Life Lies

What is the main problem when it comes to dealing with marketing? Is it the blatant stupidity inherent in each ad we are exposed to? Is it the idea that we are being sold a lot of crap we don't need, but are made to want? Not quite. The main problem with marketing, with media in general, is the lifestyle they need us to believe others lead.

We have always been sold the image of a perfect life by theentertainment industry. Entertainment is where we all go to escape from the trials of everyday life. Who wants to go and see the same shit that they live with everyday? No one. So what they show has to be an image of a perfect life. We look to our entertainment (television specifically) to give us a picture of something better, to play out our dreams in living color right in front of our conscious minds. And they are more than happy to do that for us. They want to show us the happy families, the beautiful girlfriends, and the sarcastic (but ever so loyal) drunk on a barstool that could inhabit our lives. They need these images to turn from our entertainment into our goals. "If only my life was like everyone else's, like on TV."

They need us to believe in that much more than they need us to believe in the product they're selling (In fact, these types of images are found most often in TV shows and movies. The commercials are perceived as too obviously selling to have us believe the life in them). If you do believe, it's only half a step to thinking that you need to have those products to live that life.

The first lesson we all need to learn if we are to live free from the marketers tendrils is that that lifestyle does not exist. It's a fairy tale. This is a cold, hard, irrefutable truth. Admittedly, it's pretty self-evident, on the surface anyway. But look underneath the surface and examine all of those images in your head that you dream of attaining one day. All those perfect Sunday afternoons with your loved ones, or those exciting excursions to some isolated peak come from somewhere. They have been showing us this perfect life forever. It is there in television shows, in commercials, in the movies. We've all seen it. Whatever your perfect life may be, they've found it and put it up there so you can dream of it.

And plenty of us do believe in it. According to research reported in Utne Reader (Nov.-Dec. #98) people who watch more TV routinely overestimate other's standards of living. Those who are "heavy watchers" of television also overestimate the percentage of the population who are millionaires.

I'm ready to bet each and every one of you that you're not so willing to give up those dreams that have been beamed at you over the airwaves either. But you have to do it. The idyllic families, the perfect job, the weekend getaways on a regular basis, are all pretty things to think of and dream about. But they're not a part of everyone else's lives. You're not missing out on something because you don't use Tide. It has nothing to do with having a Coke and a smile. If you eat beef, all you get is a stomachache, not a smiling, happy family around the dinner table. Everyone else's life is just as fucked up and as strange as yours.

It isn't hard to fall prey to this image. From the first stories we are told as children, through the enterainments that we were spoon fed as we grew up, right into the print ads in the highbrow, liberal magazines and weeklies we read today, images of an idyllic life are thrown in our faces. Images that only a fool would not want to be possible. We've been shown the dream of a marriage and family based on love and trust and working just because of that. We've been told that there really is a place where everyone always knows your name, and that they are always there, unchanging, safe.

Television shows parents who don't yell at their kid to leave me the hell alone, I have a headache! No, these parents actually let the kid sit quietly on their lap while the drugs work their miracles. These images create the idea of how these people lead their lives. The things that they use and the things that they have are all a part of it. Eventually, we are expected to put two and two together, and buy whatever it is dad is using to make his headache go away or whatever pretty chair mom bought to spruce up the Living Room.

Life, in the land of entertainment, is easy, and this is the life we hear about the most. It is what we believe the rest of the world has, but it's because no one leads this lifestyle that they can make us believe it exists. We try not to bring family problems to work. We're supposed to leave relationship issues in the bedroom. Television is what we watch to escape and has become what we know about other's (fictitious) lives. As a result, it is what we want, too. It's a basic rule of all advertising.

Repeat it often enough, and the idea will stick. It has.