Have a Holly Jolly (and Consumerist yet Discerning) Christmas

 

These days, we’re all savvy and jaded enough to see through the misdirection of television commercials. Nonetheless, a passage about advertising in the following video caught my attention. The video is part of a series called The School of Life and summarizes the thought of Frankfurt School philosopher Theodor Adorno. It covers a lot of ground, but it isn’t long. I recommend watching the whole thing, but watch for the bit about advertising, which begins at 4:10.

 

Here's the part that jumped out at me:

“When they’re trying to sell us something, advertisers show us the thing that we really want and then connect it to something we don’t actually need. So we can see an advert showing a group of friends walking on a beach chatting amiably or a family having a picnic and laughing warmly together. These adverts show us these things because they know we crave community and connection, but the industrial economy prefers to keep us lonely and consuming, so at the end of the adverts, we’ll be urged to buy some 25-year-old whiskey or a car so powerful that no road would ever let us legally drive it at top speed.”

Advertisements do many things and one of the things they do is show us something we need in our innermost being in order to sell us something that we don’t need. Coming up with examples is easy, especially in this season when every business and corporation this side of the Industrial Revolution is trying to cash in on Christmas and financial news reports constantly tell us it is our duty to shop in order to drive up holiday sales.

Consider this Coca-Cola commercial:

 

This advertisement is full of much that we all want and need. The words kindness and joy appear in written form. We see young couples holding hands, children playing, families bonding and friends smiling. Everyone looks physically fit. A red balloon takes flight from a vending machine and drifts over a quaint plaza. Christmas gifts fall into strangers’ hands, thereby linking disparate lives against the alienating forces of modern life. The community comes together and marvels, and we are encouraged to share that old Platonic concept the Good.

Which one of us does not want such communion with our fellows? Who would pass up a chance to fall in love again? Which one of us would not like to exude such physical and spiritual well-being? Who among us does not hunger to reclaim the sense of magic we held in our youth? Who would not like to rise like the Charioteer in Plato’s Phaedrus commanding his winged steeds to climb ever higher, leaving the earth below to see with clarity the Forms and even the light of the Good?

Coca-Cola’s marketers show us these things because we need them. And they do this to sell us something no one needs: a carbonated soft drink.

Philosopher Slavoj Zizek talks about Coca-Cola in the documentary The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012):

 

For Zizek, when Coca-Cola offers us “The Real Thing,” it is offering to give us l’objet petit a, the object cause of desire described in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. The objet petit a is what we think we want, but it doesn’t really exist, so we forever circle but never grasp it. You may think you want that new car, promotion or paramour, but once you have it, are you sated? Of course not. The object cause of desire switches to something else, so you stay driven, struggling for satisfaction that, due to the makeup of our psyche, is impossible.

Pringles is so sly that its classic advertising slogan explicitly states this, keeping the objet petit a in a cycle focused solely on its own product, from chip to chip: Once you pop, you can’t stop.

But are all advertisements merely a satisfying spin on a product that ultimately provides little satisfaction? Isn’t it possible that a product satisfies what its advertisements promise? Here’s a recent commercial for the video game Star Wars Battlefront:

 

Open with palpable estrangement: a man sits bored at his desk dreaming of his childhood. Once upon a time, he and his buddy drew pictures of their action figures, they had lightsaber battles with flashlights, and they dressed up as Star Wars characters for Halloween. Those were the days . . . Then suddenly his buddy shows up in an X-Wing, he busts out of his office, boards his own fighter with its own astromech copilot (R2D2 no less!), and goes to take out some Imperial AT-ATs.

At first, this appears to be no more substantial than the Coca-Cola commercial. On that reading, this commercial offers what you really want--friendship, adventure, a sense of purpose and fulfillment--while actually offering you cheap entertainment.

But wait!

In today’s world, a video game can actually be the medium through which people connect. Through online and cooperative missions, Star Wars Battlefront allows players to meet and play with strangers, or play together with your favorite mop-headed childhood buddy. And while the adventures are all virtual, this has always been the nature of storytelling and takes nothing away from the magic. Star Wars and other franchises are no less inspiring to many than the plays of Euripides once were to Athenians, or Beowulf to the Anglo-Saxons. Star Wars Battlefront isn’t exactly necessary, but it has the potential to facilitate some things we truly need.

I’m more skeptical that a can of Coca-Cola can be as successful at slaking spiritual thirst, but perhaps I’m being too harsh. How many cans of Mr. Pibb have I enjoyed with friends over tabletop RPGs, sharing laughs and having a hell of a time? The beverage was a part of that, a part of our subculture, our fraternity.

As usual, I see the value in multiple perspectives, but that can be a good thing. I guarantee you will watch television this Christmas season, see the same commercials over and over until you want to start chucking nutcracker soldiers at the screen, and spend too much money on crap for yourself and others. In today’s world, you can’t help but be a consumer, which is to say a stooge to the boob tube, but you can also remember to check yourself, see through the haze of price tags and twinkling lights, and seek a holiday experience that holds something more authentic.