Posts Tagged ‘television’
“Commercials are about products… in the same sense that the story of Jonah is about the anatomy of whales”*…
In a civilization organized primarily around the funneling of capital to corporations, commercials offer a space of transcendent communion with the objects of our dependence and desire. They take place in a realm understood to be ideational without quite being imaginary—existing not in any one person’s mind, but ambiently, on a level of reality we rarely think to question, encoded in the daily order of things as neatly as the peanut butter aisle of a suburban grocery store. (This bare proximity to capitalism’s exposed nerves, combined with a habitual callousness to human dignity, is I believe why, in the recent words of A.S. Hamrah, “TV commercials are the worst thing to see on hallucinogenic drugs.”) These commercials embody and transmit all kinds of cultural norms, declaiming on the career-destroying horror of “even one flake” of dandruff, the correct way to manage a labor force, how women should interpret cough syrup viscosity, and so on.
Commercials also encode and preserve basic aesthetic and narrative conventions. Musically, they’re a trove of low-rent original product psalms, in styles ranging from quietly sophisticated poultry rock to funky rugged simplicity jams that sound like a person in a boardroom frantically describing the inner life of a coalminer. They introduce stock characters from discomfiting gym teacher to comic book nerd. They offer an education in America’s throbbing corporate epiculture, whose dark world they echo in a thousand ways—through who gets represented and who not, portrayals of nations and cultures, depictions of idealized daily life, enshrinement of a particular commercial landscape, style parodies, intimations of eternity, messages of warning, messages of beneficence, and more—all calligraphed into air and sent streaming through the walls of our homes by giant corporate antennas…
From Ian Dreiblatt, “Toward a Theory of the American TV Commercial of, Oh, Say, About 1990.”
[image above: source]
* Neil Postman
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As we take it all in, we might celebrate National Tooth Fairy Day.
In the mid-1920s fairies were used for all sorts of health education from bath fairies to fresh air fairies as a way to get kids to remember to eat their vegetables, wash behind their ears and get a good night’s rest. Unlike toothpaste today, that advertises fruity flavors and sparkles to get kids excited to brush their teeth, in 1925 it was probably quite a bit more difficult considering the pastes were mostly peroxide and baking soda. One advertisement was for a Fairy Wand Tooth Whitener. This product promised to brush away cigarette and coffee stains. The ad was aimed at both children and adults, we hope!
Then in 1927, Esther Watkins Arnold printed an eight-page playlet for children called The Tooth Fairy. It was the same year Sir Arthur Conan Doyle “proved” his claim that fairies and gnomes are real and “verified” with pictures of two little girls surrounded by fairies. The world was ripe with imagination and primed to have a tooth fairy about to come collect the lost teeth of little boys and girls and leave a coin or two behind.
Arnold’s play began to be performed in schools the following year, and the tooth fairy has been slipping into homes ever since. She (or he) started leaving nickels and dimes under the pillows of sleeping children. Over the years there have been variations on the theme. In 1942, in an article written by columnist Bob Balfe in the Palm Beach Post, his children received War Stamps to put in their books when they lost a tooth…
“I am big! It’s the pictures that got small.”*…
Romaine Fielding got famous making a bunch of films in nothing flat—something like 100 films in just four years, from 1912 to 1915. Some of the films were probably awful. Others were showered with critical praise. Film was a fledgling medium still trying to find its voice, still battling to evolve from novelty to art. But Romaine rose above the melodramatic din of the silent film era. He was, by some accounts, America’s first movie star and, by even more accounts, among the medium’s first true visionaries…
Romaine had already lived a lot of life when he began making films in 1912. There were only a dozen film companies in Hollywood. The magazine that would launch our nation’s rabidity for celebrity culture, Photoplay, had just published its first issue. Romaine was 43 and on his fourth name by then: baby William Grant Blandin became Royal A. Blandin became Romanzo A. Blandin who made the leap finally to Romaine Fielding at the dawn of the 20th century.
There are lots of reasons for adopting pseudonyms and these include shame or aspiration or fear of legal recourse or extralegal recourse or confusion about identity or certainty about identity or general restlessness and for some it is all of this plus the usual feeling of fraudulence and an overdeveloped flair for the dramatic. In 1867 Romaine was born out of wedlock in an Iowa that wouldn’t stand for it and so his first name change was the projection of others’ shame. For the rest of his life he layered on identities, ever grander, though never entirely disingenuous…
After the success of The Toll of Fear (one of the first great psychological thrillers, made in 1913) Romaine made the cover of Motion Picture Magazine. He was voted America’s Most Popular Player by the magazine’s readers, snagging over 1.3 million of the 7 million votes cast by film buffs.
