Whose world? My world. The only one that mattered. The extent of logic, reason, desire, success and failure reached only a few square miles once, and this summer I've been traveling back to that small, focused place more frequently.
Too much reminiscing can be dangerous, of course. It's all too easy for curiosity to turn into longing, and equally as simple for that longing to become a debilitating fixation. This would seem especially true nowadays, when a virtual codex of pop culture - the main ingredient in the best recipes for self-indulgent remembrance in the modern age - lies at one's fingertips and a lot - a lot - of time can be wasted sifting through it.
Nowhere is this more true than on YouTube, the website that brought ease to what had previously been the arduous task of posting even a simple video on-line, the website that has made almost as many stars out of nobodies as VH-1. In its five years of existence, YouTube has become known largely for pandering to puerile and prurient interests, from girls stripping to cats playing the piano to dogs mowing the lawn, horses farting, babies singing, Midwestern teenagers fantasizing they're on Jackass as they skateboard off the roof and land with a nut-crunching thud on the patio, the pimply chuckles, chortles and cheers of their chums causing the camera's little microphone to distort.
But in that same period of time, YouTube has become about much more than just bad behavior and stupid pet tricks. It has become dumping ground for a precious stock load of historic imagery. From rare interviews to vintage performances on the talk shows of yesteryear, from historical news bites to TV sitcoms and every 'very special episode' ever produced, from classic music videos to classic commercials, chances are, if it was broadcast on television sometime in the last forty years, someone has, just in the last couple, found a VHS copy of it slowly melting away in an upstairs closet, transferred it to a digital format, and uploaded it to share with the world. That other people care about these things like I do, or that they have boxes of old VHS tapes stored away in upstairs closets, is not too surprising; that so MANY have gone to the trouble of preserving what's on those tapes is something I wouldn't have predicted, and it has resulted in a truly exciting collection of goodies that should be of interest to all but the most steadfastly UN-sentimental. (Truthfully, though, sentimentality is secondary. There is more going on here than mere nostalgia.)
Of paramount significance among this burgeoning archive, I believe, are the commercials; retromercials they're called these days.
For better or worse, there might be no more indepth way to study a decade or historical period than by perusing old advertising, particularly television commercials. Madison Avenue, as a game-changing, consent-manufacturing entity, has been riding high since at least the dawn of TV in the 1950s, and in various forms long before that. In pursuing its mission to get us to consume and feel good about consuming by making sure we smile brighter, smell better, don't go to bed hungry, wake up grouchy, settle for skunky beer, skanky coffee, flat hair or fat thighs, it has consistently attempted to reflect our deepest desires, predilections, longings, fears, fights and flights of fancy at any given moment. In doing so, it has captured, through the decades, the Zeitgeist of the times as they have changed.
That so much of what otherwise would be lost to time can now be enjoyed with the simple click of a mouse is thrilling to me. The only thing that gets in the way, or COULD unfortunately, is copyright infringement of the material being posted. This happens once in a while; some copyrighted material will be there one day, and gone the next, removed at someone's request. But posting seems to be an unstoppable force that is quickly becoming an immovable object. And if regarding YouTube as an historical archive, at least in part, helps temper the corporate world's red hot need to jealously guard its property, I'll do everything I can to spread the word.
I've been wondering where to take this post from here, what more can be said. Not much really. Those who are interested will seek it out, or have already. Those who are not interested, well, it'll be there for them one day, hopefully, if they're so inclined. I've decided instead to share some of the more memorable things I've found on YouTube. Some of it probably means more to me than it does to others, but advertising is nothing if not universally appealing, or universally annoying, and honestly, anything I post here is more worthy of taking a moment or two to watch than Snooki passing out on the boardwalk.
McDonald's - There was no McDonald's in my hometown growing up. I had to settle for Hardee's and Kentucky Fried Chicken. McDonald's represented another world - a good world, to be sure. If I was eating at a McDonald's restaurant, it meant I was on vacation with my parents. It meant we had driven to a distant city, or flown to one. It meant no school, no chores, no depressing day-to-day sameness. It meant, usually, a stop by the (equally special) shopping mall, and the Aladdin's Castle arcade I knew was inside (usually just off the food court), was not far behind.
