Tag: commercials

Is diversity “pandering”?

Kareem re: The Bachelor

I was talking to a White friend of mine recently. During the conversation, they said that all those television advertisements showing diverse people, folks of many colors and sizes, and abilities, are “pandering.” This took me aback.

Maybe it’s because I’ve written about this at least twice. Here’s the second piece, because the comments to the first piece (which I linked to in that second post) were so filled with racist vitriol that it was exhausting.

The less vulgar responses were like what “Bruce” wrote: “My count of Blacks in commercials exceeds 33%… But blacks make up 14% of the population and only 10% of total consumption (commercials, after all, are all about stimulating consumption)…

“So explain that huge discrepancy. I surely don’t mind seeing diversity in TV ads. But they should reflect fairness relative to these respective groups’ overall economic impact. Otherwise, it’s just PC gone haywire.” As I noted, I grew up when there were NO people of color in TV ads and damn few on the programs.

It finally occurred to me that I was stating the premise incorrectly. Advertisements have always been aspirational. I can see myself in that new model T Ford. My new Frigidaire will keep my food fresher.

Frankly, I don’t watch many television ads, as I fast forward a lot through recorded programs. The shows I watch tend to be news programs. But even speeding through them, I can tell many, if not most, of the programs I watch, are for prescription drugs.

Let me be clear that I despise these direct-to-the-consumer Rx ads, which seem to run only in the US and New Zealand. Their goal is to remind Black women they can also have clearer skin. Hispanic men no longer have to suffer the embarrassment of ED.

These ads show diversity, not because they are “woke” or pandering but because they want to sell stuff – sometimes things you don’t need – to as many people as possible.

As author Walter Mosley speaks to CBS News about how much more buzz his new book, Every Man a King, is getting than any of his others, he notes it’s because of capitalism.  

The Bachelor

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who incidentally appears in an ad about AFib, though not tied to a particular product, recently wrote about diversity in television. His example was The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, et al. I’ve never watched a single episode.

He asks a “simple question:  Do reality shows (or TV shows and movies in general) have a responsibility to be aspirational as well as reflecting ‘reality’? By that, I mean, should a reality franchise with a vast audience and influence on popular culture merely reflect systemic racism, or should it aim higher in creating the kind of diverse world that we aspire toward?

“When you reflect systemic racism by not including a more ethnically diverse cast, then you are perpetuating that racism. For money.” He explains it well.

AAEEO

Another friend noted, “I’ve seen some media coverage of the Oscars. The whole thing seems like a study in overcompensation, as if ‘the academy’ feels guilty and hopes throwing everything at a single film can make up for decades of ‘in-crowd’ awards.”

The reference, of course, is to Everything Everywhere All At Once, a movie I  extolled. It may be my favorite film of this century. (My friend hasn’t seen it for what I know to be good reasons unrelated to the ethnicity of the actors.)

My take: EEAAO was a film that would not have been made a few years ago,  but it can now be with an Asian co-writer/co-director/co-producer. And that should be celebrated. I’m REALLY happy that I saw it at the cinema.

And it’s not just Asians being honored. Of the four acting winners, Michelle Yeoh is 60, Jamie Lee Curtis is 64, Ke Huy Quan is 51, and Brendan Fraser (The Whale) is 54. The guys had both been lost in the Hollywood wilderness.

I understand that “diversity” is a bugaboo for many people. On a recent episode of the TV drama The Good Doctor, the black female third-year resident didn’t want to be on a video chat talking to would-be doctors that “looked like her.” It was a burden, which I totally got. Mild spoiler: she gave the talk at the end and realized how powerful the experience was.
Race
Another friend asked me in a public setting recently whether we should stop counting race in the US Census since race, as we all know, is a social construct. I said yes, which was disappointing to that person. They were sad that Barack Obama had not checked the White AND Black boxes on the 2010 Census.
I opined at the time that the race question might disappear when the number of people selecting multiple race boxes increased enough to make the numbers meaningless.
In retrospect, I don’t believe it’ll go away until America becomes more willing to discuss the consequences of racism. Since the distinctions will be based on historic racial characteristics, they will remain relevant for… I don’t know how long.

