Polyester Girl and the Materialetts

…and on the 8th day, God created an advertisement showcasing what he had just created…

The last 100 years have seen the growth of the corporate age, which has given leeway to a new form communication which can only properly be described as ‘self-expression crossed with brainwashing techniques, no money-back guarantee’.

While it is true that advertising does have many positive influences, mostly its influence on design (iPod ads, Nike soccer ads) and impact on the very culture of humanity (catch phrases: “Not happy Jan” etc…and that Canton Wokstar ad, I love that ad :D lol), the one thing I can never forgive advertising for is the rise of materialism.

I don’t think anything else in history has caused people to so silently yet so strongly be destroyed inside. I think this can be most easily seen in the whole clothing/image thing for teenage/pre-teen girls. Countless stories over the years; peer pressure leading to suicide and self-mutilation, whole families going broke satisfying the needs of these addictions, teen pregnancies and deaths resulting from sexually transmitted diseases. The list could go on.

The impact that its had on actual CULTURE itself is staggering, though. We don’t even know it, and it happens. Those of us who say we are “beyond all that commercial crap” are those who are most deeply in (how can you fight something in yourself that you deny exists?) Anyone who says they aren't affected by media and commercialism is suffering the worst kind of pride. We are all attached to media…dangerously so.

Which brings up an interesting point; when it comes time for human life to move on from advertising and commercialism, will we survive? Will the revolution against media kill all? Like a deathbed patient pulling his life-support from the wall. We are attached to media now, it needs us as much as we need it.

We look for clichéd scenes in real life, finding them more REAL then reality. Everyday life needs to be an episode of Neighbours, love life needs to be straight from Days of our Lives, sporting events need to be ‘broadcast straight from a channel 7 news desk’ and shopping is those ads in-between.

I’d like to talk about the most important one of those impacts on society mentioned before. The impact on ‘love’. Can such a thing be real anymore? You start feeling ‘love’ only to realise that its ‘exactly like T.V’, and if T.V isn’t real…?

Nowadays, love is never seriously represented on T.V like it was on T.V 30 years ago. The best example is one of the most clichéd ‘romantic scenes’ (now mostly used in parodies) where two people run towards each other in slow motion with arms outstretched. Go back 50 years, and people might have actually done this kind of thing (albeit not in slow motion) but nowadays that is impossible. LOVE ITSELF has changed, people just laugh at this kind of thing nowadays. Shakespearian love cannot exist nowadays, melodrama and love are two words separated by a concrete barrier with the word ‘media’ on it.

And that is what’s interesting. NOWADAYS, love isn’t represented so melodramatically! It’s represented ‘realistically’, where the endings aren’t always as happy, where sex scenes aren't always beautiful, where love seems strange and alienating for some. Will this love (the only love we can truly accept as real) soon become usurious, even humorous to us? The most important thing is, will ‘real’ love soon cease to be? Brought down by the material world that created it?

...but I love that ad about the 'Finnish' Sauce. That always makes me laugh :D "and always we are laughing!...it must be Finnish humor" hehehe...Finland