I found myself down a YouTube rabbit hole and ended up watching compilations of commercial of commercials from the early 80s and damned if it didn’t work. Brought back tons of memories. It then occurred to me, that is kind of exactly what the ad men who made those ads wanted and what they were designed to do: manipulate emotions. So on one level it is just crass commercialism (literally) but on another it really does reflect my childhood and my experiences as a kid so I’m not sure if I am being a sucker or not.
As I write this, it seems the real question is: are TV commercials art? Are they just pitches meant to convince or can they be something more than that?
Sure, given a wide enough definition of “art.” But even if they aren’t, they can still bring back memories and evoke feelings of nostalgia, juts by being something you saw/heard many years ago but not since.
I like the really OLD vintage commercials that depict the America of the past. Mom, Dad, 2-1/2 kids, and the dog, piling into the station wagon. Mom washing the kitchen linoleum, cheerfully, like Donna Reed, in a cute apron. All those jingles for fizzies, cereal, candy, all back when our biggest worry was wondering if mom brought home goodies from the A&P.
Considering that over half of modern commercials are for pharmaceuticals and list potentially fatal side effects in morbid detail, I’d say no, it’s not weird to be nostalgic for a simple jingle like “plop plop fizz fizz…”.
I get way more nostalgic for the commercials of my childhood than I do for most of the TV shows. Maybe it’s because when I was growing up (the '70s) we didn’t have VCRs yet, so you pretty much got to see a show once, or twice if you watched the rerun, and then you were lucky if you caught it in syndication (if it even lasted long enough to make it). But commercials played hundreds of times and burned themselves and their jingles and taglines into your brain.
Heck, I even have fond memories for regional commercials like “Adee Do!” and “Go See Cal!”
It’s not weird, because some ads are enjoyable for their own sake. Take the current Lily Adams ad campaign for AT&T. They’re hilarious little mini-movies, and I look forward to new ones for reasons independent of Milana Vayntrub’s comeliness. In five years when she and the ad agency have both loved on, I’ll miss them.
I guess I enjoy the commercials because they more show the world I want to remember and the things in it than anything else. Not always in a realistic manner – but who wants a realistic reminder of their youth?
It’s also a case of the ‘squeakiest wheel’. Only a tiny handful of commercials from back then were worth remembering, the vast majority of them were just as forgettable as today.
