Outsmarting the advertisers: Why one Statesman columnist can resist Tostitos
Yesterday I was sitting on the couch watching a little television with my mother. During a commercial break, an ad came up showing a gentleman sitting on his couch eating a bag of Tostitos chips. He looked so happy. He was chilling with his absolutely beautiful wife watching a football game in his very expensively furnished living room.
Before I even realized what was happening, I got off the couch, walked down the hall and retrieved my identical bag of Tostitos chips, then rejoined my mother on the couch. Mother chuckled under her breath, looked at me with the usual taunting look she gives her children when they’ve just done something dumb, and said, “Well, I guess that ad worked.”
I stopped mid-crunch, and the wheels started turning. I was a media student. I studied things like this, about ads, television and the messages they send out. It couldn’t have worked on me. Yet there I was, slumped on my couch with my bag of chips – half expecting my charming, non-existent husband to come and carry me home to our lavish living quarters.
Dang it! It had worked. I’d let my guard down, dropped my left. Media: 1. Mikaylie: 0.
This isn’t a new concept. I would hope everyone knows media has an effect on our lives. Sometimes this is a positive thing. Television, books, movies and most other types of media can be educational, productive and entertaining. It keeps us happy and it keeps us informed. It can ease the rioting masses or cause people to jump into action, supporting a good cause.
However, the effects of media can also be negative. I read an Associated Press article a little while ago about juries across the United States having trouble convicting without DNA evidence linking suspects to the crime, no matter what other kinds of evidence the people had. In fact, the story contained quotes from recent or upcoming jurors stating something to the effect of, “Yeah, well these things aren’t tough to figure out. You just follow the DNA. If there’s DNA, that means they did it.”
Can anyone guess where America learned to think like that? Yeah, it was television.
AP specifically cited shows like Law and Order and CSI as the teachers responsible for the jurors’ new-found education. Honestly, I am thrilled the public is becoming more knowledgeable about how the court works. That’s important. However, at the same time, I’m more than a little distressed that Executive A.D.A. Jack McCoy and Senior CSI Gil Grissom are the ones doing the teaching.
Even considering the negative effects media, and specifically TV, has, there’s no need to boycott.
There are still all the positive effects to consider. I think the whole point is to keep in mind what we are watching and pay attention to what it is teaching us to believe.
This applies doubly for young children. Even the supposedly good, wholesome shows can have a less-than-positive effect on their misunderstanding minds. Let me give an example:
I grew up in a standard LDS family, and as a young child, my parents felt it important for me and my younger brothers to learn the stories from the Bible and the Book of Mormon, a book of LDS scripture. My mother was also worried, like most moms, about the kinds of things her children watched on TV. Thus, my mother invested a substantial chunk of our family’s money into a series called The Living Scriptures, a cartoon series of scripture stories such as “Daniel and the Lion’s Den.”
Every month, my brothers and I got a new video in the mail that, upon its arrival, we promptly watched, often times repeatedly, until the next month rolled around and the next cartoon arrived. At the time, I was about 4 and my brother, Aaron, about 3.
My mother was quite pleased with the results of our videos. We were learning our scripture stories very well, which was wonderful, she thought. At least until one afternoon when my mother came downstairs to check on Aaron and me only to find me standing over my little brother, with one foot his chest and a large stick raise high above my head ready to come down and pummel him.
“Mikaylie! Stop! What are you doing?”
“I’m Nephi, momma, and he’s the wicked Laban and I’m gonna chop his head off!”
Although this story of Aaron and me acting out our own “Book of Mormon” adventure has since becomes one of my mother’s favorites, the consequences could have been drastic and deadly, had my mother not appeared on the stairs at the right moment. Those scripture cartoons were meant to teach children about faith, service and obedience, but they also carried a hidden message of violence and fighting. Even though it was for right and truth, war for the right reasons was not a concept I grasped at 4 years old.
But I grew up and learned all about the influence media has on our minds. I don’t try and chop people’s heads off anymore. I think I get a point for that. That makes it a tie. Media: 1. Mikaylie: 1. But who wins? Well, I’m cheering for me, and I’ve got my guard up now. No more of the mindless media drone.
Tostitos be warned.
Mikaylie Kartchner is a senior majoring in print journalism. Comments can be sent to mikayliek@cc.usu.edu.