Enough to give you viewer’s droop

Press, 6 September 1980, Page 13

Enough to give you viewer’s droop

r Review

Ken Strongman

Who- are -these.-people we see in television advertisements? Meh, who; rather than work, spend • their time cutting holes in walls, and doors, and dropping feathers near their double glazing. Who spend days on end painting and repainting their houses, singing at the tops of their voices when they are not gazing at their own reflections in the paint cans. Their wives look on fondly as they gently put their husbands’ bouncy cardies and enormous jockeys into drawers. Sometimes their- eyes roll' up.. and ; they say“Mehnnn!” in rapt and bleating admiration.: . ' On occasions, the men pre out dipping '.their., sheep, riding their "trail bikes across rugged.country, or . padding . to their fleet of cars.’iThis' leaves, their wives free to worry about' their washing, ironing, polishing, cleaning, and shopping. Their children are being propositioned by talking bears or eating biscuits. In the quiet of the evening, all settle down to watch phallic thermometers jump out of turkeys and envy their friends who are in Fiji, Australia, or Disneyland. Their teenage daughter is out with her man playing the usual game of dodging the bulldozer on the dirt road. They-both smile with a hint of showing each other their Macleans later. Rarely, the whole family

is together at meal times; then they all sing. Thus would be the view of the New Zealand way of life seen by the visitor anxious to glean information from the television advertisements. A place in which men are really men, women are really women, children are really children, and talking bears are .really talking bears. The men are men because they use chainsaws and have country and: western .voices. The women are .women because they simper, /ha-’e breathy voices, are concerned about their baggy legs, and know how to shop wisely and well. The children are children because they are either incredibly angelic or entirely hateful. The talking bears are there to hand out the biscuits. Not only: who are these persons, but also, who is impressed bj' them? Surely, no-one. What a deep and terrible insult to the intelligence and a crude attempt to manipulate attitudes. Surely, there are not so many people, about whose lives are concerned in equal parts with trivia and keeping up with the washing machine , ‘next door? Or if there are, then heaven help us. 5 , ,''

But it is not the assumption that everyone is stupid that is the most disturbing aspect of television advertising. Rather, it is the simplistic fudging of moral principles which is more insidious. As long as it is associated with sport, we can see men with bare bums singing locker room songs. As long as it is associated with ballet, we can see young women cavorting in their knickers. As long as it has the tinge of things medical about it, we can intimidate teen-agers about their spots and the smells they are wafting over all and sundry from every orifice. As long as someone is well-dressed, , (s)he can push anyone else around. As long as someone is small and bespectacled we can assume that he cannot handle his money, his social life, or his future. A small segement of the community is trying to force an arbitrary world on the rest of us. A world, of macho men, of spineless, wilting women, of unnatural, children, and of grotesquely immature teen-agers. A world of trivia. The ultimate horror of television advertisements comes from the first principle of advertising — that it is repetition which sells. With, enough repetition, not,.only will Die brand names stick, but.so also might the attitudes and morality embodied in the advertisements.