jjohn wrote a pretty bolshy response to the idea of banning alcohol ads. My response was getting long, so I've turned it into a journal entry proper.
I drink. I drink in front of my son. Sometimes closer :-) I'm trying to teach my son responsible behavior. When it comes to things that can ruin his brain or his body (e.g., alcohol and tobacco) I want to be the only one putting messages into his head for quite a while.
This is important, because William sees more television than Teletubbies. He goes to bed when we do--we don't have hours in the day to watch TV without him around. It's not a matter of "turning off the TV" and showing parental control. Why the fuck should we have to lock up our kid when we watch "Will and Grace" or "The Simpsons"?
The TiVo solves most of this problem, but very few people have a TiVo (and once you see the price and the burnrate of diapers, you'll know why few working class parents can afford TiVos :-).
So, in short, eat me. This has nothing to do with blaming society or failing to raise my child properly, you arrogant jackass. I'm terribly sorry if you won't be able to watch stupid alcohol ads and will instead have to watch stupid Propecia or Audi ads. This inconvenience must ruin television for you, and I am truly heartbroken.
--Nat
Re:Heh
gnat on 2002-01-22T01:54:56
William watches mostly PBS shows with no ads:-) And when he watches Disney, it's weekday morning Disney with no product ads, not Saturday morning Disney with "MURDERTRON 2000! IT SHOOTS! IT MAIMS! EET KEELS!" and "SUGARPOPS! NOW WITH EXTRA SUGAR!" commercials all over the place. Every day we say a quiet thanks to PBS. Nat
JJ doesn't have a TV
And it's a little unfair to attack some of us who continually see the US becoming the Cult of the Victim where everything is someone elses fault. TV has lots of messages besides the commercials so much that my sister, much to her credit, allows her children to only watch 5 hours of TV each week that she helps them choose and only after they have read a book or two.
The point of the reason I mentioned it was that banning alcohol ads seems absurdly inconsistent with the rest of the programming on the TV and the nations ills. That ad for Cocoa Puffs at 8am on Saturday is a lot more dangerous to an 3 year old's health than a Smirnoff ad after 9PM. Try to keep perspective.
Re:*ahem*
gnat on 2002-01-22T23:37:52
it's a little unfair to attack some of us who continually see the US becoming the Cult of the Victim where everything is someone elses faultHey, I'm all against the cult of the victim. I think fat people suing food manufacturers is the stupidest thing I've heard. I'm all for personal responsibility, but I don't think I'm playing the victim here. I'm simply saying that keeping booze ads off TV would hurt nobody and make my life as a parent a lot easier.
That ad for Cocoa Puffs at 8am on Saturday is a lot more dangerous to an 3 year old's health than a Smirnoff ad after 9PM
Smirnoff is more dangerous to a 3 year old than Cocoa Puffs. I don't want my son to see ads for Smirnoff. And as I said, we also don't want him to see ads for Cocoa Puffs, so we work hard to keep him away from those. But children's TV has lots of options (PBS, weekday morning TV) that don't show ads. There's nothing like that for "grownup TV" except for PBS, and frankly we're ready to see something other than Moneyline with Lou Dobbs
:-) --Nat
Re:*ahem*
hfb on 2002-01-23T00:07:10
Well..what I meant was that given the choice the kid is probably gonna go for the sugar rush and isn't going to add guinness to his Super Sugar Crisp anytime soon
:) I don't really like TV though I own one and hopefully not buy one when we move to
.fi since it's a great way to put your EEG to a flat line...even with the history channel and such it's coma inducing. Have you ever noticed when you go to a pub that has TVs, whether you are alone or with friends, how people tend to stare at them? I try to go to pubs without TVs since I feel like I've found refuge from the media machine leaving it to assault me only from the beer coasters and neon. Ads suck. We get ads now even with films at theatres that we pay for. I don't know that I have an opinion really about the alcohol ads since most other western countries have a lot more programming that the US would consider scandalous yet they seem to survive and raise children alright....but the deus machina, the politics, the culture, behind some of the controversy does make me wonder what's really at stake. Do you rip out all tobacco and booze ads from your periodicals too? Just curious.
