For all five of you that have been following this column, perhaps you've noticed some sort of trend that I've been attempting to express in my 500 words every two weeks on America's least trusted art form. I keep bringing up this universality of television, the fact that no matter who we are, what our major is or what our value system is, we're for the most part watching the same crap on a box in our living space, maybe briefly between classes, maybe non-stop throughout the week. We can brag about the quality of the shows we watch until we're blue in the face, but there's still that one thing that none of us (unless you watch only pay cable, which would make you a tool) can escape, that thing that makes television America's least trusted art form: commercials.
They're online now as well, so there's really no way out of them. We are all slaves to the corporations and must deal with them in five minute intervals until our show returns. So let us take a second and mull over this shared phenomenon.
It's safe to say that the act of TV program watching is in itself pretty passive and brainless. Not a lot is required to do it; it's a half-conscious form of relaxation. Sometimes we actually watch people on television watching television, in a sort of comforting reflexivity. A moment on Friends"" comes to mind when Joey and Chandler watch TV nonstop for days. The show ends with the two watching Beavis and Butt-head cackle incoherently as Joey and Chandler, now zombies, laugh in a similar fashion. This was brilliant because the audience was most likely laughing too, creating three tiers of calming stupidity.
But something else happens when the program cuts to a commercial - we're on a whole other level of brain-dead. I mean, our brains are shut off. Take away any deep discussions you're having with your friends about the quality of acting on ""CSI."" If you are just straight up watching a commercial, you are a zombie. Deal with it. The one fascinating exception is the Super Bowl, when people seem to focus on commercials and tune out the game, but more on that come February.
I tried for the sake of this column to closely analyze commercials between breaks of ""Scrubs,"" but I found I was so used to commercials for the entirety of my life that it felt like full-scale labor to actually concentrate on the Almay Pure Blends ad or Jennifer Garner trying to sell Maybelline with that stupid worried look she always has on her face. That was it, analyzing Jennifer Garner's facial expression was the most intelligent thing I could extract from my television commercial experience. But it somehow seemed so right, and I felt this therapeutic release, giving in to television's most manipulative facet.
With all this, I'm putting TV in its worst possible light. Formatted reality shows followed by commercials are what many insist makes America a wasteland, but the truth is sometimes necessary. My mom always complains about how the format of ""What Not To Wear"" has gotten so tedious and repetitive, yet admits at the end of the work week, zoning out to it is the most relaxing thing imaginable.
And maybe there's some truth to that. After an incredibly harried week, watching commercials was my unexpected savoir. I recommend it to anyone.
If you want to relax in front of the TV and morph into your zombie state while discussing the philosophy behind Jennifer Garner's facial expressions or predicting what new brillinace the upcoming Super Bowl commercials will present, e-mail Ali at rothchild@wisc.edu
