This being a Presidential election year, and us having cable, I have now watched more Republican presidential debates than I ever really wanted to in my life*, especially since the various candidates routinely put our television in severe danger. (There are things I can listen to with impunity, including wildly differing political views, but people suggesting they’d be happy with bans on contraception – i.e. threatening my ability to have a career – are not one of them.)
*I could turn them off, but I’d have to wrestle for the remote and there’s always the hope that one of them will say something exceptionally stupid or try to crowd-surf or both.
What I find just as interesting as the politics, though – which isn’t hard because the politics are more a matter of entertainment than actual information, at this stage – is the advertisements which go along with them. I remember blogging about the sheer bulk of pharmaceutical ads in this country, and that’s still staggering. But there’s also a lot of other groups which simply don’t advertise on New Zealand television – because they’re American-specific, and/or because their New Zealand counterparts just don’t attempt popular support in the same way – that range from the bewildering to the extremely very slightly insidious.
“Bewildering” definitely covers all the various stock-investment ads. Having never had enough money at any one point to consider investing it in anything more than a high-interest savings account (for what passes as “high interest” in this economic climate – I sadly remember the days when I was getting eight percent on one of my Kiwibank accounts) the range of investment ads is both curious and unnerving. It’s not just companies seeking to manage people’s “401Ks” (basically the equivalent of Kiwisaver, but tied to employers rather than the government and a staple of retirement planning here); it’s things like iPad apps for when you just have to trade that stock right now, which seems like an incitement to losing your money except under very specific circumstances, but then, the people advertising them are interested in brokers’ fees, not your long term savings. They all appeal, I think, to the American drive for independence, to the idea that everyone owns their future, financial or otherwise. The idea that, despite everything that’s happened to the economy, your financial stability is something you can control. Maybe because of everything.
Then there’s the plethora of fossil-fuel ads. These are carefully disguised as appeals to “vote for jobs” and “vote for America”, but all end up at one place: the declaration that the only thing that can solve America’s myriad problems is a renewed dedication to the use of coal, and oil, and natural gas. They’ve been around for the eighteen months we’ve been here, but with the election machine gearing up they’ve gone into overdrive. Phrases like “clean coal” are used in a way that would have the ASA driven to drink by the number of complaints they would engender. The viewpoint is pounded on, constantly, that to be against the greater use of fossil fuels isn’t just economic suicide, it’s somehow anti-American. They are counterpointed, entertainingly, by BP’s attempts to emphasise that everything on the Gulf Coast is just fine and it’s like Deepwater Hor- uh, that thing, you know, it never even – what thing was that we were talking about? Anyway, the Gulf Coast is just amazing, and BP is still there. And is always going to be there. Aren’t you reassured?
The one thing there aren’t many – or any, really – of, yet, is actual direct pro-or-anti-political-candidate ads. A little early for that, except in primary states, and Massachusetts isn’t due for its Republican primaries for quite some time and – in any case – isn’t likely to be much of a battleground, because all three Republicans in Massachusetts will vote for Romney. (I jest. All six.)
But in some ways it seems like what people say on the actual political programmes – whether the Sunday interview shows, the MSNBC/Fox/CNN/etc-style talkshows, or the debates – is matched in importance by the advertising that surrounds them. The ads aren’t just about selling things to a certain demographic; they shape a narrative, together, the ads and the shows. It’s almost hypnotic. None of these ads are directly political, remember. They’re not telling you to vote for certain people. Or even parties. A lot of them aren’t even “vote for” ads, that’s mostly the NATURAL GAS IS YOUR BEST FRIEND JOBS JOBS JOBS ads. They’re just – deliberately, carefully – shaping how you hear those people and parties in the bits in between the ads.
The problem with American TV, in terms of politics, isn’t that you watch it and become less informed (unless all you watch is certain channels, and no, I don’t just mean Fox – if all people watched was MSNBC they’d be pretty under-informed.) It’s that you need to be pre-informed by other media to watch it, because there’s a meta-narrative going on that changes the direct messages of the main narrative, if you’re aware of it.
Frankly it’s all a bit exhausting. Much easier to just go read something.