I started writing TV commercial reviews decades ago. I didn’t do it because I found these commercials so entertaining — though in truth they are often far more entertaining than the programs they interrupted. I did these reviews because I thought the commercials themselves represented a genuinely indigenous American art form, perhaps this country’s only truly indigenous art form.
Many people describe jazz in this way. Its rhythms are African, however, and its instrumentation European. TV commercials, on the other hand, employ a technology largely perfected (if not actually invented) in this country, and a form of greed that while universal, is so highly advanced on these shores and so fulsomely expressed that it can fairly be said to be our own.
At first glance political campaign commercials on TV might be viewed as just a sub-genre of the larger American TV commercial art form. Yet there’s an important distinction to be made here. Most other commercials are positive in nature. They aim to convince viewers to buy something that makes them look better or feel better. Political campaign commercials on TV tend to bear negative messages. Bad as you correctly believe I am, they imply, the other turkey is worse.
Great art needs financial support. It needs an infrastructure. You can’t play great symphony music on the lawn in a snowstorm. You need a symphony hall. You can’t safely hang a Picasso on a row house door. It needs a fine gallery.
Campaign commercials meet this test. The necessary financial support to underwrite this art form was provided to the tune of almost $4 billion in this most recent election cycle. Only in America, even in such tough times, can an art form like this be so richly endowed. Only in America would the highest court in the land move so dramatically to encourage such creativity.
Admittedly, not all campaign commercials deserve to be viewed as artworks. There’s a lot of junk out there. But so what? Have you listened closely to what purports to be great music coming out of the garage next door where a high school pick up band is practicing?
It’s time, perhaps, to accord campaign commercials on TV some real respect as a genuine art form. Because they are most certainly going to be a bigger and bigger part of our national culture in years to come. And that’s an aesthetic judgment you can bank on.
More from this writer at wallstreetpoet.com