Is YouTube the reason for all the Christmas carol parodies in TV commercials?

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Has anyone else noticed how many TV commercials for this holiday season revolve around the singing of a traditional Christmas carol with substitute lyrics which tout the products or benefits of buying the advertiser’s wares?

Some examples of song parodies (or perhaps travesties) driving TV commercials this year:

  • T.J.Maxx/Marshall’s puts new lyrics to “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”
  • Best Buy parodies a number of carols, but the one that comes to mind is “God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen”
  • The Pennsylvania Lottery has a game for every day in its version of “The 12 Days of Christmas”
  • For Outback Steak House, “Jingle Bells” becomes “Lobster tails, lobster tails, lobsters all the way…”
  • Rohrich Motors, a local car dealer, does its own version of “Jingle Bells” dedicated to financing a car purchase, which goes “Zero down, zero down, zero all the way…” 

The question is why has this advertising style invaded TV all of the sudden? I believe the answer is that the song parody represents the confluence of two trends:

  1. The song parody is a form of consumer-produced art that has become so popular in the age of YouTube and Facebook.
  2. The song parody is in essence adolescent humor, which has also become increasingly popular in advertising, especially in any non-jewelry commercial targeting men (and even some of the jewelry ones as well).

Now for a little personal history of song parodies leading to a unified theory of why they have invaded the public psyche lately, and especially this Christmas:  When I was a kid, song parodies were a kind of weak-kneed rebellion in middle school years.  There was always one person in every group of kids, usually but not always a boy (and in my group it was me) who would cleverly turn popular songs into something funny.  In my case, we were 12-year-old Jewish boys rebelling against singing Christmas carols in the holiday assemblies of our public schools, so we would sing my words to “Noel”: “No ale this morning ‘cause Piels is on strike.” Turning “Silver bells” and “Jingle bells” slightly obscene took nothing more than a deft change of one vowel.  In fact, most of the song parodies I wrote, to such varied material as “Carolina in the Morning,” “The Singing Nun” and “Stuck on You,” were pretty blue.

These parody songs, sung in such male-bonding environments as scout camps, school assemblies and dances, moved from group to group or died out when the creators grew up, but for the most part were marginal cultural artifacts, much like graffiti before pop artists discovered spray paint in the early 70’s.

Of course, there have been infrequent mainstream and near mainstream “stars” who depended primarily or exclusively on song parodies.  Alan Sherman had a series of albums in the early 60’s, with such gimmick titles as “Ma Zelda” for “Mathilda,” “Harvey and Sheila” for “Hava Nagilah,” and the incomparable masterpiece of the genre, “Oh Boy,” a cultural dictionary set to “The Ballad Of Pepe Pinto (Mexican Jumping Bean Song)” which both Billy Joel and REM may have used for inspiration for their own list songs, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and “The End of The World,” respectively. 

Calvin Trillin is our most distinguished current practitioner of song parodies in the pages of Nation, but he never sings his material (to my knowledge), only writes it down.

Nowadays, our up-and-coming Lorenz Harts get a video camera and perform their songs for the Internet, that is, the entire world.  The song parodies have thus become part of the do-it-yourself trend in entertainment launched by reality TV and the Internet.  Beyond that, they are also part of the larger trend to sacrifice quality for accessibility and portability: sound quality, image quality and quality in production values.  Such tradeoffs have been made before in cultural history, e.g., in Byzantine art and post-Charlemagne letters.

Trends such as these are ever the font of advertising inspiration.  In fact, a history of advertising reflects a history of short- and long-term trends in popular culture as a whole.  

I’m going to close with a moment of self-indulgence with the lyrics for my favorite among the song parodies I have written.  I did this one as a 21-year-old graduate student in comparative literature, sung to Jimmy McHugh’s melody for “I’m in the Mood for Love”:

I’m in the mood for geometry

simply because you’re near me.

When we are lying parallel

I’m in the mood for geometry.

 

Staring into your parabolas

sends me into hyperbole.