TV: commercials, debates, Watergate

Butterfield was asked “Are you aware of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the White House?”

viagra-football-large-2During the first two rounds of the baseball playoffs this season, the networks seemed to have run the same 17 commercials over and over and over again. One was this ad for Viagra, featuring a white woman in a football uniform top. I thought it was an interesting choice to run that ad into the ground, rather than to alternate it with one of the recent ads featuring a black woman (Date Night) or an Asian woman, actress Kelly Hu, both of whom were wearing dresses. There’s some sociological observation to be made here too, I suppose.

Two other overplayed ads were for these fantasy sports sites. I tend to root for teams, not individual players, so this interests me not all. Still, there is a question about insider trading, whether someone working at one company can pick up enough info about the popularity of a player to have an advantage playing at another major site.

During the third Republican debate in late October, when a debate moderator asked one of his rivals about whether the federal government should regulate fantasy football the same as gambling, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey interrupted: “Are we really talking about getting the government involved in fantasy football? Wait a second, we have $19 trillion in debt, we have people out of work, we have ISIS and al-Qaeda attacking us and we’re talking about fantasy football? Can we stop?”

OK, so it wasn’t the most important question on the American landscape. But it was topical, it played to what I think as Americans’ perception of “fairness,” and I thought Christie’s disparaging remarks, about a question not even addressed to him, was mostly to bash the moderators.

Speaking of the debates, the New Yorker has humorously suggested that Republican National Committee and the television networks have agreed that “future Presidential debates during the 2016 campaign will strictly forbid questions about things the candidates ‘said’ or ‘did’.” Even when questions are not as robust as they might be, the responses can be interesting.

That said, the idea of having opening and closing statements makes sense to me. Currently, there is a disparity in the amount of time the ten candidates on stage receive over the two or three hours, and this would somewhat mitigate that.

Speaking of Republicans, I saw Nixon aide Alexander Butterfield on CBS News. When he left the White House, he took 20 boxes files with him, including some documents classified as “Top Secret.” Recently, he turned them over to Bob Woodward who, along with Carl Bernstein, broke the Watergate story for the Washington Post.
fred thompson
During the Watergate hearings, Butterfield was asked “Are you aware of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the White House?”
Butterfield: “I was aware of listening devices, yes, sir.” The man asking the question was lawyer Fred Dalton Thompson, who believed, incorrectly, that any tapes would vindicate the President.

Thompson would go on to act in several movies and television shows, including several iterations of Law & Order. He was also a US Senator from Tennessee for about a decade and ran for President in 2007 and early 2008. He died this week at the age of 73.

Some controversy over the segment of 60 Minutes called Heroin in the Heartland, which a writer suggests was just a Cliff Notes version. Weirder for me: there was NO sound on that piece when I played it back on the DVR, or watched it live, but all the other segments were fine.

I see this LA Times headline: Bill Cosby can be deposed in Janice Dickinson’s defamation suit, judge rules. I swear I read the headline, “Bill Cosby can be deported.”

A long Super Bowl Sunday, Philip Seymour Hoffman edition

Interesting that the first comment I got about Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death was “If it is true, it’s sad.”

philipseymourhoffmanMy church belongs to this entity called FOCUS, which, among other things, runs a food pantry. Periodically, there is a joint service of the congregations. Usually, I miss the one in early February, because I’m away at a MidWinter’s party Saturday night out of town. But the Wife had an all-day meeting on Saturday, and that rather put the kibosh on that. It was a good service, but it was LONG: at least 100 minutes.

Then the reception afterward. The service was at Trinity United Methodist, my church from 1982 to 2000, so it was interesting being there again. I could tell the visitors where the bathrooms were – they hadn’t moved. I recognized no one from when I was in the choir there.

