Years ago when I was a creative director at an ad agency/design firm, I wrote a campaign for a wood-fire Chicago steakhouse that included print ads and billboards featuring an illustration of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow and the headline: “IT’S PAYBACK TIME.” Based on assorted letters to the editor there was virtually no one who liked the ad itself. Vegans were outraged. Local historians raced to the defense of the unfairly maligned cow. Even committed carnivores didn’t particularly like the idea of eating an animal in an act of revenge, joke or no.
None of that hostility transferred to the restaurant, however. The campaign worked. Diner traffic to the restaurant increased.62
In Infinite Jest, Wallace describes a series of television commercials so appalling they virtually destroy broadcast television, even as sales of the products advertised in the spots soar.
(E)ven though the critics and P.T.A.s and eating-disorder-oriented distaff PACs were denouncing the LipoVac spots’ shots of rippling cellulite and explicit clips of procedures that resembled crosses between hyperbolic Hoover Upright demonstrations and filmed autopsies and cholesterol conscious cooking shows that involved a great deal of chicken-fat drainage, and even though audiences’ flights from the LipoVac spots themselves were absolutely gutting ratings for the other ads and the shows around them…the LipoVac string’s revenues were so obscenely enhanced by the ads that LipoVac Unltd. could soon afford to pay obscene sums for 30-second Network spots, truly obscene, sums the besieged Four now needed in the very worst way. And so the LipoVac ads ran and ran, and much currency changed hands, and overall Network ratings began to slump as if punctured with something blunt.
It’s a very funny and smart observation, and there are plenty of examples of this phenomenon throughout advertising history. Currently there’s a series of spots for the Palm Pre that is pretty much reviled by everybody, even as the early returns show a spike in the product’s profile. And I probably don’t have to say anything more than “Head On! Apply directly to the forehead!” to cause a cringing face to appear as a reflection in your laptop screen.63
Wallace anticipated the success of a number of technologies–time shifting and DVRs and On Demand video, for instance–that have changed our relationship with television and more specifically with advertising. But perhaps most relevant to Infinite Jest is a recent study published in the Journal of Consumer Research suggesting that viewers enjoy television programs when commercial breaks are included more than the same programs shown without commercials “by a decisive margin.” This is true even though “at every given moment watching the sitcom will be more enjoyable than watching a television commercial.” I’m not sure the authors of that study have a handle on exactly why that this is.64
There would seem to be an interesting take on the subject within the pages of Infinite Jest, however.
The Steeply and Marathe sections explicitly establish the idea that freedom in the form of “choosing” is supposed to make us happy, but is really a cage in itself. The Ennet House and ETA chapters are concerned with the related paradox that, while “fascism” by its nature is clearly an immoral incursion on the dignity of the individual, we must surrender to a kind of “personal fascism” (here in the form of AA or sadistic conditioning drills) if we are serious about pursuing happiness.65 “We are children, bullies but still children inside, and will kill ourselves…if you put the candy within the arms’ reach,” Steeply says. Without some authority looking after our better interests, and left to our own choosing, we will surely follow the path of short-term gratification over long-term satisfaction–we will choose to watch The Entertainment even knowing the dire consequences of that decision.
So isn’t it interesting that while very few of us would choose to watch commercials if given an opportunity to skip them, almost all of us find the program with commercial interruptions forced upon us more pleasurable than the program without them?
And isn’t it also interesting that, some 13 years before the surprising results of this study, Wallace published a novel (a novel specifically about the inevitably fatal pursuit of uninterrupted pleasure) with the interruptions mercifully built in?
Comments
16 responses to “I Love You Though You Hurt Me So”
That seems like a reasonable explanation – delayed gratification. If you can get it all the time (watch all the episodes in a TV show’s season on DVD without commercial interruption), you may not want to (and instead prefer to catch it once a week at a scheduled time). And in the act of watching, the show is more of a reward once one is forced to sit through the commercials to earn it.
Or maybe it has more to do with our attention spans; we’re able to come back to the show refreshed when there are commercials to break up the action.
I actually think it has something to do with the commercial breaks giving viewers an opportunity to get up and go do something else and not miss any of the show. I actually enjoy viewing entire seasons of shows on DVD without commercials, but that’s because I can pause them if necessary to take a break. If people think that they are going to have to sit to watch an entire TV program without being able to, say, get up to use the restroom and not miss something, they probably would like it less than a program with commercials.
Here’s the journal. Note at the end, ‘this effect was eliminated for people who are less likely to adapt (study 5) and for programs that do not lead to adaptation (study 6)’
Though I have no idea exactly what they mean by adaptation, it does seem to lend weight that the results of similar experiment using the Sopranos would have had different results than Taxi.
