What a ridiculous premise. Well, it wouldn't be the first time.
I record television on a TiVo-like device. It's great to be unhinged from the arbitrary schedules of the broadcasters and cable channel moguls. I watch TV when I want to watch, and I record enough content on a daily basis that there is always something to watch.
One popular reason people record television is to skip through commercials. I tend to skip through commercials only because I want to save time, not because I am annoyed by commercials. Quite the opposite in fact: I find commercials entertaining. Not all commercials--that would be as bad as finding all television entertaining, when a large amount of T.V. programming is not entertaining at all. But I don't write off the whole class of commercial advertising as boring.
I will be so bold as to say that some commercials... are art.
Before I explain why I can espouse such an outlandish idea, let me quell some arguments against the idea:
1. Commercials are advertisements and are designed solely to sell products!
First, this isn't true in every respect--I think the anti-tobacco ads speak for themselves here, unless they were funded by other bad habits in anticipation of luring you from one to the other. "Cigarettes? Cigarettes are for wusses! Brought to you by Fingernail Chewers United." But they're not; they're funded by government agencies or the tobacco companies themselves.
Secondly, and far more importantly: every other form of art is trying to sell something--itself! Books, movies, music, paintings--these are all created in anticipation that someone will pay money for the right to possess or view/listen to the piece of art. If anything, commercials are more honest about it. The idea that commercials should be excluded as art because of its association to sales is false.
2. Commercials are stupid, stupid, stupid.
Yes, many commercials are stupid--they're poorly made, not appealing, and completely fail to either entertain or persuade me to buy the product. How is this different from other art? There plenty of bad movies, bad songs, bad books and bad paintings that are created, bought and sold every day. Yet, people fall in love with certain types of art because they've seen the good versions of art and are delighted to discover more good art. Sometimes the search for good art means you necessarily see bad art. Anyway, I digress--the point is, there is more bad art than good art, we just don't see or remember the bad art.
Commercials are no different--there are more bad commercials than good commercials. In my opinion, 95% of all car commercials are awful. The few exceptions are usually not stellar--think of the "Da, da, da" Volkswagen commercial nearly a decade ago. It was OK, caught our attention, and even made the performer of that simple, CASIO keyboard melody a pretty penny for about a month. Then it just got annoying. That may be the ceiling for car commercials--good for a little bit but not classic. Other car examples are the Mitsubishi commercials from the early 2000s that featured "Days Go By" by Dirty Vegas and that "Get Up Put The Body In Motion" (not the actual title) by someone else who completely disappeared afterwards. In other words, a car commercial can be art if it creates a one-hit pop wonder. Maybe--there are no hard and fast rules in commercials as art; otherwise people would follow the rules and they'd all be art (and we know they're not).
Gold Bond--bad commercials. Any medical commercial--bad. They're not evil as far as commercials go, they're just not art. Any commercial where you have to explain how it works, then explain the side effects... you get points for making me forget that you're talking about reasons NOT to buy your product, but it will never rise to the point of art. Pills designed to help ED are sometimes clever but the description of the side effects will always kill it.
But, just as there are bad commercials, there are bad movies, books, etc. Any painting you see in a hotel is bad art. The Postman, Waterworld, Snake Eyes, any movie in the American Pie series, any movie in the Scary Movie series, any movie inspired by a video game (I want to say there is an exception here but it's not coming to me at the moment)... pretty much any movie released between February and April or September and October: BAD MOVIES--Hollywood is saving the good stuff for summer or the end of the year Oscar consideration. Anything good that comes out in the aforementioned time periods is an accident or any indy film that managed to capture our interest. Bad music--surely any genre you don't listen to is bad music, and if you claim you like all music, that's like saying you like all commercials. Please watch several hours of car commercials and get back to me about liking everything created in a specific medium of art. Thanks. Bad books--of course there are bad books. I'm done thinking about this.
Having exhausted you (and myself) with reasons why commercials are not NOT art, let me give you a few reasons why they can be art.
First, they can illuminate new ideas and new concepts. One recent example is the insurance commercial of the elderly gentleman who owns a giant umbrella, which he uses in a variety of ways to help several groups of people. Um, I don't have a desire to go make an umbrella-shaped boat or try to build an umbrella that flies, but the commercial was at least as clever as a painting or a book that encapsulates the same concept.
To use a ridiculous example, the GEICO commercials involving cavemen illustrate (more for comedic effect) that one shouldn't make fun of groups of people, regardless of whether such groups actually exist--or whether they have access to the object used to poke fun. For example, it's generally safe to make fun of the Amish because there is no chance they will find out about it--they don't use electricity and can never see or hear any televised or radio criticism of their beliefs or their way of life. But if Wisconsin v. Yoder is any indication, the Amish know how to take care of themselves and are very well represented; if by some chance they alter their centuries-held cherished faith and decide to start suing people, you don't want to be in the way of that. In much the same way, you don't want to be making fun of cavemen because you never know when one of these scientists is going to revive a frozen one and raise all sorts of legal chaos.
Those are very extreme examples and arguably not intended by GEICO. However, artists are always making points they didn't intend to, because art is subject to interpretation. If someone can interpret a caveman commercial as advocating tolerance, the world is a better place, and that commercial deserves some recognition for its artistic qualities.
