As our 3rd Critic on the Spot, we welcome Matthew Gilbert, television critic for the Boston Globe. Among the shrines at which he has worshipped during his tenure: The Sopranos, Freaks and Geeks, Six Feet Under, Scrubs, Lost and The Office. He has written celebrity and author interviews for the Globe, served as literary and managing editor at Boston Review, clerked at a number of local bookstores, and gotten his MA in Literature. He has had other jobs and assignments, too, but he can no longer remember them because TV has destroyed his brain. Today's question comes from Rolando Teco.
Q:
It's no secret that advertising has worked its way into most scripted fare in the form of product placement, often extending beyond the traditional placement of props in actors' hands to lines of dialogue into their mouths and even more recently into major plot points. Do you see a broader impact that product placement has had (or potentially may have as it expands further) on storytelling in general as it exists on TV?
A:
This question makes me think of the late David Foster Wallace. In “Infinite Jest,” he had a world where corporations could buy years, such as “Year of the Whopper” and “Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken.” RIP.
I'm of two minds on this issue. I often think that commercialism is seeping into network and basic-cable TV content in profound new ways that are so much more subtle than specific props, lines, and plot points. TV characters are becoming a bit more materialistic, more eager to buy in general, unable to grow old and loyal and ensconced in one way of being and buying.
But then, that’s old new, isn’t it? Soap operas were once designed a certain way for commercial purposes, to grab melodramatically inclined and detergent-buying women; and nighttime dramas generally ended on a moralistic note, so viewers would not identify the advertised products with anything untoward.
Indeed, nowadays advertisers are willing to go along with corrupt heroes and moral ambiguity, if it gets them the viewers they want. So the advertisers don’t necessarily need to engender a climate of goodness and positivity as they might have in the old days. The selling is more feverish than ever within the content of TV and movies, but with fewer content requirements (“30 Rock” embodies that idea).