The Daughter had a rehearsal all afternoon at our church for the Lion King performance in four weeks. I slipped off to the library to use the computer, where I saw fellow Times Union blogger Chuck Miller working on this piece.

It was there that I first learned on Facebook that the actor, and former upstate (Rochester area) kid, Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead, news which I passed along. It is interesting that the first comment I got was “If it is true, it’s sad.” So much misinformation IS online, but I had checked four sources before passing it along.

I have seen LOTS of his films. I didn’t always love the movie, but always appreciate his efforts, and I was bummed. I thought he was one of the best actors of his generation, and at the age of 46, should have had a number of better pictures ahead. I so regret that his demons had gotten the best of him. The LA Times helpfully noted that he was found dead in his apartment with a needle in his arm.

I saw him in all of these movies:
Leap of Faith (1992)
Scent of a Woman (1992)
Nobody’s Fool (1994) – a small role as a cop
Boogie Nights (1997)
Next Stop Wonderland (1998)
Patch Adams (1998)
The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
State and Main (2000)
Almost Famous (2000) – I bought him as Lester Bangs
Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
Capote (2005) – great as the title character
The Savages (2007) – possibly my favorite of his films, as Laura Linney’s sibling
Charlie Wilson’s War (2007) – that film got better the moment he was on screen
Synecdoche, New York (2008) – an unorthodox film about the arts in upstate NY described well here. Watch the funeral monologue.
Doubt (2008) – believable as a priest
Moneyball (2011) – convincing as Art Howe of the Oakland A’s

Plus a role on Law & Order in 1991 that I certainly must have seen, and a voice character on the children’s cartoon Arthur, which I KNOW I saw. The New York Times had a GREAT article about him, and CNN has a recent brief interview with him

Know who else died this weekend? Anna Gordy Gaye, Berry Gordy’s sister, and Marvin Gaye’s ex-wife, who was the subject of Marvin’s bizarre Here, My Dear album.

I get home, start watching the Super Bowl stuff right at 6 p.m. Eastern, 30 minutes before the game. But the game was a blowout by 12 seconds into the third quarter. (Those of you who do not appreciate the Big Game obviously have never heard Andy Griffith’s analysis of the sport from sixty years ago.)

Many of the ads – some of which are HERE – didn’t really stick to my brain, except the Radio Shack and one of the Doritos ads, but that could have been fatigue.

I do recall seeing Bob Dylan plugging American-made vehicles, which didn’t bother me as much as it did some folks. I love the Muppets, yet feel ambivalent at best about THEIR appearance in a car ad. There was a Masarati ad or two for which I did not understand the reason why I would want the car.

I’d already seen the Budweiser Heroes ad and the Cheerios Gracie ad. I shouldn’t have been, but I was, oblivious to the backlash the Coca-Cola America the Beautiful ad would generate.

Right after linebacker Malcolm Smith was selected as game MVP, I fell asleep, waking up in the middle of a comedy called Brooklyn Nine-Nine, so it was time for bed.

Commercially repulsive QUESTION

I loathed these commercials so much that I have, years later, never purchased a package of Wisk.

I’ve refused to buy a number of products over the years for various reasons: political/economic boycotts for iceberg lettuce, orange juice, and the like.

But there have also been commercials out there that have just offended my sensibilities.

One was for a drink mix from Pillsbury called Funny Face, targeted to compete with Kool-Aid. Not only did the character on this particular envelope look like a caricature, if memory serves, he also sounded like one. It’s no surprise that the product was replaced by a more generic Choo Choo Cherry a couple years later.

But no long-running commercial bugged me more than those for Wisk laundry detergent and its irritating “Ring Around the Collar”. Often featuring a woman looking frustrated and shamed when her husband, a friend, or even a total stranger noticed that the husband’s shirt collar was less than pristine. Here are some examples here and here, plus you can find plenty more on the Internet; this later ad was less bad, but by then it was too late. I loathed these commercials so much that I have, years later, never purchased a package of Wisk.