Second, they can involve images that are just as beautiful and meaningful as images in a movie, painting, or those described in a book. Let's take a break to have a feminine moment.
The oreo commercial with the dad and the kid eating oreos together, only at the end we discover they're continents apart and communicating via webcam, the son is about to go to bed and dad is about to leave for work. That's touching. The commercial where the little girls slips the rabbit in the suitcase, so dad takes pictures of the rabbit in the places he visits and sends them as mementos to his daughter. That's touching.
These are the kinds of relationships and situations that books and movies take hours to set up, and the commercial brought me the best and most meaningful part in mere seconds.
There are other kinds of ideas that are passed along within a short time frame that are very effective. Everyone remembers the anti-drug commercial--"This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?" If you saw the "sequel" to that commercial, you'd probably remember that too. A young woman (unknown at the time, but for the sake of completeness, it was Rachael Leigh Cook of "She's All That" fame... I don't think "fame" is the right term there. Let's just move along.) begins with the "This is your brain. This is heroin. This is what happens to your brain after snorting heroin. This is what your body goes through. It's not over yet." She proceeds to destroy the kitchen with the frying pan, yelling things like "This is your family! These are your friends! These are your hopes, your dreams, everything you cared about before!" Then she throws down the frying pan and says "Any questions?"
Look at the ideas that were passed along in mere seconds! The first commercial had a huge impact on a lot of people because it focused on the damage that drugs do to the most important part of the human body. But it failed to address the people who were OK with mutilating themselves with drugs under the notion that it is their own body and they're not hurting anybody else. The second commercial destroys that argument, quite literally.
The commercial, if done right, has the ability to send a message in a matter of seconds. The ability to communicate that clearly is a very valuable skill in all walks of life, and those that do it better than most are highly regarded. If a commercial can show me how to be a better dad despite my career path or vividly show me why I should avoid a certain lifestyle, it has passed along a valuable message in a unique and inspiring way. And I think that's artistic.
Finally (for now), commercials can be clever, witty and funny. GEICO commercials are usually good (and it's been that way since at least 1999, when they were running hand-drawn ads during Diamondbacks games), though the caveman thing went a little too far (check out a few of them though, they still hold up). AM/PM commercials are hit or miss, but when they hit, it's usually good. The same goes for Sonic commercials. Jack in the Box commercials used to be great but they've tapered off significantly.
Beer ads are all over the place, which I assume is the product of trying to hit on every person using every method. Every now and then I see a beer ad that makes me laugh out loud, and I want to yell "Just STOP whatever else you are doing and hire those guys!" Unfortunately, they never listen to me, and we get the stupid Love Train ad nauseum.
"This is SportsCenter" are probably the funniest and most clever commercials, even if they only appeal to sports fans. If you've never seen a SportsCenter commercial, it usually involves ESPN employees casually interacting with sports celebrities in an office setting. In one ad, LeBron James (in uniform, always in uniform) enters and sits in his cubicle, but something about the chair isn't right. He looks over at the guy in the next cubicle, who is sitting in a golden throne with the name "KING JAMES" inscribed on it. LeBron says "Hey Scott, did you switch chairs with me?" "Uh, no, uh, this was already here when I sat down man... sorry." LeBron sits down in his crappy chair, dejected by the whole experience.
In an older ad, it's late at night and an ESPN employee is working when the power goes out. He grabs a flashlight, walks down to the maintenance closet where we assume the fuses are located, and opens the door to reveal Lance Armstrong wiping his forehead, sitting on a bike attached to an electric generator.
"Hey Lance, is everything OK?"
"Oh, sure, yeah, I just thought everyone had gone home. I'm fine," and starts pedaling the bike, which restores power to the building.
"Are you sure, you want me to get you a water or something?"
"No thanks, I'm good."
The ESPN employee then closes the door and heads back to his cubicle.
Mark McGwire acting like an animal in a Y2K scare.
Scott Van Pelt finding a new nickname for the Celtics Trio.
The Philly Phanatic messing with the teleprompter.
Andy Roddick's frustration that Stu Scott will not refer to him as "A-Rod" on SportsCenter.
Danica Patrick's open-wheel car towed away from the parking spot reserved for "D. Patrick" (which refers to Dan Patrick, the radio host, anchor, etc.).
Any commercial involving Dan Patrick in the locker room, talking about SportsCenter the way an athlete would talk about his latest game.
The list goes on. This is SportsCenter. This is art.
Anyway, that's about all the steam I have on this topic, for the time being. It's long and disorganized, but in case you didn't read the disclaimer before you started reading any articles in this blog... it's generally not recommended.
But to summarize this (until I edit it later with a real conclusion (read: never)), commercials are good for all the same reasons that other art is good, and they're bad for the same reasons other art is bad. Their attachment to sales, while more overt, is not significantly different from other forms of art. Finally, commercials are effective at delivering a powerful message in ways that other art forms cannot comparably achieve, especially where time used to the convey the message is involved. For these and other reasons, I submit that commercials are an art form that should not be relegated to being skipped through in all instances.
