.
Message: If you look at that girl and they’re saying she’s fat (which she’s not) – what am I?
Subliminal message received. Neural pathways are now shifting, due to negative self thoughts about weight and self esteem. Check.
Many will argue that that’s the way it is in these sorts of high pressure dancing institutions and the show is representing realism. Oh, now they’re calling the realism card? That’s a tiny morsel of ‘realism’ compared the heightened misrepresentation that oozes from other issues within shows such as this.
Two: In the grand old tradition of building a female star (whether it be an actress or a singer) as an innocent, wide-eyed virginal type of girl – there comes the time when she must toss all that aside, along with its innocent followers and admirers, and become ‘nasty’.
Rachel now has to be taken ‘seriously’ and must shed her chaste appearance and prove she’s someone to be reckoned with. So we hear Rachel singing, not once but twice during the ad, the following line of the song she will perform on the show (once with a visual showing a tough and sexy Rachel):
“I’m not that innocent”
A line from a Britney Spears song. How apt – a fellow innocent-turned-nasty girl…along with Christina Aquilera, Miley Cyrus…and the list goes on.
Message: Noone will take me seriously unless I sexualise myself to gain attention.
Subliminal message received. Neural pathways are now shifting, due to negative thoughts about not looking sexy and hot enough to gain attention and recognition – the only way to get it. Check.
Why do they do this to one famous, female young star after another? To add to the fan base.
In the documentary, Missrepresentation, we were informed that the main people who watch TV are women…so it doesn’t matter what you show them, as it seems they lap up everything that’s presented to them – especially the younger ones.
However, the ones who watch the least TV, are males between the ages of 18-mid/late twenties? Something like that. So shows are predominantly motivated to getting their full attention – and how else can you get a young, hormone ridden boy/teen/male to watch your show?
Sexualise the girls.
So the bottom line is that they don’t care who watches, just as long as they are.
Anything for a buck, right?
Question #104: Do these examples set off alarm bells, no matter how small, as to what’s being subliminally taught?
Here is a lovely image of the actress who plays Rachel (Michele Lea), contributing her efforts to collecting that new fan base for the network and share holders, by posing for GQ magazine.
We have a long way to go, ladies. Can’t have a picture like this without the woman’s consent.
And consent they do.
Deep Breath.
x
Ally McBeal
August 26, 2012
I was driving home after having dinner with a good friend and decided to listen to my music, instead of the radio.
Even though my iPod has all my favourite songs on it – I sometimes feel like I’ve heard them a million times. But the only station I listen to, Triple J, was playing really thrashy, heavy metal with a-man-screaming-into-a-microphone type of song. No. Not for me.
It turned out to be a great decision because when I put my songs on ‘Shuffle’, my Ally McBeal song came on. Anyone driving next to me would have seen an entertaining sight.
E-hem.
Ally McWhat?
Well, to those of you who were born ‘recently’, this great series (1997-2002) was targeted at women my age – at the time I was in my late 20s.
This show was about Ally (played by Calista Flockhart), a lawyer in a firm, who was a success in her career, but who was now looking for love. Doesn’t sound like anything special, right?
Well, it resonated with a lot of women my age (at the time) because we all felt like Ally did…well, I can’t speak for all women – but I was thinking, “I hear ya!”
I remember being told at my all-girls high school, when I was about 16/17, that “we didn’t need a man” and that “we should go and get a career for ourselves.” Great advice, actually. It made us go out and find our place, make our mark and NOT be reliant on anybody but ourselves. Nothing worse than being a weak, ineffectual woman, having to be carried by a man…or anyone else, for that matter.
So this show gave us Ally. A woman who had done just us many women in that time were advised to do – but despite all her success, she felt a void – she wanted to find the love of her life.
This show was quirky too – it was a cack! Ally famously saw the dancing baby, they had unisex toilets that they sang and danced in at times, there was an obsession with Barry White, equally odd-bod characters – all whilst trying cases in their law firm.
In one episode, Ally is told by her psychologist (played by the wonderful and very funny, Tracey Ullman), to pick a theme song. She was to then listen to it, in her mind, at times of worry, distress, feeling down etc.
Ally picked the old classic, Tell Him – a song that could help her with her trials with love.
So the other night, my Ally McBeal song came on, Jamiroquai’s, Canned Heat. Oh, how this song speaks to me.
