Keeping Up With the
Jones-Kipplings

Is any one else freaked out by commercials? I mean really freaked out on so many different levels you don't know what to buy? I find myself too often staring agape at the TV unable to believe what I am hearing and the context it has been stuffed into.

Particularly disturbing is the new line of M&Ms commercials that introduce a hip happenin' human having an engaging conversation with a cute little candy. Inevitably, at some point during this conversation the human dupes the cute little candy, which leads to the off-screen death of the candy so the human can eat it. I am not by any means a vegetarian, if it holds still long enough I'll be happy to eat it or wear it, but I have never had an engaging conversation with any of my meals and I am a little disturbed that I have to victimize my candy just to get my chocolate fix.

The big thing is nostalgia. Memories of our youth sell us stuff to feel old. Simple enough. Some hep disco sells hamburgers, a little Janice Joplin sells the Mercedes she mocked so long ago (she's dead now, what does she care?). Old love songs from our proms sell us everything from film to long distance telephone service. And in the midst of this, someone at Mitsubishi lost their executive minds. From the two commercials I've seen, the four door Mitsubishi sedan is the car of choice for hip junkie Satan worshippers. Now, I will never complain about being surprised by the first few powerful bars of Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" suddenly booming from my TV/stereo - or at least I thought that was true.

The last time that song got a lot of attention was with the movie "Trainspotting". (You remember that one, the fanciful look at the glamorous world of heroin addiction.) Iggy's anarchic anthem was perfect for that movie, IMO. And now, in case we are beginning to feel our age, our good friends at Mitsubishi assure us approaching thirty-somethings that we can still have our fingers on the pulse of the sub-culture, AND have room for the kids. Yay-hooray!!

Or for those of you who were never punk oriented and think British movies are for fruits who have never banged their heads, rest easy. Mitsubishi apparently has thought of everyone, making sedans with enough room for the kids AND what's left of your big hair AND the old amp that you carry around to offset your little tike's car-seat.

And I'm not talking about late night MTV commercials, either. I refer to prime-time general audience advertising. The same music that my parents took from me claiming it would make me a god-less heretic is now the best idea they could come up with to sell family cars. And the weird thing is, in this context, nine out of ten parents don't even recognize the music. They aren't privy to the irony that horrifies me. They think it's a nice car, a "young" commercial. I guess they just need to take a step back and play the commercial backwards. I wonder if it shows the car driving off a cliff in the driver's desperation that he really is that old now; while telling you in garbled words that White Zinfandel is good stuff.

Happy Thirtieth Birthday, class of 1987. You are now old enough not to trust yourself.

Cydniey 99
cydlet@chickmail.com