4 PERSPECTIVES rol The Michigan Daily Monday, December 11, 1989 Page 8 6 'Dead- Mid-shot. A living room, night. A middle-aged woman sits comfort- ably in a La-Z-Boy recliner, sipping tea and reading a book. Family pic- tures hang in the background. The picture of domestic tranquility. The doorbell rings. She answers it. A policeman stands at the door, with~a grave expression. POLICEMAN: Mrs. Johnson? WOMAN: (Worried.) Yes? POLICEMAN: I have bad news, ma'am. There's been an accident. Your husband lost control of his car and drove off the highway with your two children. They were all killed. WOMAN: Oh my God! POLICEMAN: I'm afraid I need you to answer a few questions. The accident happened because one of the front tires blew out. (Sternly.) When we inspected the car, we dis- covered that it did not have Acme Sak-RydeTM tires. WOMAN: (Tremendous guilt.) M. no. Oh, no.... vertising: Buy this or we'll kill you POLICEMAN: (Furious.) Wh y didn't you have Safe-Ryde"m tires on your car? Why did you let your fam- ily DIE? Why? Why? Why?!? WOMAN: (Hysterical.) AAAAAAHHH! AAAAAAHHH! (She runs around the house, looking for things to kill herself with.) Fade to black. Logo: "Safe- Ryde r' - unless you don't love your family." It was a lot easier, back in the old days, when advertisers could just flat out lie. If you wanted to sell a prod- uct, you'd just make some outra- geous claim, like saying it would give you psychic powers. As long as you caveated your emptors, you were fine, and the only people who got suckered were too dumb to be trusted with money, anyway. You knew when you were being screwed with. But lately, a disturbing trend has developed in advertising - the threat. Whereas the message of commercials was once "you can't live without our prc it," it's now "you'll die without our prodtuc." In psychological terms, advertis- ing in the late '80s has switched from Eros to Thanatos. Where adver- tisers use to ply us to buy their goods by showing us flesh, they now show us bones, as in the Volvo commercial which features a slow pan of a skeleton, and urges us to buy their car because it has a won- derful braking system - and "replacement parts are hard to find." And whereas high-fiber cereals used to keep you fit and trim so you could mate, mate, mate to your heart's content, now they unclog your heart's contents so you don't die. And apparently, we're not the only ones in danger - our children are, too. In my personal favorite threatvertisement campaign, Miche- lin shows cute babies playing around their tires, while their parents dis- cuss road safety - i.e., the necessity A'/ 'riched by Jim Poniewozik of owning a set of Michelins. The subtext of the ad is: "See these babies? Aren't they cute? Don't you love them? And wouldn't it be a shame if they were cruelly mangled in a car crash because you didn't buy our tires?" All in all, getting your intelli- gence insulted is starting to look pretty good in comparison. I mean, you could always laugh off the su- perficial values of old ads, but you can't exactly deny that you don't want to die, right? As much as I hate to figure the Baby Boom into anything, it would seem to make sense that the aging of the post-war generation must have something to do with this trend. Since the object of ad is to sell a lot of things, it's generally consid- ered good form to target them at a lot of people, and that particular generation, by virtue of its numbers, has thus dictated the focus of adver- tising for the past decades. Until recently, the bulk of those people were in what Eddie Murphy refers to as their "fuck years," and hence, were interested in products that would make them attractive. But now, the generation that didn't want to grow up like its parents did has now discovered that it also doesn't want to die like its parents did, ei- ther. Thus endeth the Sexual Revolu- tion and thus beginneth the Mortal- ity Revolution. But what comes next? Well, ex- tending the psychological thing a bit longer, tradition holds that accep- tance is the last stage of death, so it stands to reason that the next thing advertisers will come after is our souls. Once we realize that no amount of oat bran or rechargeable car batteries will keep us alive for- ever, we'll want to prepare ourselves for whatever comes next. Look for a revival of indulgences, as well as a variety of New Age breakfast cereals ("orange ankhs, yellow yin-yangs, and blue crystals!"). In the meantime, however, look for the trend to spread to less obvi- ous products. Do you know how many people have died of razor burn? Or that armed robbers are 33 percent more likely to shoot their victims if they have unsightly facial blem- ishes? And remember, the wrong kind of running shoe could cause you to slip and fall in front of a speeding car. 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