My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol. 3 #18, October 31, 1997

Look who bought the myth
buy a jingle, buy America
R.E.M.

I was watching television when a commercial came on for a toilet bowl cleaner, and the woman in this commercial was so thrilled about it that she told people to stop by her house and she'd invite them to come in and sniff her toilets. Which is when I decided maybe the Roswell freaks were on to something--UFOs DID land, aliens ARE living here, and they're in love with their bathroom bowl cleaner.

You see, I don't know anybody who is made ecstatic by toilet bowl cleaners. Nor do I know anybody as thrilled by taking a shower as all those people in the commercials. For them, it appears to genuinely matter that they are using Irish Spring rather than Ivory Soap, and it appears to give them sensuous pleasure verging on orgasm.

Of course I'm not a guy, so I don't know for a fact that men don't have as much fun when they're out drinking with their buddies as those guys in the beer commercials, who are joking, laughing, rhapsodizing that "life doesn't get any better than this." But when I see guys together drinking, I see them getting sloppy drunk, getting loud and obnoxious, and making frequent trips to a john that smells of stale beer and vomit.

I doubt that anybody has a life quite as charmed and blissful as the shiny happy people on TV commercials, lives that are fulfilled so quickly and easily by simply buying a particular brand. They say most kids in America will watch 100,000 commercials by the time they're 18, and if that's the case, aren't they doomed to disappointment? Aren't their lives going to be just another defective product that didn't live up to the advertising claims?

People in ads live in a technicolor, heightened reality. Choosing the right coffee leads to flirtation that turns to romance. Taking your family to McDonald's leads to a treasured family moment of love and shared laughter. If you choose the right travelers' checks you will bake luxuriously in the sun on a Caribbean island. Eat the right cereal and you'll grow up to be like Michael Jordan. Drive the right car and a beautiful blonde will magically appear in the front seat.

In the real world, though, the choice of the right coffee guarantees nothing more than that you won't have to prop your eyelids open with toothpicks to stay awake. In the real world, the kids are just as likely to be picking at each other and driving you crazy when you go to McDonald's as at any other time. In the real world, you're more likely to use your travelers checks at a convention in Chicago. And in the real world, if you eat the right cereal, you'll be full for a while. (And hungry at 11:30.)

I wonder if these ads don't make real life seem pallid and tasteless. If you're out with the boys and NOT having that kind of fun, do you start wondering whether you have the wrong friends? If you're driving the right car and there is no blonde, what then? If you eat the right cereal and still end up 5'4" and scrawny, what then?

It seems to me that Americans, more than any other species, feel a strong sense of entitlement, a belief that it is our right not so much to pursue happiness as to catch it. When we don't obtain it, we seem to have a sense of grievance, a sense that somehow, somebody cheated us of our birthright.

And I wonder if this doesn't have a lot to do with those ads, that tell us all problems can be solved by spending money, by choosing the right product. Look who bought the myth: we did. If the America we bought doesn't match the advertising, it's because there's no way it could. Because, after all, these are very good actors, who are paid very well to convince us that a product makes them eternally ectstatic.

The sad thing is, the ads may keep us from appreciating that real life is at least authentic, at least ours to be enjoyed. And better than the ads, with its moments of splendor that matter all the more to us because of the long stretches of ordinary in between them. Like Tom Cochrane says,

life ain't big, no, it's kind of small,
made of small moments, they're all strung together.
If you don't look out you might miss them all.

Real life is more challenging, and the problems don't go away when you click a button or swallow a pill. But if our lows are lower than in the commercials, the highs are a lot higher. Love that comes instantly from using the right zit cream couldn't be as rewarding as love you spend years working at, building, cherishing. The colors of our lives may not be as splashy as in commercials, but they're there. I for one will settle for the subtler hues.

NOTE: My thinking is always a work in progress. You could mentally insert all my columns in between these two sentences: "This is something I've been thinking about," and "Does this make any sense to you?" I welcome your thoughts. Please send your comments about these columns to: marylaine at netexpress.net. Since I've written a lot of these, some of them many years ago, help me out by telling me which column you're referring to.

I'll write columns here whenever I really want to share an idea with you and can find time to write them . If you want to be notified when a new one is up, send me an e-mail and include "My Word's Worth" in the subject line.