Ad-ding Us Up:Advertisements can tell so much about our society

Ad-ding Us Up:
Advertisements can tell so much about our society

F.V. Beup Jr

The thought hit me during my stay in Seoul, Korea. Not having much to do, sometimes I would watch and try catching the alien words on Korean television. For months I struggled to listen, hoping that I would naturally acquire the ear to discern words spoken by “real” Koreans. I made very little progress. I heard little and barely understood the spoken language, save for some words and sentences I learned at Seoul National University. Faced with this problem, it’s amazing how the mind makes up for the handicap by maximizing its potential to generate meanings from what the eyes see. It seemed to me that as my ears lost the ability to hear meaningful utterances, my eyes became keener, supplying my mind with plenty of visual information to process. And because my ear could not make out what I hear, watching TV became a guessing game. The most interesting shows (because they were easier to understand) were the ones with the least talk; the most boring ones were, naturally, the talk shows. When watching sitcoms I laughed at visual cues that seemed funny (to me). In soap operas, I focused on the faces of the actors and actresses: I like the way she turns that pretty head, Korean men are as pretty (sometimes prettier) than the women, My! Where do they get such fine complexion? The director sure knows how to portray sadness here, etc.

After weeks of watching TV, I thought that my effort at understanding Korean language was futile. I made sense of my surroundings visually, all my energy now concentrated on a singular goal: to understand Korean society in visual terms. It was then when I discovered the pleasures of watching television commercials. In Korea, television ads are not plugged in the middle of TV dramas, nor are they shown in breaks during newscasts. Advertisements comprise a whole segment, a major break before or after a show that is shown uninterrupted from beginning to end. The advertisements are quite a spectacle: the latest car from Hyundai, the widest and flattest TV screen from Samsung, Anycall cellular phones, a special refrigerator for kimchi, LG credit cards, Korean Air, Hite beer, cosmetics, computers—everything the mostly middle-class Koreans can buy. I note the near-absence of food commercials; and I was awed by the number of high-ticket items being sold onscreen. Who’s going to buy all these? Koreans must be really rich.

So, there, in front of the television, something dawned upon me, a revelation so obvious I should have known about it ages ago: TV ads speak more about our society than we care to notice. Philippine TV ads are composed mainly of food products and basic necessities—canned sardines, soy sauce, bath soap, detergent soap, toothpaste, shampoo, etc. Our necessities are simple, pointing to an economy that is barely out of subsistence level. Many items such as shampoo are sold in sachets, powder laundry soap in small packets, vinegar in budget packs, instant coffee in “stick” packets. The list goes on. What it says about Filipinos is that they are poor, that they can only afford something to last them for a day. It’s about survival, really. Getting by until the next pay-day.

Try going to Manila bay at the end of a storm and check out the garbage that is dumped on the shore. Plastics of all shapes and sizes, most of them meant to package something that small money can afford. Multiply that by the millions of plastic-throwing households and what you get is 7,107 islands floating on plastic. Manila itself owes much of its floods to plastic clogging the drainage system. If Manilans don’t die for want of food, they will soon drown in floods courtesy of the plastics they throw away.

It does not get any better. Judging by the number of infant milk formula advertisements on Philippine TV, you can be sure that there are still more plastic-throwing Filipinos being born every minute. Why else would they advertise milk formulas if we don’t like making babies? You see, TV ads say something about a country’s demographics, too. I’m not surprised why I did not see such kind of advertisements on Korean TV: Korea has falling birth rates. Either that or they breast-feed. And what do we feed our children? It’s all on TV: corn chips, potato chips, candies, canned sardines, instant noodles, pop soda. Ah, this is our concept of children’s paradise. And it’s all in those ads.

Maybe it’s not survival we Filipinos are really after. Just slow death.