This award was a remarkable accomplishment in the pre-Oscars era. He beat out Mary Pickford, an early cinema powerhouse and eventual cofounder of the famed United Artists studio. He beat out Bronco Billy, who had starred in The Great Train Robbery (1903), arguably the first ever Western film…
The genuinely remarkable tale of an American original: “The Lost Apocalypse of Romaine Fielding.”
* “Norma Desmond” (Gloria Swanson) in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard
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As we see stars, we might spare a thought for Herbert Eugene Ives; he died on this date in 1953. A scientist and engineer who headed the development of facsimile and television systems at AT&T in the first half of the twentieth century, he is best known for the 1938 Ives–Stilwell experiment, which provided direct confirmation of special relativity’s time dilation (though Ives himself did not accept special relativity, and argued instead for an alternative interpretation of the experimental results).
But relevantly to this post, Ives also led AT&T’s development of video and television. His 1927 transmission– of images of then-Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, from Washington, DC to New York– was the first successful long distance demonstration of television. Two years later, he achieved the first successful long-distance transmission of color images.
“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are”*…
Food regularly plays a role in religious life, in forms that range from communion wine to Kahlua cheesecake…
A sampling of 34 cloistered comestibles: “A Guide of Heavenly Cuisine.”
* Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
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As we devour with devotion, we might recall that it was on this date in 1993 that the first “Got Milk?” ad premiered. Created by the advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners for the California Milk Processor Board, it was later licensed for use by milk processors and dairy farmers nationwide. The campaign launched with the now-famous “Aaron Burr” television commercial, directed by Michael Bay.
“Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television”*…
And sometime, good television: full episodes of the frighteningly-prophetic Max Headroom at Dailymotion.com— watch ’em while you can!
* Woody Allen
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As we cope with blipverts, we might recall that it was on this date in 1959 that the legendary Edward R. Murrow aired his 500th and final Person to Person interview (with actress Lee Remick). The series continued for another two years with Charles Collingwood as host.
“There’s no reason that anything should ever become obsolete”*…
One newspaper article complained of boys walking into walls while looking through kaleidoscopes; another kvetched about scope users running into cyclists on the street. (The draisienne, or “dandy horse,” a pedal-free precursor to the modern bicycle, had recently been introduced.) Large kaleidoscopes were set up on street corners, where passersby could pay a penny for a peek, and parlor scopes became themust-have accessory for the middle and upper classes…
The extraordinary story of a the kaleidoscope, a technological fad that was, in many ways, a precursors of hot devices of today (and of their effects): “Long before iPhones, this 19th-century gadget made everyone a mobile addict.”
* Rebecca McNutt
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As we watch shapes shift, we might recall that it was on this date in 1951 that the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) televised the one-hour premiere of commercial color television with a program appropriately titled Premiere.
In 1950, there were two companies vying to be the first to create color TVs — CBS and RCA. When the FCC tested the two systems, the CBS system was approved, while the RCA system failed to pass because of low picture quality. But CBS’s technology had some pretty serious flaws: it was very expensive, it tended to flicker, and probably most fatally, it was not compatible with the black and white TV set already in American households. RCA continued to tweak its approach, and ultimately overtook CBS to become the standard setter for color TV in the U.S.
“It’s morning in Baltimore, Lester. Wake up and smell the coffee”*…
WHERE’S WALLACE? THAT’S ALL I WANNA KNOW…
WHERE THE F*CK IS WALLACE?”
—D’ANGELO BARKSDALE
An interactive homage to what was arguably the best television series ever: “Where’s Wallace.”
* Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick), to Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters) in “A New Day (episode 11 of season 4), The Wire.
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As we return to Baltimore, we might spare a thought for Jackson DeForest Kelley; he died on this date in 1999. After a long career paying character parts, largely in Westerns, Kelley was offered the role of half-alien Spock in a proposed sci-fi series being developed by Gene Roddenberry– Star Trek– but declined. He later reconsidered his involvement and accepted the role of Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy.
“It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood”*…
Back in 2011, on his blog devoted to all things Mister Rogers, neighborhoodarchive.com, Tim Lybarger recorded the color of every sweater Rogers wore in each episode between 1979 and 2001. “When I realized such a resource didn’t exist… I just felt like somebody needed to do it…might as well be me.”…
Dive more deeply into the sartorial habits of a true American hero at “Every Color Of Cardigan Mister Rogers Wore From 1979–2001.”
* Fred Rogers (the first line of the lyrics of his theme song for his series, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood)
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As we agree to be his neighbor, we might recall that it was on this date in 1990 that Americans were invited into a very different kind of neighborhood: NBC premiered Seinfeld. (In fact, the pilot– with a different title [The Seinfeld Chronicles] and a different female lead [“Claire the waitress” instead of Elaine]– was broadcast in July of 1989; but NBC didn’t pick up the series until the following year.)