I'll never forget the day in July 1989 when McDonald's finally arrived. I was sixteen. Driving down the highway at sundown and spotting the brightly lit golden arches punctuating my town's low-slung skyline, I felt, somehow, my little town had, as Obi-Wan Kenobi said, taken its 'first steps into a larger world.'
McDonald's employs a variety of initiative to sell its product; they seek out all demographics, all strata of the population, all walks of life. They are good at leeching off the sensation of any given moment, as in this commercial, which borrows heavily from H.R. PufnStuf, the children's show from the early 1970s (come along on Ronald's acid trip, kiddies!...):
They're also good at capturing sentimentality, sometimes gratuitously so, as in this absurdly melancholic gem from 1982 or '83:
Seriously, what the hell is up with this commercial?! It had me blubbering heavily and not knowing why when I was ten! Now, it seems corny and over-the-top, but back then I was so saddened by this spot, I was, for a little while, frightened to be alone after watching it, thinking the older brother was dead, or dying, or something...
I wonder now who conceived of it, and what led this individual or group of people to believe something so gushy, so shamelessly sentimental, was a good way to hock hamburgers...arouse anyone's appetite. It certainly did not make me hungry.
And yet I remember it, don't I? And that's really all advertising needs to do - lodge into your brain, and stay there.
Another from McDonald's. This one going way back, early 1970s...a true classic:
'There is nothing so clean, as my burger machine....' indeed...
I can't say I remember this commercial; it was a bit before my time. But I really like it. Its campy, Broadway extravaganza vibe is kind of timeless. (Man, that shift manager really kills it with his tenor, doesn't he?) Unlike the other two McDonald's examples, it could likely still work today; though it's highly unlikely any of the slack-jawed, glassy-eyed teenagers working at your average McDonald's now - covered in tattoos, hair hanging in their eyes - could possibly show the same level of enthusiasm for scrubbing fryers, grills and grease traps as these spirited gentlemen in their paper hats.
But it's probably always been slack-jawed teenagers working at McDonald's, and I'd bet nobody in the history of humanity has ever taken to the task of cleaning a grease trap with enthusiasm. I sure as hell haven't; and I WAS a long-haired, slack-jawed teenager working at McDonald's once, come to think of it...
Advertising is lot of things, but nothing if not dependent on suspension of disbelief.
Drugs - As a child of the 80s, I grew up at ground zero in the War on Drugs. Post-1960s America was just starting to think, oh shit...we might have a problem here...we never thought our kids would want to do drugs like WE did!....
Its response to the problem was to tell kids to just say no. Don't give them any reason to say no (other than the abstract specter of potentially turning their brains into mush)...that is, don't instill in them a sense of hope, purpose and psychological well-being that might make the need to get wrapped up in drugs a less powerful urge, or need. Nah, just say no. Just say no. Just say no.
Seems a futile battle now, but I must say, it worked on me at the time. I was sufficiently scared straight, came to regard people who did drugs as bad, and people who didn't do drugs as good, though this may simply be on account of the fact that there weren't many opportunities for drug use in my world. Drinking, of course, was a whole other story. Drinking was okay, encouraged, in fact. I learned from an early age that no small amount of beautiful women, nice cars, and funny dogs to share the good times with would come my way when I sipped my first beer.
Some notable anti-drug PSAs from my youth:
Love how he uses his grandpa's cigar box to hold his stash. And Dad, seriously, I know you're upset, but let the kid get a word in, why don't you?
This might just be the mother of all anti-drug PSA's. And probably the most effective on me back then. The visual is undeniably impactive. Nevertheless, my friends and I, none of whom were doing drugs at the time, always had a stock wise ass reply to 'Any questions?'
'Yeah, do I get bacon with that?'
