I don't like to watch television. The movies on AMC tonight are "King Arthur" and "We Were Soldiers"––neither of which I have any real interest in––and leave it to cable to make the 15 climactic minutes at the end of any film last a whole hour.
It dawned on me that there was something vaguely inappropriate about all these commercials, and I couldn't put my finger on what it was. After all, the parade of commercials for cell phone plans and insurance and decongestants hasn't changed significantly since I started watching television. Some still try to be funny, or ingratiating, or matter-of-fact. Hell, some of them are even good at being funny or ingratiating or matter-of-fact.
Listening to NPR this morning and hearing Diane Rehm (in her sultriest, old-beef-jerkey-I-found-between-the-couch-cushions voice) discuss the unemployment rate, I realized what it was that irked me so much about these advertisements: They really hadn't changed since I started watching television. Advertising executives haven't realized that nearly one in ten Americans doesn't have a job, and really is living on ramen noodles, like the chipper upstart Emily in this Allstate commercial.
"Emily's just starting out." I wish I was.
"Emily" is a stand-in for all us bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young folk who don't have a pot to piss in. Never mind the usual cues that she isn't "one of us"––that she's perfectly manicured, that she drives a new car––; what Emily's missing is the look of someone who has somewhere to be. So like an unemployed person living out of her parents' basement, she has the trappings of a workaday jane, but is obviously not really "just starting out." She's stagnating, only she's doing it with an idiot smile on her face.
I would love to see an advertisement on TV telling me a company is hiring people, and that labor is urgently needed. It's a pie-in-the-sky idea, but I think a commercial like that would indicate that a new reality is sinking in. A lot of Americans aren't thinking about how they can save big on their cell phone bills by switching carriers. We're thinking about what we can cut from our budgets. That's how scarce money is. It's a scarcity that we don't see anywhere on television, and if one were to sit on one's couch all day long and watch sitcoms and advertisements, one might never grasp how dire the job and money situation really is.
I wish I had Emily's problems. It would be awesome to move out of the basement and starve a little, as long as I had places to be and things to get done. But apart from Liz Lemon on "30 Rock" and a few rare others, television is populated with people who have no ambition––people who viewers never see working, or changing diapers, or even cleaning their immaculate Manhattan lofts.
It's disappointing because America is ripe for someone to produce commercials and television shows about the real drama of finding and keeping work.
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