by Jay Rafferty
The first fortnight of September I spent in America, mostly out in the world, bookshops and bars, haunted hotels and great restaurants exploring Oklahoma and Colorado in kind. In this time I didn’t have an over exposure to American television, streaming services or YouTube. A few hours at most. In the time that I did spend in front of a screen I was reminded of the purgatory that is the American advertisement: an overly self-aware, celebrity saturated, post-ironic purgatory. They are a full stop in a television show, a sports game, a film, for 10 minutes at the very least. Perhaps that’s too halting. The transition from show to ad is so smooth and unnoticeable they may as well be part of the programming, moreover they are the programming in these instances. Shaq has more prominence in an episode of NCIS than Gibbs does (albeit they are reruns. Long live Leroy Jethro Gibbs).
I watched ‘The Babadook’ for free on the streaming service Pluto Tv the night before I left in preparation for Ghost in the Magazine’s ‘31 Days of Horror.’ I could have watched several of the films for free in America. I barely made it through one without quitting. If a jump scare or transition wasn’t ruined by one musical number for a diabetes pill, it was ruined by several Subway ads with sports stars I did not recognize. Dot-Marie Jones was not in ‘The Babadook’ but she may as well have been for the amount of times I watched the Allstate advert that night. One more commercial in the last 10 minutes of the film? As the former ‘Glee’ star’s character says in those two or three minutes “That’s not gonna fit.”
What makes American advertisements so distracting, or more precisely unnerving to a European? We have the same disproportionate nostalgia for advertisement narratives (just look at the John Lewis Christmas Advert or fond memories of the Guinness Christmas Advert) as the next continent. I think it lies primarily in how much bullshit we’re willing to put up with. Now I of course don’t mean individually. The individual American can be as no nonsense as anyone, the individual European might fold at the inclination of conflict, but collectively Americans will take a lot more on the chin as “just the way things are and are done” than Europeans are willing to.
Look at university tuition fees. Average tuition fees in the United States have risen 4% in the last year. Will the system be changed? Will rates go down? You know they won’t, I know they won’t. For every American protester there is a louder, frothing-at-the-mouth counter protester, defending the status quo and the way things are “when I went to college.” Compare this to the 2019 student protests across France in support of a 22-year-old student who set himself alight in Lyon to highlight student poverty and present a final-straw middle finger to the French President Emmanuel Macron’s education policies. More recently in March of this year students barricaded themselves in universities across the country, joining trade union street demonstrations and transport strikes (against Macron’s “reforms” to pensions, raising the age from 62 to 64). Incomparable circumstances I grant you, but is there a national protest to rising American tuition fees? Regionally maybe, but the fees are still rising. The world has reported the French strikes, the barricaded universities. Does American news mark a student protest in passing? If they don’t, what other country will? You know the answer to that too.
Last month there was a situation at Trinity College Dublin. Students staged a similar protest outside the building that houses the Book of Kells and The Long Room library on their campus. These are both popular tourist draws and while many tourists respected the picket line (organised to protest a 2% rise in accommodation on campus) there was footage of a few tourists who wanted to bull on past the poverty stricken students. Can you guess their nationality? In this clip an American man tries to persuade the President of Trinity College Student Union, László Molnárfi, to step aside claiming a lot of “respectful” tourists have waited but would like to see what they paid for. Molnárfi replies that the man should ask for a refund from the college, explaining that this is the only course of action for the students who pay thousands more than the American. Molnárfi explains they have tried other avenues which haven’t worked to effect a decision that insults and impacts every student depending on accommodation from their university. This is the truest arrow in their quiver. The American tourist’s reply is prophetic, and to my point: “And you think this will change it?” These are the words of a disgruntled tourist, who believes that not seeing the Book of Kells will ruin his holiday (come on, it’s only a fancy bible) but they’re also the words of an American man who has come from a societal history of strike-breaking (pinkertons a-plenty), a working class taught to take their punishment lying down, regardless of the cost to their pockets or their time.
None of this is to say that striking or protest is ineffective or under-utilised effectively in America. What is happening at the moment with the Writers and Actors strikes has left a lasting wound on western media production that will take a long time to heal. Their message has been broadcast around the world. We hear you America. But when production returns, when Hulu and HBO and MAX are no longer taboo to support again, how many of the Americans sympathetic to these striking artists will return to their streaming services and willingly put up with the adverts? With the rising price of streaming service subscriptions and the introduction of a cheaper ad-supported plan (Netflix), how many thousands will put up with musical diabetes-pill interludes eating minutes of their lives to save a few dollars monthly? How many Subway ads will you watch to stream a sub-par (yeah I said it, ‘The Babadook’ was just ok) horror movie? Take a leaf from Europe’s big book of protest.
If a video has an unskippable advert, skip the video.
Jay Rafferty is a redhead, an uncle and an eejit. He is the poetry editor for Sage Cigarettes Magazine, a guest lecturer on Irish Literature and a Programme Committee member for The John Hewitt Society. He is also the author of two published chapbooks, Holy Things (The Broken Spine, 2022) and Strange Magic (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). You can read his poetry, essays and reviews in several journals including Winecellar Press, An Áitiúil Anthology, Unstamatic and HOWL New Irish Writing. When not losing games of pool he, sometimes, writes stuff. You can follow him on Twitter @JayRaffertyPoet or Instagram @SimplyRedInTheHead
