ecstasy of the real. In Baudrillard’s “hyper-reality” and “simulacra” terms, the storied images of Nike sports heroes are more real than the reality of Third World workers to millions of consumers. However this consuming condition is an obsession and the product of late capitalism in Western societies.
Digitally created commercials – Faking the real
When we examine television advertising we once again find art and technology being used to create simulations that tell stories in an effort to evoke desired reactions from audiences. But in advertising we see a strange new cultural creation: the 20-second ‘cinematic’ production full of dancing, singing and joke-telling characters playing physicians, housewives, and used car salesmen, with ultra-abbreviated plots and quick resolutions of conflict in which the characters overcome obstacles and fulfil their desires in record time with the help of the product. Unlike movies, which will evoke the wrath of the audience if the unfolding of the story is interrupted, in commercials there is virtually no story to interrupt. The entire commercial is a dynamic, graphic, field composed of images, music, theatrical performances, superimposed illustrations, narration, and other elements, which reinforce each other to achieve their effect.
Commercials also include another kind of simulation in the form of digitally manipulated images that are used to portray another realm of fantasy in which the limits imposed by the physical world no longer seem to be in effect. As a result, they are full of talking dogs, giant sized children, products that zoom into space, dancing credit cards and scenes that suddenly become two-dimensional which spin out of existence, creating a virtual world that surpasses anything produced by Imax or Nintendo.
Commercials take these elements – visual fantasy, deceptive images of the products, and false claims – and weave them into their various approaches. There are, perhaps, a handful of approaches that they rely on and put together in different ways, just as theme parks, video games, television and news fall into a few basic categories.
The product, no longer able to offer satisfaction on its own ground (“a potato chip is a chip is a chip”), instead offers the consumer a chance to be part of a certain ‘crowd’ or ‘scene.’ They belong to a cool “product tribe,” revelling in the image and sensibility that the product somehow mystically confers – the fetishism of commodities. More and more people are being sold style, image, and celebrity, since there is no substance or material satisfaction to the product-in-itself. Concealed within the jump-cut flash of post-modern advertising is a simple code: consumption is a mode of transcendence, a way to take part in something larger than yourself, the “Pepsi Generation.” Today, ads are filled with a strange sort of rugged selfishness, misanthropy, and mean-spirit people (“touch my Doritos and die.”) A person is told sternly to buy as much as they can of the product but never to share with friends. “Get your own,” they’re told. Latest ads on TV have that narrative that goes on and on and takes the form of a mini soap or a series of short cinematic films. The product is like a movie star. The product has taken the stand of the character in the commercial. It has become another simulation for audiences. Small Nokia phones that are given a character play a different role in each different Nokia commercial.
Digital technology has given designers the ability to make real characters and models that we see in everyday TV. The big entities spend millions of pounds in one 60 second commercial. The commercial has the production company behind it; director, actors and the whole set that would normally be used in film production.
Many television commercials thus give us another variation on Umberto Eco’s absolute fakes; they are false promises that make everything seem better than it is. Like theme parks, they make mundane realities look like transcendent utopias.
All cultures place people inside invented worlds, so that in itself, isn’t what