I think your cosine’s the same as mine,

I’m in the mood for geometry.

Buy now, pay later turns infantilization into debt slavery.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

After signing off yesterday, I realized that I forgot to mention one of the most subtle forms of infantilization of American adults, one that has led to the current deep recession (which I won’t believe is over until there is some job growth).

It’s the “buy now, pay later” mentality that makes people use high-interest credit cards or take loans on their houses to buy something now instead of saving up the money and not having to pay interest later.  Let’s amend the phrase and call it what it really is: “buy now and pay more later” because of what are sometimes exorbitant interest charges.

Infants and children can’t wait.  One of the signs of adulthood is being able to delay gratification.  Buy now, pay more later is about instant gratification.  It’s about behaving just like a child.

Yet the “buy now and pay more later” ideology permeates our culture more than any other ideological principle, more than even the superiority of the free market or the blessedness of monogamy.  And it has all happened since the end of World War II.

Most advertising is about making people want something right now so people will buy right now!!  If people stopped behaving like children when it comes to satisfying urges, many of which television and other mass media artificially inseminate into viewers, the U.S. economy would come unhinged.

On the other hand, when sub-prime mortgages brought down housing values, literally millions of people who had solid jobs and good mortgages suddenly owed more money than their houses were worth, all because as the value of housing had become inflated, they had borrowed more on theirs so they could buy now and pay more later.

So indeed, the U.S. would be better off if we weaned ourselves off the “buy on credit” mentality completely, except when it comes to buying (not fixing up) homes and paying for college for kids who deserve to be in college.  The economy would shudder if we all woke up one morning and decided to become adults, and then it would adjust.

The infantilization of the U.S.: more adults are behaving like children today.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Paul Sheldon pointed out to me a recent op/ed piece published in the New York Times by an Oregon high school senior, who tells of the many times in visiting college campuses that she heard the tour guide compare some aspect of the school to Hogwarts, which I understand is the imaginary school for apprentice practitioners of supernatural arts in the Harry Potter children’s books. 

Some examples of what Lauren Edelsen encountered:

  • “…he points to a nearby field and mentions the sport students play there: a flightless version of J. K. Rowling’s Quidditch game — broomsticks and all.” (Middlebury)
  • “…the admissions officer compared the intramural sports competitions there to the Hogwarts House Cup.  The tour guide told me that I wouldn’t be able to see the university’s huge freshman dining hall as it was closed for the day, but to just imagine Hogwarts’s Great Hall in its place.”  (Harvard)
  • “…a tour guide ushered my group past a large, wood-paneled room filled with comfortable chairs and mentioned the Hogwarts feel it was known for.” (Dartmouth)

And on and on about other pretty laughable, if pathetic examples of colleges touting their Potteresque qualities. 

First off, hats off to Lauren for expressing her disappointment that the schools were connecting to children’s literature to sell themselves.  Universities should be creating free-thinking adults, not indulging the passions of childhood.

Now to put the information presented in this article into a broader context, which is the infantilization of American adulthood over the past 40 years.   Infantilization means to make someone into an infant in appearance or behavior, in this case, for adults to retain the habits and predilections of childhood which are in fact made for children.

I’m talking about adults in late 20th century and early 21st century America behaving like children and enjoying the entertainments of their childhood.   Some examples:

  • Disney’s EPCOT Center, a theme park for adults, opened in 1982 and since then the growth in popularity of all theme parks among adults has skyrocketed.  It is absolutely amazing how many adults now go to theme parks for vacation.
  • Around the mid-70s, there began a wave of children’s movies for adults, starting with the “Star Wars” and the Indiana Jones series.  Other children’s movies for adults are the movie versions of situation comedies for children such as “The Brady Bunch.” (But I’m not talking about “The Simpsons,” which like “Gulliver’s Travels” and “Huckleberry Finn,” is an adult entertainment that children can also enjoy.)
  • The hundreds of computer games for adults.
  • Glorified fast-food chains serving alcohol with video and other games for adults, such as Dave & Busters.
  • The intervention of parents into the play lives of their children, e.g., over-organization by parents of all activities of children.

