Advertising

Social commentary on advertising is not a new phenomenon, but it does point to a society’s values. For example, the association of fear and menstruation.

Last night I dreamed that I saw a beer ad on TV in which a man was drinking at a party and there was an unattractive woman on the other side of the room. Every time he looked away, and looked back, she looked better. He drank more beer, and she got thinner and more attractive. As he got totally wasted, grimacing at what he was going to do, she turned into a supermodel, and they started dancing. Then it turned out this was a wedding reception, and the bride and groom appeared. The bride was hideous, but the groom had a gigantic, mostly empty, bottle of beer with him, so you knew he’d been able to marry her because he was really drunk.

Later, there was a vague dream about a blood sugar monitor marketed at diabetic children– it was like a little candy-colored bead you stuck to your arm, and it drew a tiny bit of blood and changed color depending on your blood sugar level. You could wear them like jewelry and they would continue to monitor your sugar levels all day. I’d been in the store to buy candy, and they were right in with the other candies. I was excited and went to tell my girlfriend, but she said, oh, those things suck, they’re inaccurate, plus you get creepy guys hitting on you using diabetes as an icebreaking topic of conversation.

Apparently I shouted something about communists in my sleep too.