Re:*ahem*
gnat on 2002-01-23T02:07:48
Re: tvs in pubs. There's a great book, "Dublin Pub Lore", that talks about the rise and decline of pubs in Dublin. The pox of the TV is addressed there. I agree--televisions anywhere there's supposed to be socializing are a curse. I hate it when people throw a party but leave the TV on. That kills half or more of a room for meaningful social interaction.I'm such a curmudgeon
:-) -Nat
Re:*ahem*
pudge on 2002-01-23T03:06:33
I agree--televisions anywhere there's supposed to be socializing are a curse. I hate it when people throw a party but leave the TV on. That kills half or more of a room for meaningful social interaction.
That's fine and all, except for where sports on TV is concerned, such as Super Bowl parties, and the time I first met hfb and we were at a Boston.pm social thing at a bar, and it was the night Mark McGwire broke the long-standing home run record. Such things supercede normal socializing.:-)
First, I'm delighted to know that anyone reads my comments and even more so to see they provoke a response. I find use.perl.org helps me kill time effectively and it appears I'm not alone.
Second, like some of my favorite essays on Suck, gnat's entry sent me scurrying to the dictionary -- in this case to look up bolshy. Bolshy, for those in my boat, is British slang for obstreperous. Not being up my Jane Austin, I had to find the definition of obstreperous which turns out to be a synonym for "clamorous; noisy; vociferous." So far, gnat has improved my vocabulary by two words. Thank you.
I then reread my comments and gnat's. Indeed, my comments were bombastic, pompous and bitter but I do stand the message: this life is a dangerous place. It's true that society has eliminated many of the daily plagues that haunted our forefathers -- vermin, wild beasts and marauders (for the most part) -- but new hazzards have appeared to worry our modern life. Avarice, apathy and weltschmerz are the enemies of our times. These new dangers are particularly pernicious because they come from our successes. I believe _Forbidden Planet_ called them "monsters from the id." Without the daily struggle for survival, we often find ourselves rudderless in a sea of personal desires, all of which are ultimately unfulfilling. We turn to consumerism to ease the gnawing emptiness of our trite and isolated lives. Naturally, this also fails to satisfy us. It is on a bewildered and harried population that the vultures of politics and advertizing engorge themselves. That we turn to the very institutions that afflict us for help would be high comedy if it weren't true.
Against the many social forces that seek to harm the individual, we have only one weapon -- analytical thought. In the same way that gnat has challenged the validity of my rant, I want more people to challenge the messages they get from television and news outlets. The problem isn't that liquor or McDonald's or Audis are advertized on TV, but that too many folks uncritically accept ads at face value. Ads work because they implicitly or explicitly promise that a given product will make our lives happier. Madison Avenue has gotten particually adept at selling us the message that one more product will make us complete. I've personally seen friends fall victim to this lie, but certainly we all have similar stories.
Gnat's family was certainly not the focus of my call for better parenting. Unfortunately, his family is more of the exception than the rule. Banning "offensive" advertisement isn't a good solution to the problems I've outlined above -- it merely shifts the responsibility upstream. Creating an awake and alert citizenry is the only way we can stop the raping of our planet and ourselves.
I must admit I'm very amused that gnat construed my comments as a defense of liquor advertisements. That's Komedy.
Re:A considered response
gnat on 2002-01-22T23:45:09
Bolshy comes from the Bolsheviks, who presumably were obstreperous:-) I wholeheartedly second your call for critical evaluation of ads. I regularly clutch my head like a stunned monkey and mentally plan to launch an asteroid at Madison Ave. My favourite technique is to say one thing in the smooth voiceover and totally contradict it in the fine point at the bottom of the screen. Target audience: illiterates
:-) In 5th form English we did a unit on the language of advertising. It was basically the rhetorical and visual devices used to entice. Is there such a thing in the American curriculum? Is there such a thing as an American curriculum?
:-) --Nat
Re:A considered response
pudge on 2002-01-22T23:59:06
No, there is no American curriculum, and for this I am mostly glad. However, there probably isn't much incidence of such discourse in the various American curricula, either.
