At breakfast today I saw the start of an infomercial. It was for some kind of dental-related practice. That's as specific as I can get right now, but it got me thinking.
Infomercials are an annoyance when you're waiting for and expecting something else. Say, if it's 11:30 at night and you know The Twilight Zone is scheduled and it might be one you haven't seen before or not, but you like The Twilight Zone. Because infomercials get slotted in at the last moment, and the things they replace have some viewers, but not enough so that the station owners are worried about annoying them.
Conversely, these spots might strike you as funny. Groups of two or more people have been goofing on their canned awkwardness basically forever.
And a third reaction is just wonder. Some of these things are so odd that you can only ponder what unintended messages they might carry, how they reflect the unconscious of technological civilization. One might even find a kind of inspiration in them.
Infomercials aren't something I'd spend a lot of time looking at, but it's interesting to think about what they imply. In the streaming world they're probably doomed, as hardly anyone would be interested in ordering them in a service. But then streaming itself, at least its most heavily promoted side, shows signs of being a bubble. So who knows?
1 comment:
There are a couple of doctor's offices I've been to that run infomercials if that's what they are nowadays. The first is a screen over the dental chair where I go for my hygiene appointments that shows people visiting houses they might buy. That talk is all about renovations to modernize an obsolescent home. I always ask for the tv to be turned off. The other office is a surgeon's waiting room where lots of people wait... often for a very long time. That one shows endless cooking demonstrations. They won't turn that tv off.
Like I said I'm not sure those are infomecials, certainly not in the classic sense of seeing someone trying to sell cheap reproductions of watches and diamond tennis bracelets like QVC used to do. Do they still exist? Well, here's a sample of some weird old favorites all in one place.
https://youtu.be/Rzg7aKCeNLQ?si=EsopsAq6MFIDubuA
It seems you're right about unnecessary fluff disappearing from the streaming world. If others are like Netflix subscription services are getting out of hand and it's essential that you need to limit yourself regardless of the global economy. Add this little one and then the other and before you know it it's death by a thousand cuts. The very idea that the average person has endless purchasing power is a myth that will soon falter.
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