Hardcore Logo

On the front page of the current USA Today Weekend, wedged above the headline, a caption asks, “Which Adds will You be Talking About on Monday?” The question, of course, is related to the advertisement coup of the NFL Super Bowl, which is as much a hallowed tradition as the game itself. This “question,” or whatever you could call it, made me ask myself a few other questions, namely, “Who would be stupid enough to answer this question,” and “Why do these schmucks assume I’ll be talking to people about TV adds on Monday?”
Whenever I am asked ridiculous questions in advertisements, the type of questions that obviously weren’t intended by the agency to be answered with a logical reply, I can’t help but to become devilish and conceive to myself a sarcastic reply. "Hmmph…that’s a good question there, young feller. Adds…TV…I talk about TV adds all the time, sometimes even to my wife and kids over dinner. I like the Caveman adds, and the ones for the Snuggie blankets; I brought that one up to my boss. Goddamnit, I didn’t realize this would be so hard!"
I dislike to think that television adverting has an influence on my choices and thinking; it certainly didn’t influence my choice for presidential candidate, because I refused to vote for precisely that reason. Never in my life have I found an instance in which I thought advertising was practically necessary, at least, not for disseminating truth or expressing intelligent ideas ; in short, it's my assurance that all advertising, at its core, is calculated to manipulate people into a blustering, irrational, and predetermined conclusion, whether for the sake of stuffing their fat faces with Dorito's, purchasing healthcare from Montel Williams or Billt Mays, or to vote for "change you can believe in." For this reason, I try my best, each day, to ward off advertising “persuasion,” which I either avoid like the plague or, like the cynic I am, level as much derision and mockery at as I possible.
As for “pathos, logos, and ethos,” I am not the best judge of that, not only for the reason I just gave; as far as I am concerned, the general tendency of advertising is to aim square at the gut, bypassing reason or ethics altogether. So I suppose my answer would be “gut.” To take one example, while watching Headline News today, the newscaster, whoever it was, described as the show went to commercials what was coming up in the next segment: A new add has been circulating on television - an advertisement for vegetables - in which half naked women, crawling and writing in a dimly lit hallway, are caressing broccoli, apples, oranges, etc. You may be asking yourself, “What does that have to do with vegetables?”; my question is, “Where were the bananas and zucchini?” Advertising, as everyone knows, is not intended to sell things; it is merely there to concentrate capital, to make the TNT premiere of “Back to the Future” last beyond 3 hours, and to give an excuse to look at women.
That is all.