Whenever possible, I fast forward through television commercials, or I wander off physically or mentally while they're on (i.e. grab a tablet of some sort to read through Twitter or play games, or go investigate the latest crash-y noises that frequently follow bored kittens). Rarely I pay attention to ads on TV. There's an ad on current rotation that actually caught my attention, although I couldn't for the life of me tell anyone what sort of product it is selling. It uses an instrumental pop song that is as treacly sweet as can be, doubly so once you realize it's "Sunshine Day" from the Brady Bunch episode where they were a semi-professional singing group recording in a studio. (I'm pretty sure that's the one where Peter's voice starts to change. Is that relevant?) That I know all of this without consulting the Book of All Knowledge (Google) is kind of the point I want to make. I really feel targeted by nostalgia, to the extent that it has gone past annoying to feeling vaguely threatening. I don't want to think of myself as a member of a particularly desirable demographic, but maybe I am. I get all of these subtle pop culture references that are thrown out, and I'm more than a little bit susceptible to the nostalgia they are using to manipulate me and my cohorts. This is everywhere now. The first time I sang along to Muzak in a grocery store decades ago, I groaned that I must be old. Now every single song piped over the top of public spaces is aimed at me. The casino I went to so often in Central City was notorious for digging deep on the pop charts, spanning about 20 years, all of which cover my entire youth. I know they're trying to give me a sense of calm or even euphoria, so that I'll continue to sit and plug bills into the machines. I know I'm being manipulated. The hard part is figuring out whether I'm offended.
There is something very endearing about people who get the same pop culture references as you. It allows you to feel a bond that doesn't really exist when a person who has a natural distance from you (like if they're a celebrity, a newscaster, a boss, a candidate...) refers to some entertainment or toy that meant something to you when you were both younger. When some actor on a talk show references something from your youth (lets say, Gremlins or Tamagotchi Friends or the song that played at your high school prom that had everyone out on the dance floor), it catches your attention, doesn't it? If they make a fond comment about something you like, you feel positive toward them, even if you otherwise couldn't care less about them. If they speak disparagingly about your beloved Aquanet and scrunchie hairstyle that you rocked when you were 13, then you feel shamed or angry, regardless of whether they actually deserve your scorn. Is it fair to do that? Conversely, is it fair that all the movies are remakes of what we loved as kids, so that they can make money off of us without original content?
I had a pop culture epiphany yesterday. Someone on Twitter made a comment comparing someone to "Vince Clortho," and it set off alarm bells in my head. I'd heard that recently, but I had no idea who this name referred to. The Google alerted me instantly that the commenter had misspelled "Vinz Clortho," and from there I found that it referred to the Keymaster, the minion of Gozer who was the dog/bear monster that Rick Moranis' nerdy CPA character turns into in the original Ghostbusters. But having found all this out, I still had no idea why the name was echoing in my head. I turned it over mentally for more than an hour, until it finally fell into place. I had been watching a lot of old Key and Peele videos, because I had told someone about a great skit. It was the "Inner City Wizard School" bit, where Jordan Peele is the principal of Vincent Clortho Public School for Wizards, a run-down, underfunded, inner city American version of Hogwarts. It hasn't been a month since I was showing my friends the clip, and giggling over how well written and performed the skit was. I kept wondering where the Clortho part came from. I thought maybe it was totally original, or maybe it referred to something cultural that I was never exposed to. It didn't occur to me that it was one more layer of their writing brilliance, a deep dive into pop culture that I missed the first five times I watched that segment. I found myself admiring their pop culture bona fides, and now, a full day later, I'm wondering the ssame thing I wondered in the last paragraph. Does it really make them cooler that they used an obscure movie reference from my past? I mean, honestly I think Key and Peele are some of the best comedy writers of my lifetime already, but is it okay for me to give them bonus points for this? To my astonishment, I think they deserve them, for no other reason than they did their homework. And maybe now I'll go see whether Ghostbusters is on Netflix.
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