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By Tom Gable
Slice-of-life commercials have taken a turn for the worse as the baby-boom generation meanders, limps and trundles in record numbers into the ranks of the American Association of Retired Persons.Not long ago, the airwaves were awash with scenes featuring two fresh-cheeked, wrinkle-free housewives in their 30s discussing the attributes of bottled ammonia floor-cleaning solutions (as if they had discovered a secret potion for getting their husbands to clean the garage and put down the toilet seat). People were deeply concerned about lemon smells on their furniture, kitchen floors that wouldn’t embarrass the family when guests arrived, and giving the kids vitamin-fortified, tasteless chocolate drinks for stronger bones.
Maybe those commercials still run and boomers just miss them because we’ve become a different demographic, adjusting our viewing habits accordingly. New gangs of advertising agencies now scrutinize our data and predilections, plotting daily to target our frontal lobes and wallets. Unfortunately, they are aiming at other parts of our anatomies; a majority of commercials now appearing on The Native’s home screen involve dysfunctional or deteriorating body parts.
If we were to take the collective messages to heart, we would stay mostly in bed—or in the adjoining bathroom facilities—24 hours a day. We would avoid most human contact and spend about $783 a month on various drugs, depilatories, laxatives, denture cements, hair fertilizers, bleaches, mole-removal formulas, wrinkle erasers, corn cutters, wattle tighteners and fitness club memberships. We’d do this in hopes of not disintegrating completely, perhaps even regaining some semblance of our youth. Beyond becoming more youthful, the messages indicate we must also worry about embarrassing ourselves and our loved ones as we squint, hunch, hunker, sneeze, chew, wet and waddle through life.
One recent senior slice of life features a clean-cut grandfather and grandson at the circus. Grandfather looks pained and begins complaining about having to visit the bathroom 12 times a day. The high-wire act and other excitement swirls around them. He is getting desperate but doesn’t want to leave his grandson there alone with all the men in wife-beater T-shirts and mullet haircuts accompanied by women with Annette Funicello hairdos and trailer-park Spandex. So he has to leave the circus in mid-performance to avoid embarrassment, taking along his grandson, who is traumatized for life because his grandfather likes to hang out in restrooms.
Some slices go to the extreme to ballyhoo product durability and utility. There’s a spot with a 60ish lady cowpoke who is—no kidding—getting ready to herd cattle. She won’t have proximity to appropriate facilities and thus below the waist must wear more than jeans and chaps. The commercial cuts to a description of the product. She smiles, puts on her Stetson and rides happily through a cloud of dust chasing a few cattle. There are no other cowpokes in the scene—they probably wouldn’t be within 400 miles of such a cowgirl (“Boys, stay away from the Lazy U—strangest side saddle you’ll ever see.”).
Television commercials also alert us to dangers we never knew we faced. During a special on Charles Lindbergh—which undoubtedly attracted a certain demographic—we first learn of a lung ailment that can only be treated with multiple daily doses of a new over-the-counter wonder drug. And hypochondriacs across the country, baited by a zillion-dollar advertising campaign, race to their local pharmacies to stock up.
There is an alternative. Channel surf through MTV, E!-Entertainment and wrestling shows. Instead of fuzzy-edged commercials about regained romance for seniors on hormones from major pharmaceuticals, watch cavorting young sybarites grind and dance across the screen to hot music, then link up romantically in less than 30 seconds through the magic of beer, premixed drinks, herbal body washes and condoms.
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