The content of the popular media is a decent reflection of the state of the society. There you go, I have stated my thesis at the beginning and the rest of what follows is an attempt to show what really follows when you accept this premise. Let us undertake an experiment – watch this advertisement –

 

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It’s a popular advertisement about a printer. What was your reaction to it? Do you like it or feel indifferent? Actually the advertisement or rather the content of it and the subtle psychological message it attempts to send to its target audience is quite telling about the state of the current generation of young adults, you know, those of us born in the late 80s or 90s, who are now getting jobs, getting married, having families of their own. In short those of us who have the purchasing power. The advertisement starts by depicting a scene which appears to be in the house of the modern upper middle class Indian family. The dad is watching the television; the mom is at the table with the daughter. It appears that the mother is helping the daughter in doing some work, probably homework. Then we see the son and the crisis. The Science project is due on Monday but it is already Sunday 9 pm. The mother gives the son an indignant look and then the family gets together and with the help of the printer being advertised they save the day and win a prize in the process.

 

 

Thus far nothing spectacular jumps out at you, does it? It just appears as a garden variety run of the mill advertisement. But shall we delve in to the advertisement a little more deeply? Firstly, even though the advertisement superficial depicts a modern Indian family but in reality it emphasizes the stereotypical Indian family equation. The father is watching the TV, distant, aloof while the mother is helping the kids. Is that all? You know it is a trick question. Of course that’s not all. What is important here is where the mother and her little girl are studying. See the image above. Do you see the salt and pepper pots on the table? They are studying on the dining table, indicated by the presence of a pot, probably of salt and the positioning of 4 chairs around the table and its proximity to the kitchen. Way to show women their place! And I thought this to be a modern Indian family. May be is it, may be it is me who has got it backwards. Or not. How would it feel it they had shown the mother to watch TV in the other room not caring for her children?

 

Now we come to the crisis it self. The viewers are first informed about the crisis in the form of a sticky note posted on the refrigerator that the science project on due on Monday. This singular fact is of profound significance because it implies either that the mother or the father did not use the refrigerator a single time during the day or that like their son, they themselves forgot about the project. I think that the second scenario is much more plausible.

 

The fault of forgetting is as much of the parents as it is of their son. One might even argue that the parents wouldn’t have remembered unless their son first noticed it. They were blissfully oblivious, the father more so than the mother.  Now to compensate for their faulty parenting they resort to a gadget. It is a ticket out of the mess which they are in because of their own short coming. What does the ad tell us? You can procrastinate and even teach your children to do so because you have the gadget instead actually inculcating in them the value of timeliness. It’s ‘your get out of the jail free’ card. You like this ad because it assuages your guilt for not paying enough attention to your kids, you like this ad because it lets you let you take the easy way out. The answer is not the printer or any other gadget that you can buy because the problem is you. The problem is your lack of time management, your procrastination. But you don’t want to hear that.

 

The singular fact about the advertisement that the ad makers thought that it would work. Telling.