A few more comments on baseball and new media, this time focusing on commercials.
First let me say that I don't watch much TV, and almost always have some reading material, and the remote with mute button, nearby to zap commercials. Most of the time I consider commercials the devil.
But occasionally, when I am watching a sporting event (baseball, basketball; don't care much for football), I intentionally watch commercials just to see what Madison Avenue is hawking now. Not watching much TV, or many commercials, I think I bring some freshness (not to mention healthy cynicism) to the proceedings.
There is no doubt that some of the most brilliant and creative minds are doing commercials these days. Visually many of them are very compelling. For instance, there is a series of commercials from Sharp (Aquos), which presents, in chapters, a Fellini-esque mystery involving a key, a beautiful woman, a rich older man, and a car going into a pool (just went to the website for the commercial--got the URL from the commercial on TV--and found a little treasure-box of media which I will analyze another time).
But I, for one, would like some space that is not constantly invaded by pop-up commerical culture. I don't really want to keep seeing a computer-generated GMC truck driving across the screen as I'm trying to watch the game. I don't want the AOL logo popping up and pitching at me some piece of baseball data (and I CERTAINLY don't want to see that commercial with the soccer Mom getting up on the AOL board room table. Would someone PLEASE lock the door when that woman leaves. Enough already!). I don't even want to see the Polar Express barrelling into the screen, which must, in part, be a punning reference to that first Lumiere brothers film, when the train came barrelling into the camera and the movie watchers jumped out of their seats so as not to get run over!
Where is the line of demarcation between the commercial and the leisurely (and ludic)? I'm afraid it's been effaced, like the chalk baselines at the end of the baseball game. And it's been effaced because it is media that is continually crossing the line (which is mostly what I've been reflecting on tonight). More media means more avenues for the commercial to invade our pasttimes.
A couple more points and I'm out of here.
I noticed the majority of commercials now have URLs appended. I'm sure that the major corporations and licking their chops at the prospect of something I mentioned in my last post--the swallowing up of the television by the computer, making it interactive television (I know this has had its failures but I think television-computer remediation is inevitable anyway). So we'll have pull-me data to go with the current television push-me data (data that can be queried as opposed to data that is delivered). A trend to watch.
Secondly, I noticed this about text in commercials: the more prominent the company, the less text (and the more visual narrative) appeared; and the less prominent the company, the more text and less visual narrative. Narrative, in this sense, is something of a luxury, which is a curious thing for me to think about as an aspiring novelist and story-teller. I suppose we've been seeing this trend for a few years now, in terms of scripted television being overtaken by "unscripted," "reality" TV, which is much cheaper to produce, which is what the suits like.
Thirdly, I might say a few things about the paratextual relationship between different visual media (maybe we should just call it paramedia?) such as webpages, on the one hand, and television commercials. When a commercial has a URL appended, you can follow the link later (as I did with the Sharp commercial) and you find data, and media, that act in a paratextual manner, that is offering a kind of "window" on the main media object, making more pleasurable the consumption of the main media object, in preparation, it is hoped (by the advertisers) of consuming the product advertised. There are often video and sound files on these web pages, as well as lots of information, and opportunities to shop. There are also, in some cases, games. There's plenty of opportunity for interaction, anyway.
Tomorrow (or soon) I hope to do more analysis of the points raised above, looking in more depth at the Sharp commercials, the Major League Baseball site, and the U2 music video/ipod commercial website.
Posted by jeb at October 27, 2004 1:43 AM | TrackBack