“Dance! Nothing left for me to do, but dance
Off these bad times I’m going through, just dance
Got canned heat in my heals tonight, baby.”
I love to dance – and do it in the kitchen with my girls when I can. At any party with good dance songs, I tend not to move far from ‘dance floor’.
Question #84: What’s your Ally McBeal song?
Below is a clip I found of the show…if you’re a youngin’. Enjoy!
Deep Breath and DANCE!
Woooo Hoooooo!
x
Just Sayin’ – #9
August 25, 2012
As much as the hype over The Shire seems to be abating (I’m not sure what their ratings are like at the moment), it seems ludicrous that the types of people who media feel we need to ‘follow’ are people like this:
Shire star charged over gay attack
When producers of TV shows like The Shire sink to the lowest sludge at the bottom of the bucket to create ‘entertainment’, I just wonder one thing:
Question #83: Who are the bigger fools? Those who create the show or those who watch it?
Why is a man who has urinated on another in a homophobic attack, given the platform and reverence (by some) that TV affords them?
WHY?
As always, though, we do have a choice as to whom we give our prized attention. Let The Shire sink into its own excrement.
…Just sayin’.
Deep Breath.
x
The Seven Deadly Sins.
August 5, 2012
Question #79: Is our media, and in turn reality, teaching our kids that the only way to ‘succeed’, is by feeding our Deadly Sins?
I look around and I feel surrounded – like I’m in the middle of an old-fashioned, cowboy-style ambush.
* Greed * Lust * Wrath * Sloth * Gluttony * Envy * Pride – transgressions that I read are ‘fatal to spiritual progress’.
They’re everywhere.
WHY?
Yes, they’ve always been around. Of course. The Deadly Sins weren’t written a few years ago in a boardroom – they’re ancient.
I’ve always seen them as a warning – that to indulge in them would lead to chaos. Hell on Earth.
I don’t think we’re quite there yet.
But…
There is one society that is yielding to them more than others…and it’s our capitalist one.
While the majority of the planet wallows in poverty/war/despair of some sort (due to their rulers participating in some Deadly tastes of their own) – we basically live in a luxury that’s unfathomable and unattainable to them.
You’d think we’d be satisfied, wouldn’t you? And yet…according to studies, we are the most affluent we’ve ever been in history – but the most depressed.
Doesn’t this ring any alarm bells?
Our predominant drive? To make money.
Am I saying we shouldn’t? Absolutely not! I could always do with a little more – couldn’t we all? It IS the world we live in – we need it to survive here.
But at what price?
Our society’s hunger for more of everything and the latest of that, is giving me the uneasy feeling that we are starting to flirt with danger.
Not including the majority of ‘have-nots’ equally inhabiting this planet – we are spoilt. And we are few, in comparison to the big picture.
Yet we consume at a pace that is starting to become insatiable and is being bred into this generation of children and young adults.
So as the ‘line to cross’ has to move further behind to get an ‘edge’ on consumption – how is it done today?
By tapping into the taboo, the naughty, the violent, the lazy, the greedy, the depraved…then market it and SELL!
So, yes, I’m starting to feel boxed in by our media and how it’s becoming the teat from which our society suckles – predominantly a pornographic one.
The frustrating part is that I know that there are many, many of you who can see how things are travelling down a soul-less path, as I do; who are doing the very best they can with their children and share my frustration…
…but we’re obviously not enough. We are in the minority.
I can only look at the evidence before my eyes:
1. What I’m seeing in my daily life through (predominantly, but not exclusive to) TV and its ads, Internet, Magazines etc. etc. etc.
2. The choices our youth are making through their behaviour and appearance. Choices that make me question: Where are their parents in this equation?
Today I saw something that chilled me: A book being sold by Amazon (but has since been removed) giving a world guide to sex laws called,
Age of Consent: A Sex Tourists’ Guide
It claims:
“In some countries it is even illegal to have sex outside of marriage, with severe consequences if you are caught doing so! On the flip side, there are many countries on this planet where the age of consent is as low as 12 or 13…whilst one country has no age limit whatsoever! Before travelling, whether you are going as a backpacker, for business purposes, or as a sex tourist, you need to invest in this comprehensive guide to the age of consent laws in every country in the world! It will keep your fun legal!…This $3.49 will keep you out of jail, possibly the most important few dollars that any red blooded testosterone pumped traveller will spend.”
This utterly sickens me – because what I keep questioning is how did something as disgusting as this get printed in the first place? HOW?