There is also some infantilization in the growth of experts to help us manage our lives such as closet consultants, professional organizers, party planners, life coaches, college selection consultants, etc.  The rise of the “Age of the Expert” results from a variety of social and economic forces, but one of them certainly is this trend of adults behaving like children (looking for an adult to tell them what to do).

Over the next few days/weeks/months/years, I’m going to try to identify and write about other aspects of the “infantilization of adult” trend.

Buy Citigroup stock if you want to pay for executive bonuses.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Yesterday’s announcement that Citigroup is repaying the $20 billion it owes the federal government in TARP (aka  “bailout”) funds rightfully focused on the news that yet another bank was returning the loan.  Many new stories–but not all and none of the shorter ones–also mentioned the curious fact that Citigroup was going to sell $20.5 billion in stock to finance the return of the money. 

No one yet has connected the dots between these two facts, so let’s do it now as Socrates would have, which means we’ll ask a series of questions to which we already know the answers.

  1. Why is Citigroup returning the money?  So they can have more flexibility in giving bonuses to executives (now that the crisis has passed).
  2. Why is Citigroup floating stock?  So they can pay off the TARP funds.
  3. What then are the new investors into Citigroup investing in?  Bonuses for executives.  

By buying the new stock, investors will water down the stock (since there will be more shares out now for a company worth the same, so each share represents a smaller piece than before).  The investment will also facilitate an increase in the company’s cost structure since it will enable the company to give out those bonuses.

I’m not a stock picker and I don’t give stock advice, but I don’t mind telling readers that I won’t be buying any of the new Citigroup stock.

Target misses the target with a traumatic holiday ad.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Target is a very savvy marketing company, and like all large marketers, it conducts a lot of consumer research and pretests all its commercials.

Yet after all of that, Target has come up with what I think is a very negative TV ad, one in which they get connected to a traumatic moment in the life of a dysfunctional family.   

Here’s a précis of the ad (and I may have some of the words in quotes wrong, but not the thoughts of those quotes nor the underlying emotional tenor):  Mom, Dad and Daughter are around the Christmas tree and Mom unwraps a large flat-screen TV.  Dad says something like, “I thought Santa was watching his pennies this year” through clenched teeth to which Mom answers, again with clenching of teeth, “Santa thought we could afford it.”  Back and forth it goes, each time a tad more hostility in the voices, back and forth between Mom and Dad, with a shot of Daughter listening, a little terrified.  The last shot is of Mom, an odd mixture of happiness and terror on her face, saying, “But what if Santa got a good deal.”  Then the screen cuts to the Target logo.

The cut to Target is ambivalent, meaning it could signify two things.  But both are bad for Target, as follows:

  • Either the ad is saying, avoid this tense scene about money by buying at Target.

OR

  • Target has turned this mom into a heroine (but the heroine is near tears and the family seems to be falling apart right underneath the Christmas tree).

Christmas is an aspirational holiday.  We aspire to show our loved ones that we love them, which in the United States means buying them something that they really like.  There is nothing aspirational about a thinly veiled argument over money in front of the kid on Christmas morning in which both parents bandy about a symbol of childhood happiness, Santa, as if it were a symbolic rapier.  Not waiting to talk until the kids are off somewhere is certainly a sign of a dysfunctional family.  Why would Target executives think that linking to this disturbing family vignette would make people feel warm and cozy inside about buying at their stores?

Some surprising lessons from the 16th century

Posted on by Marc Jampole

I have been rereading the updated 1972 edition of Fernand Braudel’s The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, which originally appeared in 1949.  Some of Braudel’s conclusions about economic and political trends of the 16th century resonate today.

