Marinate in Time
We love to hate them. They drive us nuts. As the story reaches a point at which your nerves are at the breaking point, bam! You have to wait. How long depends on what channel you're watching. Six minutes is the usual, though some channels have maddening commercial breaks of close to fifteen minutes. Everyone hates commercials.
But then there are commercials that we expect, that we await during part of the year. Christmas commercials are some of them. There are commercials for Freixenet cava whose television presentation used to be advertised ahead of time as if it were a new television show. Some of the longest of them took around ten minutes and showcased famous actors and actresses. For the last two years or so, they only last a little longer than a minute and tend to feature Spanish athletic women's teams that are Olympic medalists. But now the full commercial doesn't even appear on television. They have a fifteen minute compressed blurb and that's it. To see it complete you have to go to the internet.
Then there are the Christmas lottery commercials. They used to last well over a minute and were nostalgic and, well, Christmassy. The best were the ones that lasted quite a few years, with the British actor and model, Clive Arundell. Everyone knows him as the "Calvo" or "Bald One." He embodied the spirit of luck in the lottery as music from Dr. Zhivago flittered along. When someone decided they were tired of him, we passed through horrific renditions of an Elvis song, tear jerkers of unemployed neighbors winning the lottery, to animated shorts of a mannequin factory night guard with whom the day workers shared their new money, to this year's in which a granny mistakes last year's winning number for this year's and thinks she's won. The entire town helps her celebrate, even though she didn't win. (At the end, one wonders who's going to pay for all the food and champagne.) But this year's lottery commercial appeared once on national television at prime time and hasn't been seen since. All we see are about ten seconds, and then we're told to check it out on the internet.
I hate commercials in general on television and I'm not about to go and check them out on internet. The only commercials I will look at on YouTube, are commercials from when I was a child or a teenager. Their power now is in the memories they contain, not the urge to buy the product. Let's face it, living in Spain, I'm not about to buy a can of StarKist tuna (Sorry, Charlie!). Nor will I buy Oscar Mayer bologna, but I still like to hear the kid sing the jingle and spell out b-o-l-o-g-n-a. I also like to occasionally see how Mikey likes Life Cereal, and listen to Coca-Cola want to "...teach the world to sing in perfect harmony..." which would be a pretty good one to re-air in this day and age. My fruit is also likely to come from the Spanish Mediterranean, yet I still like the jingle for California peaches and nectarines, "..fresh from the tree, taste them and see.." The sales commercials for now-defunct department stores, like Bradless and Zayre, also show how far we have come in the perception of gender roles, and that some things slowly get better with the passing years. And, yes, at the time I paid no attention to them, and only wanted the television show I was watching to come back on.
So, maybe within twenty or thirty years I'll check out this year's commercials on YouTube or whatever video web page there might be in the future. Until then, they aren't getting my visit.
But then there are commercials that we expect, that we await during part of the year. Christmas commercials are some of them. There are commercials for Freixenet cava whose television presentation used to be advertised ahead of time as if it were a new television show. Some of the longest of them took around ten minutes and showcased famous actors and actresses. For the last two years or so, they only last a little longer than a minute and tend to feature Spanish athletic women's teams that are Olympic medalists. But now the full commercial doesn't even appear on television. They have a fifteen minute compressed blurb and that's it. To see it complete you have to go to the internet.
Then there are the Christmas lottery commercials. They used to last well over a minute and were nostalgic and, well, Christmassy. The best were the ones that lasted quite a few years, with the British actor and model, Clive Arundell. Everyone knows him as the "Calvo" or "Bald One." He embodied the spirit of luck in the lottery as music from Dr. Zhivago flittered along. When someone decided they were tired of him, we passed through horrific renditions of an Elvis song, tear jerkers of unemployed neighbors winning the lottery, to animated shorts of a mannequin factory night guard with whom the day workers shared their new money, to this year's in which a granny mistakes last year's winning number for this year's and thinks she's won. The entire town helps her celebrate, even though she didn't win. (At the end, one wonders who's going to pay for all the food and champagne.) But this year's lottery commercial appeared once on national television at prime time and hasn't been seen since. All we see are about ten seconds, and then we're told to check it out on the internet.
I hate commercials in general on television and I'm not about to go and check them out on internet. The only commercials I will look at on YouTube, are commercials from when I was a child or a teenager. Their power now is in the memories they contain, not the urge to buy the product. Let's face it, living in Spain, I'm not about to buy a can of StarKist tuna (Sorry, Charlie!). Nor will I buy Oscar Mayer bologna, but I still like to hear the kid sing the jingle and spell out b-o-l-o-g-n-a. I also like to occasionally see how Mikey likes Life Cereal, and listen to Coca-Cola want to "...teach the world to sing in perfect harmony..." which would be a pretty good one to re-air in this day and age. My fruit is also likely to come from the Spanish Mediterranean, yet I still like the jingle for California peaches and nectarines, "..fresh from the tree, taste them and see.." The sales commercials for now-defunct department stores, like Bradless and Zayre, also show how far we have come in the perception of gender roles, and that some things slowly get better with the passing years. And, yes, at the time I paid no attention to them, and only wanted the television show I was watching to come back on.
So, maybe within twenty or thirty years I'll check out this year's commercials on YouTube or whatever video web page there might be in the future. Until then, they aren't getting my visit.
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