New Studies Show Increase in Monsters Hurts Feet, Head
I am unheased by the proliferation of small monsters on television advertising for prescription medications.
Unheased, you ask?
It's a verb I got from that Kim Carnes' song, Bette Davis Eyes. I think it means, well, something like "to make uneasy."
She'll unhease you!
Something something!
All the better just to please you!
She's precocious!
And she knows just
what it takes to...something gross-us!
Unhease. You've heard it. But I digress.
The growing prevalence of smallish, often horned, gaudily-colored monsters to denote various health problems unheases me. Remember when we were kids, and television commecials for medications actually indicated those medications' effect on the body? Why is this less in evidence now? It seems like the logical way to go. The glowing red discomfort of a TRON-like blueprint of tortured feet would go cool and blue with the application of a little graphic of a swirling foot-cream tube. Some visual metaphors were less literal. Remember Contac? From what I remember, the tiny multicolored beads of medication would escape the large capsule and fill one's nasal passages, thereby allowing for the passage of arrows. Contac was beautiful.
Not so the Lamisil feet monsters or the migraine-ad migraine monsters. They're gross, and of course are meant to be. We're meant to want to take anything that will vanquish or repel bodily monsters. Americans are a race of primitives, they seem to believe. It's advertising hoo-doo! The complexities of cartoon pharmacology elude us, I guess. The ad hacks of my imagination explain it thusly:
"Listen here, Snively, America doesn't understand your fancy-pants, college boy anatomical science. They don't know what a bronchial dilator does. They can't identify an ear. What we need to focus on in these network spots is our lozenges' abillity to repel fictional creatures. What we gotta show 'em is CRITTERS!Podiatric trolls, demons of the lung, gremlins swarming the colon. All computer-generated, too. Trendy monsters. That's our angle! 'Cause God knows the side-effect profile of this crap isn't helping us."
Unheased, you ask?
It's a verb I got from that Kim Carnes' song, Bette Davis Eyes. I think it means, well, something like "to make uneasy."
She'll unhease you!
Something something!
All the better just to please you!
She's precocious!
And she knows just
what it takes to...something gross-us!
Unhease. You've heard it. But I digress.
The growing prevalence of smallish, often horned, gaudily-colored monsters to denote various health problems unheases me. Remember when we were kids, and television commecials for medications actually indicated those medications' effect on the body? Why is this less in evidence now? It seems like the logical way to go. The glowing red discomfort of a TRON-like blueprint of tortured feet would go cool and blue with the application of a little graphic of a swirling foot-cream tube. Some visual metaphors were less literal. Remember Contac? From what I remember, the tiny multicolored beads of medication would escape the large capsule and fill one's nasal passages, thereby allowing for the passage of arrows. Contac was beautiful.
Not so the Lamisil feet monsters or the migraine-ad migraine monsters. They're gross, and of course are meant to be. We're meant to want to take anything that will vanquish or repel bodily monsters. Americans are a race of primitives, they seem to believe. It's advertising hoo-doo! The complexities of cartoon pharmacology elude us, I guess. The ad hacks of my imagination explain it thusly:
"Listen here, Snively, America doesn't understand your fancy-pants, college boy anatomical science. They don't know what a bronchial dilator does. They can't identify an ear. What we need to focus on in these network spots is our lozenges' abillity to repel fictional creatures. What we gotta show 'em is CRITTERS!Podiatric trolls, demons of the lung, gremlins swarming the colon. All computer-generated, too. Trendy monsters. That's our angle! 'Cause God knows the side-effect profile of this crap isn't helping us."
posted by sarahfisch at
6:29 PM
10 Comments:
Contac is one of the most beautiful pills ever.
Where have you gone, Contac?
Check this out (!):
http://glaxosmithkline.co.jp/contac/
Sarah, your version of the lyrics of Bette Davis Eyes made me laugh out loud both times that I read it. It's the exclamation point after "Something something!" that gets me. I think it's the incredibly vague enthusiasm that it implies.
Listen, Snively, after those people eat the fried chicken that they ordered after watching our fabulous commercial, they are going to need remedies for Acid Reflux (a real) disease. Botox has no common side effects except flu-like symptoms (not a real disease.) And sudden death is so rare that we don't have to mention it. (Thanks, FDA.) And thanks, to you, for the props on the computer-animated trolls. Remember the "chemical imbalance" animation for depression (a real disease?) Sold that chemical monster to millions. Ah... memories. Never fear. The best is yet to come. I believe our new live-action ads are getting better. Do you like the cute bellies in the girls-only laxative drug? Constipation is a real disease. Gotta run to the bathroom after you ate all that fried chicken! We don't want anyone unheased.
I just saw the headache monster.
He's clearly gay.
I like the empty little ovoid Paxil dudes.
1. adding "h"s before vowels when youre singing makes you sound sexier.
2. i like that menstrual blood and baby excrement are always blue in commercials. it reinforces my belief in the imminent apocalypse and my subsequent levitation (assumption?) into the kingdom of the lord. soon my life will be pure joy!
--chartreuse velour
I LOVE those little, round Zoloft (not Paxil, A) dudes!
I'm currently dating one.
All excellent points.
especially about the vague enthusiasm, I am SUFFUSED with it.
I just saw a cartoon mucus monster. It was horrifying.
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