I’m just at page 470 (of about 1,200 pages!) and here’s what I’ve already learned about the 1500s in the Mediterranean region and the wider world:

  • The last countries entering any industry tended to quickly dominate older players.
  • When regional or national economies started to get strong banking industries, it tended to weaken and eventually drive out other industries and commerce.
  • In the trade between the west (Europe) and the east (Asia), hard currency, which in those days comprised gold and silver, tended always to flow to the east.
  • Worldwide weather changes (the beginning of “The Little Ice Age”) had profound effects on local and international economies and on the way people lived.

All four of these observations apply to the current situation.  Strange as it may seem, the U.S. is repeating many of the mistakes of 16th century Spain.

I have never thought to compare the current age to the 16th century.  Nor do I believe that these four observations on the 16th century demonstrate that we are living through its rerun. 

What I do think is that Braudel’s observations are truisms of economics and politics that transcend centuries and levels of economic development.  It’s a shame that we never seem to learn the lessons of history.

And here’s another truism that I know will dominate much of the rest of the book (as I remember from my reading of Braudel some 25 years ago):  a sure way to deplete your nation’s treasury and destroy your economy is to fight a distant war against a smaller but highly motivated foe on that foe’s land.

I’m referring to the 80-year war between Spain and its unhappy possession, the Netherlands, which started in 1568.  The similarities to Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan are compelling and disheartening.

Once again a reporter tells us that the best way to save money is to spend money.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Featured on a number of portals and websites lately has been a Bankrate.com article by Heather Boerner on four urgent home fixes people should make before they retire.  The idea is that if you plan to stay in your home, as most people do, it’s better to make expensive one-time repairs such as replacing the plumbing or the roof while you’re still working. 

It sounds like a sensible suggestion.  A major repair typically costs more in an emergency situation, e.g., when the roof starts to leak, and any major expense will play havoc with those on a fixed-income. 

But underneath the good advice, the ideological subtext still exhorts the reader to buy, buy, buy!, because it is by spending more now that you obtain the “control you will have over your life” that the article promises.  Once again, the answer to your problems is to buy something. 

As a stand-alone advice feature, the article is just fine.  But the daily accumulation of advice articles, virtually all of which are veiled shills for the purchase of a product or service, creates the sense in readers that it is only through engaging in a commercial transaction that all problems are solved and all needs satisfied; and that it is only in the context of commercial transactions that all interpersonal relations take place. 

Maureen Dowd speaks in code and everyone understands what she means.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Another low point in the endless and senseless coverage of a married professional golfer’s extramarital affairs was Maureen Dowd’s smarmy attempt to find a trend in the actions of Tiger Woods and White House social secretary Desiree Rogers who might (but might not) share some blame for party-crashers penetrating President Obama’s first state dinner and demurred from testifying to Congress about the incident. 

GenXProgress in the Daily Kos has already discussed the inherent racism in the connection between Tiger and Ms. Rogers, since the two people and two cases have absolutely nothing to do with each other except that both are at least part African-American.

What GenXProgress does not detail, and I will provide here, are the many racial code phrases Dowd uses or creates on the spot to explain why our anger at Tiger and Ms. Rogers is and should be similar in nature:

  • “…put themselves beyond authority…”
  •  “…perfectionist high-achievers brought low…”
  • “…both the golf diva and the social diva…
  • “…it was the assertion of personal privilege by Tiger and Desiree that was offensive…” (and not Ms. Roger’s assertion of “executive privilege” or Tiger’s desire not to air his dirty laundry in public, a desire he shares with virtually every public person caught in extracurricular hanky-panky).
  • “She mistook herself for the principal, sashaying around and posing in magazines as though she were the first lady…”

As far as I can tell, these phrases are all code for “uppity N*****s.”  Shame on Ms. Dowd for stooping so low.

The Daily News does a classic bait-and-switch using Tiger bait.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

The low point of the unfolding coverage of Tiger Wood’s alleged multiple affairs has to be the December 4 article in the New York Daily News about the reaction of a man who would have been the father-in-law of one of Tiger’s purported playmates if the man’s son had not died in the 9/11 attack. 

