Sept 1, 1999

A much needed critical eye on advertising

Mental Engineering comes out of St. Paul and it works because it has a smart idea and smart funny people executing it, but perhaps mostly because it is so shocking to see television biting a food bearing hand.

Granted this is on public television where the advertising is more stealthy than the kind 'Mental Engineering' critiques. But even public television relies heavily on the goodwill of corporate America, and it will be interesting to see if the show, which began life on a Twin Cities public access station a couple of years ago can continue it's rapid growth rate: up to a claimed 25 percent of the country since getting into the PBS system in May.

It is perhaps telling that it has been picked up in Chicago not on the main PBS outlet, WTTW, but on WYCC ch 20 (where it has been airing Sundays at 4:30PM though not this Sunday)

Imagine a Super Bowl party in which nobody cares about football, only the ads (and they aren't drinking so much) and you get an idea of the concept. A TV ad is played, and four panelists and host creator John Forde have a go at it, with a perceptive and witty mixture of academic dispassion and consumer culture bitterness.

On one show, a discussion of a Mastercard ad probed whether money (and credit) were usurping religion. On another, the Ali Landry Doritos spot was given a Freudian reading (those sprinklers!) and ultimately dismissed for being a tired idea-- except by the comedian on the panel who said, quite earnestly, Bring on the titillation.

It's a little like "Sportswriters on TV" the late, lamented Sportschannel show, only the people at the roundtable are more likely to eat brie than smoke cigars. And it's a little like Bill Maher's 'Politically Incorrect' except that the discussion is more focused. And what, after all, could be more relevant to TV viewers, even public TV viewers, than TV advertising? 

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Last modified: January 19, 2002