A Delicious Mind-Controlling Dessert-Like Organism: Fictional Advertisements and ‘The Stuff’

In the interest of getting my brain up and running for the day, I present a list of some of the best fictional television commercials. Why? I don’t know, exactly, but the idea popped into my mind as I was driving to the coffee shop where I’m sitting right now. I think the best fictional television commercials satirize the advertising industry as well as television and consumerism more broadly. For example,

1. The Stuff takes to task the advertising and public relations industry for its unthinking devotion to capital and marketplace demands over ethics, and features some of the more memorable fictional advertising in film history as a way of pointing up the (utterly believable) ways that The Stuff might actually be sold to real people. If extraterrestrials invaded Earth, they’d probably have an easy time selling their invasion in between breaks of The Rachel Maddow Show or Modern Family. That’s what I think films like The Stuff and They Live get so right about the forces that insidiously shape our world. The best parts of The Stuff are the sequences, including the ads, that show the product’s easy and smooth entry into the American marketplace and the American consciousness. Here in 2018 [Author’s Note: this is a part of a diary entry I wrote in, well, 2018], 33 years after The Stuff, capitalism may literally be the downfall of humanity as corporations and the politicians they bribe continue to prioritize profits over enacting regulations and changes in business practices that work to mitigate climate change as well as mitigate its already inevitable effects [Author’s Note: not to mention the effects of the coronavirus and the weaknesses and violences it highlights in the capitalist model]. It may not be exactly as The Stuff predicted, but I think this film is eerily accurate in terms of the way that the death of humanity is quietly sold to us as a delicious dessert. Don’t think too much about it, just eat it. Comfort, in a sense, is the enemy of progress, and The Stuff, like so many real consumer products (including television itself) that distract us from the real issues facing our world, is comfort. Gil-Scott Heron said “the revolution will not be televised”, and it’s worth remembering why. Speaking of disguising danger in something fun and comfortable, I can’t not mention
2. the Silver Shamrock ads from Halloween III. I watched Halloween III two and a half weeks ago, and that fucking jingle still pops into my head on occasion. “Happy, happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween / Happy, happy Halloween / Silver Shamrock”. Just like The Stuff, the happy ads for Silver Shamrock Novelties disguise sinister corporate motives. This is particularly relevant as the Silver Shamrock ads target children with a hypnogogic ritual designed to control them and mutate them. Television itself here is, as it is in Videodrome, a battleground of body and soul, with television in Halloween III specifically presented as a vehicle for human destruction, particularly of children. Speaking of David Cronenberg, consider also
3. the Starliner Towers ad from Cronenberg’s Shivers. Cronenberg opens the film on a sales pitch for the petite-bourgeois high-rise apartment building, promising a more encompassing kind of comfort. Cronenberg’s answer to J.G. Ballard’s novel High-Rise, Shivers uses the initial ad to set up the supposed tranquillity of the Starliner Towers that will be revealed as repressive and illusory. This contrast between presentation and reality is key in horror, I think, particularly satirical or critical horror like The Stuff, Gremlins 2, or much of the work of David Cronenberg. Or even, for that matter,
4. the Cheddar Goblin ad from Mandy. Now, Mandy is not a political horror film like They Live or The Stuff, and part of why this is one of my favorite fictional advertisements is because of the utterly surreal way Panos Cosmatos uses the Cheddar Goblin ad to amplify the film’s ambiance. But at the same time, I think part of why the Cheddar Goblin ad works is because there’s a contrast between the childlike glee over mass-produced mac & cheese and the violence the protagonist has just experienced. It’s something like a reminder of the disconnect between a world like advertising and the real world; while so much television and advertising more broadly is selling you a vision of a consumerist utopia, real people have real problems that won’t be solved by mac & cheese. On another end of the advertising spectrum, there’s
5. the Scrooge ad from Scrooged, which trades overtly on fear rather than joy and comfort. There’s an undercurrent of fear in any piece of advertising, because the underlying premise is to make you afraid of not buying the product even when the message is framed more positively. But I think there’s a distinction to be made between ads that trade on the promise of comfort or happiness and ads that trade on the promise of danger and terror, and the scare-tactic ad from Scrooged is particularly relevant in a world full of political fear-mongering, particularly on racist and transphobic grounds. I’m thinking about it in the context of the 2018 election, which happened yesterday, but this kind of thing goes back to the infamous Willie Horton ad Bush ran against Dukakis in the 1988 election and I’m sure even further back than that. It might be a stretch to compare a silly ad from a Bill Murray comedy to very real racist scapegoating and fear-mongering, but I think the basic principal is the same. Just as the ad for Scrooge tells people to watch the show because “your life might just depend on it”, Trump tells his base that their lives are in danger and that Republican votes are the only way to save themselves (frighteningly, it seems to have worked, at least in part). The Scrooge ad actually strikes me as advertising at its most naked, because as I said, even “positive” ads trade on fear. The Starliner Towers ad works on fear of the messiness and complexity of modern life — including, implicitly, being forced to cross paths with people of a different class than you — by offering an ostensible escape. That’s one of the reasons I think advertising is important to analyze and deconstruct, I think: it trains us to respond to fear rather than hope and to value easy, consumerist solutions rather than active work for change, which amounts to discomfort.

These fictional ads are united by the fact that, within the context of their films, they satirize and criticize the television advertising landscape from a variety of angles, in turn commenting upon consumerism more broadly. This brings me back to The Stuff, a film that does such an amazing job selling, if you’ll pardon the expression, the realism of such a silly premise. I call it realism because I really believe that were there really a delicious mind-controlling dessert-like organism, this might actually happen. I think the least realistic part of the film is the way that The Stuff is defeated by a right-wing militia broadcasting about the dangers of The Stuff. One independent news outlet against a massive capitalistic machine? No way. But I think part of the reason that Larry Cohen does that is in order to suggest the finale in which The Stuff survives in a diluted form with a new name as well as remaining on the black market. That, to me, is part of what makes the film: ending on a note that stresses the unfortunate resilience of capitalist enterprises to continue to poison consumers. The Stuff is a relevant film in part because it’s a sharply observed portrait of advertising and consumption patterns, and the ads are among the most memorable in film, I think, because they ring so true to the way we’re sold things: not on their merits, not with truth or facts, but with appeals to fear and sex. What the hell does “enough is never enough” even mean? It’s nonsense, but it sticks in your brain, especially when coupled with a catchy jingle. That’s what rampant consumerism is: the idea that enough is never enough, just keep buying, buying, buying. Don’t think about the labor practices that go into the products you buy or the environmental impact of the products you buy. Just keep buying. That’s so insidious, but we’ve been ingrained, in part through the selling of comfort, to engage in uncontrolled consumerism. It’s not just soul-killing to the consumer; it’s dangerous to the planet, to humanity, and to individuals and societies. Consumerism, driven by capitalist imperatives, might literally destroy humanity. But hey, look at all the neat Stuff we can buy.