The headline, “Almost father-in-law of alleged Tiger Woods mistress Rachel Uchitel: She’s a stranger to me now,” strongly implies two pieces of information:

  1. He’s angry at her
  2. The link to Tiger is the reason he’s angry.

After essentially repeating the “stranger” headline in the two short opening paragraphs, the article continues: “O’Grady said the sexy siren accused of being one of Tiger Wood’s mistresses is not the wholesome woman his son was planning to marry when he was killed on 9/11 – and when she became a national symbol of grief over the terror attack.  ‘She was a nice person.  She is not the same person anymore,’ O’Grady said.”  (Blogger’s note: while there were a few articles about Uchitel mourning her fiancée, she never became a “national symbol of grief.”)

When you read further down in the story, though, you learn that the potential dad-in-law has not seen Ms. Rachel since the 9/11 attack.  In other words:

  • “She’s a stranger to me now” is a statement of fact and not an expression of anger related to the Tiger link
  • The guy can reasonably have no idea what Ms. Rachel is really like now since he has by his own admission had absolutely no contact with her in eight years.

So what you have is an old-fashioned “bait and switch” of the kind that has always populated tabloid newspapers.  There is no news here except for the absolutely trivial fact that one of Tiger’s alleged girlfriends once was engaged to a 9/11 victim.  The Daily News report “beefs up” the story by injecting the emotions of a basically uninvolved third party in a misleading lead and opening.

Walmart commercials are becoming the new reality TV

Posted on by Marc Jampole

I saw another new Walmart commercial that seems to be based on the new realities of the great recession and the 21st century family. 

In this one, the announcer says that it costs $45 on average to take a family (of four?) out to dinner.  Instead, the announcer suggests, with that Walmart mix of aggressive friendliness and friendly expertise, that mother (since it is a woman in the commercial) uses Birdseye frozen foods as the basis of a home-cooked meal once a month!!  The narrator concludes by triumphantly announcing that you’ll save $345 a year (the difference between the home-cooked meal and eating out times 12, I assume).

The Walmart message seems to have changed quite recently from the long-time exclamation to be happy because what you’re buying is cheap to a more nuanced plea: Walmart can help you deal with your family’s challenges.  The “you” is a woman, as there has yet to be a man shown in the two new commercials I have thus far seen.  (For an analysis of the other one, on Christmas without dad, see my November 25 blog).

But let’s peel away the explicit message, “we’ll help you save money while feeding your family” and see the underlying subtextual conversation.  I call it a conversation because Walmart is not trying to sell something.  Instead, it is responding to a reality, and in this case, the reality is the large extent to which U.S. families, especially in the middle class, eat meals out.  The storyline—once a month you cook in instead of eating out—reflects the trend of eating more meals away from home.  The average American now eats away from home six times a week.  Although the NPD Group reported in July that restaurant trips in 2009 are down almost 3% over 2008, Americans still spend 50% of their food dollars in restaurants and on average, eat out six times a week.

I’m going to end with an archetype, which is a kind of argument by anecdote.  The archetype is a generalized version of a group of people who share a number of characteristics, e.g., “he’s an archetypal first baseman—slow with power in his bat and a weak arm.” The classic archetype in politics over the past 40 years was Reagan’s “Welfare Queens.”  

The archetype I am imagining is a middle-class family in which both mother and father have professional jobs or a single mother is working and making a very good living, let’s call it six-figures in income in either case.  I have known a lot of families that fit this description and have the following weekly dinner menu: pizza one night; McDonald’s or Wendy’s on another night; some family style restaurant a third night—could be Eat ‘n Park, Denny’s or even Olive Garden.  Then there’s take-out Chinese.  We still haven’t gotten to mom and dad having a night out alone at Chez Fourstar.  Just as the subtext of one of the Walmart commercials is an appeal to the single mother, so is this one that mentions Birdseye meant to appeal to families that eat out all the time.  Otherwise, why the stress on not eating out once a month?

In its subtext, Walmart has begun, I believe for the very first time, to segment the marketplace and try to appeal to specific subgroups that have special concerns and needs.  That makes the new commercials a form of reality TV.