A couple of weeks ago I posted a vintage ad referring to Bolsheviks and an interesting discussion ensued about the difficulty of knowing how seriously people would have taken ads at the time they were made and whether the ad would have been seen as a parody at the time. We have a tendency to see ourselves as particularly witty, sophisticated consumers of media and to think people in the past were more straight-forward, credulous, and took things at face value (I’ve certainly been guilty of it), as though sarcasm and parody are recent inventions.
I thought of that when I saw the video Michael M. sent in. It was made as an in-house joke by a producer of commercials in the 1960s and makes fun of cliches used in commercials at the time. It’s slightly NSFW–there are exposed breasts at about 4:10 in, as a reader pointed out.
It also, of course, pulls the curtain back on the advertising industry a bit. As Michael says,
Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.We’ve all seen parodies of the old 50s and 60s style commercials, but I thought it very interesting (and telling) to see it parodied at the time of production, in knowing fashion by the very people who make them. These advertisers were well aware they were selling a fantasy.
Comments 11
JoyfulBee — November 20, 2010
Just noting in case you feel like it warrants a NSFW or a note, there are exposed breasts at around 4:10.
I do think it's funny to see old things like this, showing the sense of humour about it of the time. It's really easy when you learn history to feel disconnected from the people that you're learning about, you kind of treat them like cardboard cut outs of a person and don't think of them necessarily having the same day to day emotions and experiences as you. I find this especially true when you go further and further back, and you're studying people who have starkly different ways of dressing, mannerisms, and behaviors, sometimes you have to remind yourself that they were still people and could have shared some of the same angst, lust, or what have you of people today.
As far as advertising, I credit a lot of my early knowledge of advertising scams and schemes from reading my dads old Mad Magazines from the 70s. A lot of them had comics mocking the prevalent advertising tricks of the time, most of which are still prevalent today, so I learned early to look for them and then also found them humorous when I could spot them. It was like being in on the jokes of adults, as Mad Magazines in my mind were real adult fodder (as they belonged to my dad).
RMG — November 20, 2010
This is amazing.
HP — November 20, 2010
And let's not forget Stan Freberg, who became a huge celebrity by skewering Madison Ave. on his radio show, while continuing be the highest paid creative talent in that same industry.
Ben — November 20, 2010
Wow, this is a great find, I'm saving it for later.
One of the largest challenges in recognizing and understanding satire is that you need a really good understanding of the context that it came from. Try reading Guliver's Travels without any annotations, or try to watch the original Scary Movie without a good memory of popular movies made from 1995 to 2000.
A. Helin — November 21, 2010
This is brilliant, my favourite part is the little girl poking her head up and Mr Cliche hurriedly pushing her back into hiding.
Laughingrat — November 21, 2010
This was fabulous! I too find the parody's comment on the whiteness of TV families pretty interesting.
uberrogo — November 23, 2010
This is a little bit like the game Fallout.