by Allison L. Williams Hill In-Vesica Art Design Energy
“Do All Things In-Vesica.”
Originally posted on January 18, 2018
Commercial messages are designed to sell products. The ads target specific users and are always reaching for more to increase profit. Some of the messages should be questioned. Among them are two that subtly convey society-altering ideas.
Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead share Lays Potato Chips. They consume a product that is like them as they laugh gleefully. In another commercial, a Cinnamon Toast Crunch square consumes another square. It was too late for the second square when it realized what was about to happen.
The first commercial used adult potatoes traveling in a vehicle. The second Lays commercial had children potato heads discovering their parents behind flora at a campsite. A third commercial showed Mr. Potatohead discovering Mrs. Potatohead (a blond, interesting) consuming potato chips in the pantry of their home. The Mr. Potatohead toy was distributed in 1952, recognizable by at least three generations.
The Cinnamon Toast Crunch commercials’ target market is children with seriously unaware parents who consider objects eating others like themselves as innocuous.
Both used animation, Lays’ specifically uses stop animation, like a children’s entertainment show. These animated images consume things that are like themselves and attempt to render the message harmless because they are not real. It is only animation, after all. The message’s method reduces any objection to the unnatural suggestion of and the acceptance of eating others like oneself as irrational and not worthy of consideration.
Someone might say I’m being irrational. I ”see” cannibalism. Like eating like is cannibalism. Gary Larsen’s The Far Side had a comic where a chicken, in bed with a thermometer in its beak, was given a bowl of chicken soup. The chicken offering the soup ended with, “…Besides, it’s no one we know.” It acknowledged the act of cannibalism. This humor of Larsen’s comic was dark, and intentionally so. His audience was mature persons capable of understanding that type of humor. However, children are impressionable and are learning to discern right from wrong. Socially unacceptable acts displayed by fun, animated characters in commercials present a problem. A parent, who is vigilant in vetting what his or her child watches cannot prevent viewing of a commercial because, unlike series, movies, etc., they have no warning. They are televised within seconds of screens fading to black and are over in about twice that much time.
It all comes down to one’s point of view. If a parent or guardian sees these commercials, they can elect to discuss them with their child. Or they can elect to not discuss them if they think it’s harmless to see an excessively large tongue from a cinnamon square licking milk from another one prior to engulfing it.
Allison L. Williams Hill is an artist; designer; planner; healer; integrative health coach, and inventor. She shares her work and services through
“Do All Things In-Vesica”
Registered Medium and Spiritual Counselor, Certified Spiritual Healer, Church of Wisdom. In-Vesica’s slogan means to work and live while including Spirit in your everyday life.
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