The finding disturbs me because I decided years ago that advertising was a form of psychic rape. Needless to say, I can’t stand cities like LA or Vegas precisely because I’ll need sedation.
Gratefully, I had no idea what you were talking about when you mentioned the palm ad.
“Adaptation” sort of means “you get used to it” – like how a garbage man can’t smell the garbage after he’s been exposed to it all day. In this sense, they’re saying the test subjects “adapt” to the pleasurable experience of watching the program, by getting less enjoyment out of it as time goes on.
When you put commercial breaks in between, the viewer’s experience is “reset” to a base neutral, or negative, level – then the resumption of the program becomes a welcome end to the interruption, leading to greater viewing enjoyment than if the program were uninterrupted. Some people have lower “adaptation” levels, meaning they experience less decrease in perceiving an experience over time, so the effect is less noticeable with them.
Sort of a scientific way of saying “the valleys in life make the mountains seem so much higher”.
I wonder what kinds of programs they used, and would it make a difference? For instance is there a difference between watchers of, say King of Queens versus NOVA, which is normally shown without interruptions? What if you took shows that are normally shown without interruptions, and add interruptions? Is there a difference in the effect based on the show’s content?
As a former ad guy you hurt me, AC, but you might be relieved to know that it doesn’t appear the commercials specifically were what led to the enjoyable experience. It seems to be the break itself.
Here’s a presentation that puts the data from this study into a larger context of pleasant and unpleasant experiences. Although humans are inclined not to take breaks during positive experiences (and to take them frequently during negative ones) breaks seem to make good experiences better and bad experiences worse. This presentation offers the plausible explanation of what it calls “dread and savoring.” Simply, the breaks make both good and bad experiences longer, and during the break in the positive experience the participant anticipates the return of good feelings, but during the break in the bad experience he dreads the moment it will start again.
Actually, reading it again I’m not sure that really is what they mean by “dread and savoring” although my explanation seems perfectly logical. To me.
Totally love ‘dread and savoring,’ which I read this way:
1. Candy! yum
2. Oh no oh my god they are taking it away (dread)
3. Maybe it is coming back, I think it is coming back (during commercial)
4. It is for sure coming back; it did last time (savoring)
5. It’s back!
I came late to this post but I just loved it, and the comments. Thank you.
Excellent, Chris. Thanks for that clarification. I believe they used a sitcom for this experiment (Taxi, maybe?). To your point, the Freakonomics guys suggested that part of the effect might be that a sitcom is written specifically to the breaks, so the experience was heightened when the expectation of breaks was met. It would be interesting to see the same experiment with a PBS show, as you suggest, or even a film.
As a reformed ad/branding dude myself, I love Wallace’s discussions of advertising and consumerism. The videophone and the LipoVac sections are particularly titillating. If you haven’t, read his short story Mr. Squishy, which is collected in Oblivion and was originally in a McSweeney’s issue. Hilarious and scary and touching and all that you’d expect from Wallace.
And for what it’s worth, with no research whatsoever to back it up, I think people like breaks in evening television because they can’t sit still for long periods, knowing there is laundry to be done and snacks to be prepared and conversations to attempt and ablutions to be performed and tidying to do and next-day preparations to complete. I think we like our entertainment in bites because it’s how we fit it into our lives.
It’s funny to me that since I don’t have a TV, I rent whole box sets when the program has run it’s course (the wire, arrested development) or has at least run a few seasons (Mad Men) and watch them (sans commercials) on my laptop. The strange realization I just had is that I will watch marathon sessions of the DVD’s and end up having to tear myself away. I think I’m the medical attaché (at least I haven’t soiled myself and I still remember to eat, phew.)
I’ve read about this study before and my first thought was that these people must have never sat down to watch the entire fifth season of Six Feet Under in one day.
haha, agreed!
I’m way behind, having come in the middle of the infinite summer, if there is such a place.
Been doing the background reading to help me get centered on the read. One of the questions I keep hearing is What Book Is This Book Most Like? Somehow, your post “I Love You Though You Hurt Me So” made it click: Catch-22
This entire section in IJ sparked a memory of Neil Postman’s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, in which he posits and writes about the decline in attention span (using a comparison of those who sat through long debates such as the Lincoln-Douglass debates vs. those of the majority today who can’t sit through a 30 min to 1 hr. program without needing a break.
I also loved your Tainted Love ref (even though it is my least favorite Soft Cell song ha ha.)
Craig – I agree completely! Amusing Ourselves to Death has been at the top of my mind through this whole book. This book itself is a lesson in re-establishing an attention span.