Other commercials that I remember seeing time and time again as a kid:
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups - 1970ish
This terribly (hilariously) acted spot is very old, before my time, though I do remember it. It was probably being replayed as a 'classic' when I was ten or eleven years old. My brother and I identified the red-headed kid as Donny Most (who played Ralph Malph in the sit-com Happy Days), congratulating ourselves on having discovered some very important secret. Now, I'm not so sure. Nor do I think the other kid is Robby Benson.
Though, gotta confess, I don't really know who Robby Benson is...
I do know, whoever these two are, they can't act. And really, who walks down the street eating from a frigging jar of peanut butter?!
This is the first commercial I remember being skeptical of. When they cut a Reeses Piece open to show the peanut butter inside, note how thick and round it appears. Anybody who has ever eaten one knows they're not anywhere near that firm and fully packed.(Gives you an idea of the caution advertisers need to exercise in the claims they make; I figured that out when I was eight!). What's more, I remember thinking the peanut butter inside didn't look too appetizing. In fact, it seemed to possess the same brown/purplish hue as the canned food I fed our dog.
Life Cereal - 1970s
Not much needs to be said about this. Just a classic. And, again, far more worthy of watching than anything on reality TV...
Monster Cereals - late 1970s
This one is significant for me because it is, quite literally, one of my first memories. I remember this commercial as a clearly ringing bell in what otherwise, with one other notable exception posted below, is a murky haze of extreme youth, say four or five years old. I remember the three monster characters on the beach, and recall vividly wondering why Count Chocula and Frankenberry were excluding BooBerry, my favorite of the Monster cereals. (Though today, sadly, they're all kind of nasty....completely inedible. That isn't true of all 'kid' cereals; I fancy myself quite a connoisseur, and some have held up: Apple Jacks, Cocoa Puffs, Cocoa and Fruty Pebbles. The nastiest cereal ever made in my youth? C3POs...I love Star Wars, but there IS a limit, or should be, to merchandising!)
Many who grew up in the upper Midwest might remember this Ontario tourism commercial:
I might never have seen this commercial, or others, were it not for the presence of various 'superstations' on our cable system. When it finally came to town, cable TV gave us not only local network affiliates and HBO, but WTBS-Atlanta (carrying my beloved Braves games), WGN-Chicago, and WKBD-Detroit, where nearly all of the commercials I remember seeing were actually seen, including this one from the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Recreation. It ran every spring, summer and autumn in the States throughout the early 1980s (there was a different one for each season, as I recall), and signified that summer was on the way, that school was almost out. The song still makes me thing of all things done in warm weather, under sunny skies.
It was the music that told me my family and I would soon be traveling to a McDonald's somewhere. And in fact, Ontario, specifically Thunder Bay, was our destination more than once.
Here's a shocker:
Winston Cigarettes - 1960s
Whoever posted this commercial didn't get the sound timed quite right, but man, they certainly immortalized the drastic change our society has gone through in forty-plus years when it comes to smoking. To be sure, all change for the better. I am an (ex)smoker, but I could never imagine a world in which people are allowed to smoke on airplanes or in movie theaters, belch out soot from the booth behind you in a restaurant. We've happily come a long way since you've come a long way, baby.
It's not only commercials I remember:
It's not only commercials I remember:
Schoolhouse Rock - "Figure 8"
Nobody who is currently between the ages of 29 and 45 should fail to remember Schoolhouse Rock. These Saturday morning educational shorts were very much of their time: an earnest attempt to reinvent how children are taught, to speak to a new, 'hipper' (such as we were) generation of kids, yet still geared TOWARD kids (whereas today, we seem to excel mostly at teaching kids how to be snarky, skeptical adults). There isn't a Schoolhouse Rock song that I don't love watching to this day, but 'Figure 8' is the stand-out for me. Pleasantly spacy, catchy (as all S.R. ditties were) this one is also a pretty well-textured piece of music...and the ending is just trippy as hell. Infinity...right on, sister!
'In the News'
A news bite segment for kids that aired during saturday morning cartoons, I think I can trace my interest in news, in being plugged in to what is going on in our world, to this effort on the part of CBS...so, mission accomplished for one kid, anyway. (Although the subject matter of this particular installment is interesting. Don't know that discussing ways our military can drop bombs more efficiently would happen today. Not commenting on whether it should...only that it probably wouldn't.)