Money.
Now, I won’t bore you with a list of how consumption is dancing with the Seven Deadly Sins – but it feels like we’re going down a slippery slope and picking up speed.
There is too much evidence.
How do we slow down this beast/machine, that’s bearing down on us?
Simple. Don’t buy into it!
Those Sins are in all of us – we all feel them at one stage or another…I know I ceratinly have…
Question #80: So why are we allowing them to take over?
The images throughout the post, are of the Seven Deadly Sins from a 2008 ImageFX competition. They uniquely connected with me – I can easily see how these are very present in our lives. The curious thing, however, is that when I looked for images on the Net – they predominantly featured women only. Interesting.
Deep Breath.
x
Just look at this image…
July 20, 2012
Lily Munroe – a friend I have made through this blog (and has a like-minded blog herself: freedomfrompornculture) – found the following, A-MAZ-ING image, after reading my last post:
Question #76: Do you think this is what’s happening?
I do…
and I’m finding myself getting a little alarmed.
Deep Breath.
x
Don’t make them right!
July 20, 2012
In lieu of the recent discussion about ‘quality’ television, it made me question what we’re becoming as an audience.
The general response, by the people who defend shows like, The Shire or Jersey Shore etc. etc. etc. is, “It’s so bad, it’s good!” or “It’s just for a laugh!”
But when pushed for an articulate explanation as to what it is they ‘like’ about it or how it’s funny…there is only the sounds of crickets.
That’s because there is nothing they can say about the tripe they’re watching – in fact, some of them explain with an, “I dunno, it just is.”
Yet they’re popping up everywhere. Why? Because it’s what the creators and producers think we want.
Is it?
Well, the tragic part is that it does appear to be what the masses want. I’m sure there will be many people glued to their seats, watching the next gripping and exciting installment of their favourite show of ‘tacky and fickle’.
Are they in the majority?
We appear like a nation of dumb and mindless, when these sort of shows are afforded our attention…and they gain ratings.
Question #75: Is there no sense of pride – knowing that we appear so easy to dupe?
This INFURIATES me because thanks to this perception, a lot of us are being held to ransom, as the choices of what to watch – for entertainment – are so limited.
Worse still, people are making money off it. Your attention = money.
We need to be more frugal with who gets our attention because at the moment, it appears that when a ‘carrot’ with big boobs is dangled – we follow – like children behind the Pied Piper.
Or we say nothing.
A few years ago, when I was on an excursion with students, I noticed that there was a new energy drink in the shops, called Pussy.
I talked to the students in my year group about seeing this drink. I told them of how I imagined the guy who thought it up – thinking about how he would get rich – he himself imagining guys saying to each other, “I’m going to drink some Pussy!” *HawHawHaw/SnortSnort*
I said to them, “Don’t make him right! Do not give him a cent!”
I urge you to think the same way about what’s being dished out and sold to us as being ‘popular’. Step back and take a look at the core of what’s being sold.
In these sorts of shows, the message that keeps hammering us over the head – on BIG screen TVs across the country – is that young women are not worth our attention, if they don’t have a certain type of vanity attached to their behaviour. This can manifest itself in a spectrum of ways – through clothes, make-up, plastic surgery, conversations, ACTIONS! – and the guys?…well, I didn’t see much about them in the first episode of The Shire – it mainly focused on those girls – and I don’t intend to watch anymore to find out either. My brain cells are still recovering from the first encounter.
So, what sort of audience member are you?
Don’t you want – DESERVE – something better?
Deep Breath
x
Just sayin’ – #3
May 20, 2012
I was watching the horror space movie Event Horizon last night and noticed that they’d cut out a lot of the more really scary visual images – the Hellraiser type ones. I thought, “Fair enough”…it was on the TV and the movie did start at 8.30pm.
Last year, however, when I was flicking through channels, I stumbled on something quite different. The Aussie TV series Underbelly Razor (set in the roaring 1920s and based on real events) was on and the scene was in a bar, where two women – being looked on by a crowd – were having a very heated verbal argument.
One of the women challenged the other to fight and she agreed. At this point both women took of their tops and completely bare-breasted, started to fight each other.
I kid you not.
That was also on at 8.30. Pity there’s no thought of cutting out scenes like that.
…Just sayin’.
Deep Breath.
x
PS It’s been a crazy week. Exhausted – but all good. Next post is coming soon.
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