Real Commercials For Real People

In a more sensible world, I think television, and commercials in particular, would finally come to understand that while making people feel bad and insecure about themselves may generate a market of fear, appealing to that sense of alienation and bringing people together to pick on the people that have marginalized might actually get them more sales, since it’s coming from the “We actually understand you” angle.

So the commercials that I’d want to see start off like “typical” commercials in that you see the usual assortment of Beautiful People in Beautiful Settings doing Beautiful Things that the vast majority of people who watch television will only ever see on television.

One commercial might start with a housewarming of a beautiful woman and her friends:

Beautiful Friends: What a fabulous apartment!

Beautiful Woman: Thank you, I love it’s, gorgeous and so not like a split level home that I used to live in as a child but would never admit to now because middle class living is so embarrassing!

Beautiful Friends: (Laughter) How much did it cost?

Beautiful Woman: I don’t know! I’m the mistress of a high ranking executive, he paid for everything! I don’t lift a finger except to have sex with him and rag on his frigid wife!

(Everyone laughs at her cleverness)

Or, in an Expensive Restaurant where the appetizers cost more than the average weekly salary:

Beautiful Man: I love coming to this restaurant!

Beautiful Woman: I thought you said this was your first time?

Beautiful Man: It is, but you have to say you come here regularly or else you’ll look like you’re out of touch and anyone worthwhile will shun you!

Beautiful Woman: Oh! I love coming to this restaurant too!

(They both laugh at their belonging-ness)

Beautiful Man: What do you think of the food?

Beautiful Woman: It’s terrible, and the servings are too small, but I love it! It’s going to be really fun throwing it up again in fifteen minutes to make sure I stay 18% underweight!

Beautiful Man: Well, I hope you use some mouthwash afterwards, or I won’t enjoy sleeping you and then getting a fake phone call to leave you after it’s done, brag about you to friends and then sleep with another desperate but beautiful twig girl with no sense of self-esteem in the same evening!

(They both laugh at their cleverness)

At this point, The Real People invade.

In the Bauhaus apartment portly and stick thin nerds and geeks break in with unhealthy snack foods, posters of Kurt Cobain and video game consoles. Fat girls with chocolate tackle the beautiful women and start stuffing M & Ms in their mouth while Clive Barker and Frank Miller enthusiasts raid the bookshelves taking out copies of Cosmo and The Fountainhead and replacing them with The Dark Knight Returns and The Great And Secret Show.

Meanwhile, in the expensive restaurant:

Jane’s Addiction (Been Caught Stealing, naturally…) thunders through the speakers as a horde normal to slightly overweight normal people storm in with a barbecue range, tossing hot dogs everywhere, breaking out salsa and nachos and starting up drinking games where they have to take a shot every time they see fake breasts. Two of the contestants pass out within the first three minutes. A few of the kinder liberators pass some booze and snacks to the waiters and welcome them back to the real world while the Beautiful People scream about how much their shoes cost and try to keep them from harm’s way.

At this point, a voice over kicks in that points out, “Why let 1% of the people tell the other 99% they suck? Remember, there are more of us then there are of them.”

Commercial ends with two geeks screaming at each other “SEGA!” and “CHALLENGE EVERYTHING!”