Congresswoman Anna Eshoo has given us all a holiday present. The Democrat from California got a bill through the House that will lower the volume of TV commercials to the level of the program carrying them instead of letting them spout unbearably shrill, disruptive racket that sears your brain with name of the latest drug, the pushiest insurance company, the hottest new cell phone.The bill has an acronym, CALM, for Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act. A corresponding bill has been introduced in the Senate.
Is this really a matter for Congress when we've got mute buttons on our remotes? Well, it's far less important than climate change or health care or war in Afghanistan. But it's not unimportant.
For one thing, it has a lot of symbolic value. When ads are louder than programs, it says something about our society. It says that content comes second to marketing, often marketing that's unutterably tacky. It's part of a situation in which much of our literary talent goes into writing ads, not great books, and kids, who used to grow up memorizing poetry and inspiring quotations now repeat in their sleep that you can have it your way at Burger King.
Speaking of children (and all the rest of us), here's what's pernicious about the commercial volume thing. It trains the Pavlov's dog in all of us; enormous, expensive study goes into doing that. Two major irritants, absurdity and loudness, hammer these ads into our brains so we remember even the ones we can't stand—especially the ones we can't stand. Dancing toilet brushes. Smurf-like creatures who are supposed to be mucus. I confess to having had a weakness for the Aflac duck, but as its iterations have grown more bizarre, its squawk has become unnerving.
So much for me—my friends and I could recite whole psalms and classics like Kipling's "If" by age 12 because they used to drill them into us in school and church, and in my longterm memory, they will outlive drum-thumping pink rabbits. But the rote memory path the schools abandoned, Madison Avenue commandeered. It hurts to watch our children grow up lisping commercials.
We can't get rid of this Disneyworld of Energizer bunnies and cavorting beer bottles, but we can at least tone it down. Until then, one thing can be said for the Geico gecko: he speaks more softly than the aforementioned duck.