(Company policies generally can cut both ways. On one hand, a potential boycott against Butterball turkeys, because they are halal, might make me MORE likely to buy them. On the other, Butterball being sued by EEOC for harassment and the firing of an HIV+ employee, not so much.

What commercials, or company policies, backfired with you, making you LESS likely to purchase the product?

These commercial messages

I was going to tell you about the presentation I’m doing today. Our organization is changing from using Standard Industrial Classification codes to North American Industrial Classification System. All businesses are given a classification, which helps in data gathering, and NAICS (rhymes with “snakes”) is the most current one. This stuff is actually rather interesting to me. But that’s just me. Others may compare it with watching glaciers melt. So instead I’ll tell you about TV commercials.

I’ve been watching Sex and the City reruns, usually on tape. I don’t have HBO, so, as NBC used to suggest, “They’re new to me.” During every brace of episodes runs this commercial:

VOICEOVER OF COSMO KRAMER, WITH THE WORDS ON THE SCREEN: Who’s gonna turn down a Junior Mint. It’s chocolate. It’s peppermint. It’s delicious!
JERRY SEINFELD (on screen): That’s true.
KRAMER (on screen): It’s VERY refreshing!

I’ve seen this commercial a few dozen times. It never fails to crack me up, as though it were the first time.
What’s WRONG with me?

I never was a big Seinfeld fan. Oh, I liked the early episodes when it really was about nothing. The Parking Lot episode comes to mind. But when George worked for the Yankees, or Elaine stressed over her job- not about nothing. But the ad gets to me.

Nasonex

There is a commercial for a nasal spray called Nasonex. If you’ve not seen it, go here. The male bee weirds me out! It’s the eyes. The irony is that the ad is “designed and directed” by Neal Adams, one of the most respected comic book artists, one best known for X-Men and Batman, but who I probably first saw (and liked) on The Avengers (the comic book, not the TV show with Emma Peel). The bee is voiced by Antonio Bandares, who I liked in Shrek 2.

So there it is: crazy about Kramer, crazed by a cartoon bee.

However, the Nasonex commercial isn’t nearly as scary as a Burger King commercial. Someone raises the shade in the house in the morning and there is a person in that eerie Burger King plastic mask. Arrrgh!

Dodge

Even worse, though is the ad for some Dodge SUV. A woman, with a girl in the back seat, stops and talks to a guy who reminds me of Clint Eastwood in his spaghetti western days on the side of the road. “Out of gas?”, she asks. The motorcycle gets loaded into the back. All the while, the music, and the camera work are suggesting that this woman is CRAZY for letting this dusty stranger in her vehicle, with her daughter in the back.

Then, “Daddy just HAD to get a motorcycle.” OK – he’s not a potential murder, he’s a relative. But it’s manipulative and creepy, and I don’t think it engenders the sense of security that the purchaser of such a vehicle would want.

Coke

There’s a Coke commercial featuring lots of roller skating or blading. “It’s a Coke thing.” It must be a generational thing, because every time I hear it, it reminds me of the theme of the Academy-award-winning movie “Midnight Cowboy”, a depressing flick I’ve managed to see four times in the theater within 18 months of its release. So instead of “Sparkle”, I think of Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) pounding on a vehicle and yelling, “I’m WALKING here!” But what I often tell my wife when she’s perplexed by an ad, I need to tell myself: “I’m not the target demographic.”

And speaking of commercials, Mason Adams died late last month. He had a most distinctive voice for radio and television for decades. I was a big Lou Grant fan, so I remember him as Lou’s boss Charlie Hume. But he’ll probably be best remembered for saying, “With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good.” As Vietnam-era DJ Adrian Cronauer, who talks about him on this NPR audio clip might have put it, “To sell the Smucker’s catchphrase, Mason Adams had to be good.”

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