I quite like these sorts of moments. Having recently explored the idea that I have ADD (and concluded in fact I do not), this message on the side of my Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal box caught my eye. Nearly 20% more attentiveness! Wow! Just from eating cereal, no less. My curiosity piqued, I read the fine print for more details about this study.
Based upon independent clinical research, kids who ate Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal for breakfast had up to 18% better attentiveness three hours after breakfast than kids who ate no breakfast. (boldface mine)
By these standards, Twinkies or beef jerky could make the same claim! “Put some food in your kid’s gut–any little thing will do–and he won’t be distracted by a growling stomach for three hours.” What marketing genius thought up this campaign? One of the interns?
At times like these my mind wanders back to various 1970’s dystopian stories of the perils of a merchandising society. At what point do we reach a saturation point with the unreality of marketers, who present their version of reality in powerful, compact little bursts? After a continuous barrage of these unreality bullets, our notion of the state of things is riddled with inconsistency. Bank ads feature smiling families enjoying the purchases made on their credit cards, yet when was the last time you smiled while reading your credit card statement? In this light, those smiles turn into grimaces of fear.
The pesky thing is that marketing untruth isn’t an overt lie, but rather a disproportionate analysis. Mini-Wheats will make you full, yes. And kids who aren’t hungry are more attentive, of course. Therefore Mini-Wheats will make you more attentive. The logic is simple, but devilish; Mini-Wheats are a healthy enough cereal that they can spread nonsensical information within the realm of nutritional benefits and expect to be heeded. Twinkies, of course, would be mocked for making the same claim.
Literature works in much of the same way, which could be why so many English majors end up writing ad copy. Coat your untruth with the teflon of plausibility and you will hit home for a brief impact. Historically, many writers have had something to sell: an agenda, or a perpetuating perception of significance (I think here of the pulpy penny dreadfuls that created the myth of the American Cowboy hero). Genre writers such as myself wonder how much truth they need to inject into their work to create a veneer of plausibility. Some embrace a lack of truth and write “magic realism,” hoping that a symbolic truth will seep through.
I encounter it in my daily interactions, where I come out of hiding to present myself to a friend whom I haven’t seen in months. Do I give them the list of updates, or just pick up the idle chit-chat where we left off? What misconceptions do I create by unconsciously sending out sprays of truth bullets whose impact craters depict a life experience far more tragic than my daily life?
To take it to another context, I have created an image in the minds of my readers through writing The Bloodbaths and the Secret World Chronicle. Is that an image I want to retain as I ponder an exploration of less genre-oriented fiction? Should I choose a pseudonym? Or, as Jonathan Lethem has done, own my geekdom and rock the cultural references?
This post has raised a lot of questions that can’t be easily answered–and all from a box of cereal! I should stick to bacon and eggs in the morning.