CBS 'Special Presentation' intro
When I heard this, usually on a Friday or Saturday night, I was one happy kid. It was the unmistakable pre-cursor to something fun or interesting about to be broadcast, something interrupting the normal boring adult programming; a cartoon special, perhaps. I remember on many occasions jumping around excitedly to this music in anticipation of the Peanuts or Dr. Seuss special I knew was seconds away, and actually air-bongoing once or twice. They used this sounder for ALL special programming though, which meant every once in a while, the music was followed by something depressingly adult - the Emmys, or the Oscars, or some crap like that. But most of the time, I was not disappointed. A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Halloween is Grinch Night, and countless others...cartoons were a special thing then, in a way they simply can't be for children in this day and age.
PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) Station Ident, 1970s
I must say there is probably nothing that moved me more when I was a kid than this short, Moog synthesizer-ish tone, used to announce, and unequivocally, that you were watching PBS.
When I was very young, we lived in the country. Eventually, we moved into town, but until that happened there was no cable TV for us. Just four over-the-air channels broadcasting faintly from a distant city; the three networks, and channel 8, Public Broadcasting. In the days before I started going to school, and during the summer, PBS is mostly what I watched, and this ident's unearthly, plaintive plunk struck a resonant (and not at all pleasant) chord in me.
It came on before Sesame Street, then after Sesame Street, linked shows like Mr. Roger's Neighborhood with The Electric Company together in the way commercials did on the other channels. But there were no commercials on PBS; and as pathetic as this seems to me now, I was aware of this fact at age four and five, and somehow bothered by it.
Again, I wonder just how this particular ident was conceived, and what the eerie tone was meant to represent. Something futuristic, I imagine...PBS leading the way into a perceived computer age, or a cerebral endeavor of some sort.
But to me it signified isolation; served only to remind me that I lived in the country; that there were distances between our house and others, and a long road into town; that I could, at any time, get lost in the woods not twenty feet from the back door of my house and maybe never find my way back.
It was the sound of boredom.
Of restlessness.
Of a bland lunch.
It was the sound I was going to hear when I (eventually) got lost in those woods, reaffirming a lack of humanity. It was the sound that arose in the absence of a heart beat.
I'd be the first to admit I was just an overly sensitive kid, bordering on being a freak. But user comments on the YouTube page where this is posted suggest I was not the only one weirded out by it.
In any case, reading over this post, it's clear I watched way too much TV growing up.
When I was very young, we lived in the country. Eventually, we moved into town, but until that happened there was no cable TV for us. Just four over-the-air channels broadcasting faintly from a distant city; the three networks, and channel 8, Public Broadcasting. In the days before I started going to school, and during the summer, PBS is mostly what I watched, and this ident's unearthly, plaintive plunk struck a resonant (and not at all pleasant) chord in me.
It came on before Sesame Street, then after Sesame Street, linked shows like Mr. Roger's Neighborhood with The Electric Company together in the way commercials did on the other channels. But there were no commercials on PBS; and as pathetic as this seems to me now, I was aware of this fact at age four and five, and somehow bothered by it.
Again, I wonder just how this particular ident was conceived, and what the eerie tone was meant to represent. Something futuristic, I imagine...PBS leading the way into a perceived computer age, or a cerebral endeavor of some sort.
But to me it signified isolation; served only to remind me that I lived in the country; that there were distances between our house and others, and a long road into town; that I could, at any time, get lost in the woods not twenty feet from the back door of my house and maybe never find my way back.
It was the sound of boredom.
Of restlessness.
Of a bland lunch.
It was the sound I was going to hear when I (eventually) got lost in those woods, reaffirming a lack of humanity. It was the sound that arose in the absence of a heart beat.
I'd be the first to admit I was just an overly sensitive kid, bordering on being a freak. But user comments on the YouTube page where this is posted suggest I was not the only one weirded out by it.
In any case, reading over this post, it's clear I watched way too much TV growing up.
